I used to work with Leigh! She's awesome. This is so cool!

Something that too often gets overlooked is that Catholic schools can be staffed by caring and insightful educators, Catholic hospitals can be staffed with caring and insightful health-care professionals, etc. Catholics, and religious people in general, often get tarred, undeservedly, with a very broad brush.

Bill Coffin, who died last week, had this to say: "The first of the four cardinal virtues of the Roman Catholic Church is 'prudentia,' which basically means damn good thinking. Christ came to take away our sins, not our minds."

Good thinking suggests that educating all children well is a virtue.

Reading this story, and remembering one on TV last week about two men in Florida, who were not able to adopt, but were able to get legal custody of first one child, and then her sister... I had a thought.

Perhaps there are kids who actually benefit from having two parents of the same sex. Granted, I'm thinking of a small sample here, but it sounds like Jesse, after being buffeted around so much might have needed the extra nurturing of two mothers.

The little girl in Florida had also been in many foster homes, but she was really out of control, a serious discipline problem. Sure, she needed loving parents, but she also needed some structure and discipline. Who doesn't know that children will usually "listen better" to a male voice than to a female one?

Could it be that adoption or legal custody arrangements like these, which are out-of-the-box, work precisely because there is something serendipitous at work for these children who are selected by same-sex parents?

Just a thought...

I was raised Roman Catholic. Went to CCD, got communion, confession, the works. I, like many others, left the Church for many reasons, none of them having to do with the PEOPLE in the parishes. The people of this Church are warm, caring, compassionate, and tolerant (on the whole.) The LEADERSHIP of this Church is, well, not. And I am confused a bit by this, because it was this Church that taught me to be compassionate, tolerant, and caring.

I causes me great pain to see this Church, a parent of mine, turn from those values. I am reminded why I left.

Now, can we talk about the hypocrisy of the Boston Archdiocese afraid of "doing violence to these children." I am stunned that they can say such things without even a hint of irony.

As noted previously, to a large extent, the Church's leadership does not reflect the feelings, beliefs, and actions of its membership. The reasons for this are not hard to fathom: the Church's hierarchy is composed almost entirely of clerics. Unlike clerics, the Church's laity live in the real world - they marry, have sex, bear and raise children, etc. As a result, they are more likely to come in contact with gays as real people, not as an abstract idea. It is much harder to condemn homosexuality when you know gay couples as friends, co-workers, and fellow parents.

A similar situation exists with the Boy Scouts of America, an organization whose leadership has become almost entirely Mormon, yet whose membership is comprised of persons from all faiths, including some who profess no faith at all. While the BSA leadership has declared that gay and atheist boys cannot be Scouts or Scout leaders, the membership at the troop level does not reflect these narrow-minded views, and tends to turn a blind eye with regard to enforcement of BSA diktat.

One story that I really wish Salon Broadsheet would pick up on and talk about, and it's NOT a feel-good gay parenting story, is the story of the website Adoption.com.

The company that owns Adoption.com -- Adoption Media LLC also owns 200 other parenting, fertility and adoption-related sites. Adoption.com – the popular main site of the Adoption Media network's sites, with millions of hits per month -- shut down their online forum for gay and lesbian adoption (they referred to the forum with the title "Non-Traditional Families") about two weeks ago. This shutdown was made with no notice or warning. All the content and posts at those forums, content created by the participants, was also deleted without notice, and is reported to be "irretrievable" by Adoption.com.

The site's forum members – who include prospective and current adoptive parents, birth parents, adoptees, and adoption professionals who gathered to exchange information and support at dozens of forums for everything from Guatemala Adoption to Domestic Foster Parenting – can only speculate what happened.

It's suspected that the move may be retribution. Adoption.com is being sued by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, on behalf of a gay couple who were gefused the opportunity to purchase a paid Profile ;isting at Adoption.com's "Parent Profiles" (http://www.parentprofiles.com).

The lawsuit, originally filed in 2004, challenges their discriminatory policy under California law, which prohibits businesses from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. ( http://www.nclrights.org/releases/pr-adoptiondotcom050504.htm )

In an initial victory in May 2005, federal district court Judge Phyllis Hamilton held that Adoption.com must comply with California's non-discrimination laws and that the case can proceed. In a subsequent victory in late March of 2006, Judge Hamilton denied Adoption.com's motion to dismiss the case. (http://www.nclrights.org/cases/adoptiondotcom.htm )

It may be no coincidence that the shutdown of the forum came not soon after Hamilton's latest ruling.

According to lawsuit records, Dale Gwilliam, a spokesman for Adoption.com, has admitted openly that Adoption.com does not allow gay and lesbian couples to use their services, and refuses Parents Profile listings to any gay couples or singles.

Adoption.com and its network of sites are privately owned by Arizona-based Nathan Gwilliam and his father. Both are prominent members of the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormon Church), a church that has a known antipathy to homosexuality.

According to Adoption.com itself: "Adoption.com Web sites are the world's most popular adoption information destination, delivering more than 10 million pages of content a month, with more than 1.5 million total monthly visits to its Web sites. Adoption.com also publishes the AdoptionWeek e-Magazine, which is sent to more than 120,000 email recipients each week. Adoption.com has been providing information and community services to the adoption community since 1996. These Web sites are part of a small, family-run business, Adoption Media, LLC, located in Gilbert, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix." It's estimated that the company employs twenty people and creates revenues from advertising, directory listings of adoption attorneys and agencies, listings of parent profiles, and from sales of adoption books, music, videos, and other products.

Adoption.com and its forums are just part of a huge network of hundreds of websites, all focusing on adoption, parenting, families, and fertility. In addition to traffic powerhouse Adoption.com, popular sites include AdoptionWeek.com, an online magazine sent via email weekly to 220,000 readers; AdoptableKids.com, a photo listing with nearly 2,000 children in foster homes and orphanages; ParentProfiles.com, a service allowing hopeful adoptive parents to build online profiles and pregnant mothers to access those profiles; and AdoptionRegistry.com, the largest mutual-consent reunion registry that helps adult adoptees and birthparents find each other. A listing of selected other sites in their network are included at the end of this letter.

Upon the announcement of the shutdown of the "Non-Traditional Families" forum, Adoption.com faced a huge backlash from members. Hundreds of members left the service, mounting a vocal boycott, and vowing never to participate again. (Site moderators, however, deleted all references to the controversial forum closure.)

Within hours, a new forum was started up at the website Soul of Adoption (http://www.soulofadoption.com ) and former Adoption.com forum members – straight, gay, single, married, and from all races, ethnic origins, nationalities, and denominations – joined together to create a non-discriminatory alternative to Adoption.com's forums.

Various members of the community sent out mass mailings to Adoption.com advertisers and content providers, urging them to boycott Adoption.com and its network of sites, due to its discriminatory policies.

--Straight But Not Narrow, and Boycotting Adoption.com