CBS Chicago reports online about the Catholic Charities lawsuit against the Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS), and the ACLU of Illinois recent motion to intervene on behalf of children who are wards of the state. The article is quick to point out the discriminatory stance of Catholic Charities against potential gay and lesbian parents, but also highlights how this could harm the children.
The ACLU also says Catholic Charities is claiming a “religious right to discriminate,” but in choosing homes for wards of the state of Illinois, the group is performing a state government function. State government does not have the legal right to discriminate against homes using religious objections, and the same applies to private agencies with which the state has contracted, such as Catholic Charities, the ACLU argued.
“This is not tolerable in an inclusive society,” John Knight, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Project of the ACLU of Illinois, said in a news release. “It harms children by limiting the pool of potential adoptive parents and harms our clients – basically telling them that they are not capable of parenting solely because they are lesbians.”
