By Valerie Schmalz

SF Catholic Charities cuts ties to homosexual adoptions

Controversial arrangement ends amid budgetary pressures, protests

The Archdiocese of San Francisco's Catholic Charities plans to sever its two-year funding relationship with an adoption agency, Family Builders by Adoption, that focuses on placing children with homosexuals.

"The funding from Catholic Charities is ending this [budget] year," Jill Jacobs, executive director of Family Builders by Adoption, told Our Sunday Visitor Sept. 25. Catholic Charities CYO currently provides two staff members for the agency at a cost of about $250,000 annually.

It is not clear what motivated the decision, which means the archdiocese will no longer have any involvement with adoptions. A Catholic Charities spokeswoman declined to comment.

"The CCCYO relationship with California Kids Connection [Family Builders' adoption program] was not envisioned as being long term," archdiocesan spokesman, Maurice Healy, told OSV in a one-sentence e-mail statement. He did not explain why the archdiocese did not describe the arrangement as temporary when the partnership was announced two years ago.

"I'm very happy to hear that Catholic Charities is severing its relationship with Family Builders by Adoption. I think the archdiocese now understands that Family Builders is a totally unsuitable partner," said Gibbons Cooney, a Catholic activist who operates the website SanFrancisco-Catholic.com, devoted to documenting homosexual associations within the archdiocese.

Catholic Charities recently revealed it was undergoing budget difficulties. In an annual letter mailed to archdiocesan households in September, the archdiocesan agency reported a $1.2 million deficit in the $39.3 million 2007-2008 budget. Catholic Charities said the deficit would be corrected with operational changes in the current fiscal year ending June 30, 2009.

The archdiocese's relationship with Family Builders by Adoption was a compromise agreement with the city of San Francisco after Cardinal William Levada, then the Vatican's newly appointed doctrinal chief and former archbishop of San Francisco, directed the archdiocese's adoption program to stop placing children with homosexuals, as it had reportedly done in five cases since 2000. In his statement, the cardinal cited a 2003 document by his predecessor at the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, now Pope Benedict XVI, which called same-sex unions "gravely immoral" and said that allowing same-sex couples to adopt would "actually mean doing violence to these children."

'Discriminatory directive'

In response, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and city supervisors threatened to withdraw Catholic Charities funding and questioned its status as a non-profit. The board of supervisors unanimously passed a resolution accusing the Vatican of being a "meddling...foreign country"; said Archbishop George Niederauer and Catholic Charities should "defy" Cardinal Levada; and urged the cardinal "to withdraw his discriminatory and defamatory directive."

The supervisor who introduced the resolution, a self-described gay Catholic, said the board would "take the necessary steps to defund Catholic Charities if this dispute cannot be resolved." Two-thirds of Catholic Charities' $30 million 2005-2006 operating budget was funded by government contracts.

To end the controversy, the archdiocese announced in mid-2006 it would shut down its 99-year-old adoption arm and instead provide Catholic Charities staff to Family Builders. Archbishop Niederauer said at the time the compromise would allow the archdiocese to continue to support adoption efforts while complying with the Vatican's directive to halt homosexual adoptions.

But some Catholic protest has been building as Family Builders' focus on a homosexual clientele for adoptions has become more widely known.

This summer the agency conducted an extensive billboard, bus and newspaper advertising campaign promoting adoption by homosexuals.

Same-sex success

The city of San Francisco repeatedly has lauded Family Builders for its efforts to place foster children with homosexuals. A 2008 mayor's report said the agency was meeting its goal of encouraging homosexual adoptions. Eighty-eight percent of the 16 children placed with nonrelatives were adopted by homosexuals, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

In 2006, the Boston archdiocese announced that it was cutting adoption services because of Massachusetts regulations that prohibit discrimination against same-sex couples wishing to adopt.

Valerie Schmalz is an OSV contributing editor.