What does that have to do with same-sex marriage? UPDATED
SUNDAY UPDATE: Half-truths and mistruths about adoption, field trips and church weddings: See today's editorial on Proposition 8.
Catholic Charities in San Francisco has done a lot of good works, including finding adoptive homes for the kids most families want nothing to do with -- hard-case, hard-to-place older children who have circled the foster-care world. They have special needs and dark pasts.
And the single biggest group of prospective parents willing to adopt these kids and make homes for 
them are in gay and lesbian households. An interesting irony when you consider all the muck going on in the anti-gay campaign conducted by Yes on Proposition 8 about how all kids ought to be raised in straight households with their heterosexual mothers and fathers. Most of these children were abused or neglected by their heterosexual mothers and fathers.
Catholic Charities was happy to find good homes in both homosexual and heterosexual households for otherwise unwanted, rejected children. But a couple of years ago, under pressure from church hierarchy not to place children with gay and lesbian parents, yet facing state laws that ban discrimination against gays, the nonprofit stopped doing direct adoption altogether.
Note that this has nothing to do with same-sex marriage, which did not become legal until the state Supreme Court ruling some 18 months later. Similarly, the case of Catholic Charities in Massachusetts that the Yes on 8 people are so fond of bruiting had nothing to do with same-sex marriage, but with anti-discrimination laws and the public funding Catholic Charities received to do the state-contracted work of 
finding homes for these children. The story of the Mormon adoption agency in Massachusetts -- a successful balancing of religious doctrine and state law that the Times editorial board will explore in detail soon -- offers an interesting contrast to the claims of religious discrimination. But that''s not a story the Yes on 8 campaign would like you to hear.
As the board prepares to publish its final pre-election editorial on Proposition 8, which would take away the existing right of California's same-sex couples to marry, it has discovered that the scare stories advertised by the campaign not only are full of untruths and half-truths, but they don't have anything to do with same-sex marriage itself. Gay and lesbian people still are entitled to adopt, to receive health care, to use public spaces. They were entitled to that before the state Supreme Court ruling, and they'll be entitled to it after the Tuesday election, unless the next goal of the anti-gay coalition is to deprive them constitutionally of those rights as well.
Unthinkable? Arkansas voters will be deciding a ballot initiative Tuesday under which gay and lesbian households would be unable to adopt. Clearly, fairness -- including fairness to rejected, troubled children who can't find a stable home -- is not a goal of such campaigns.
Photos by Justin Sullivan and David McNew/Getty Images
9 years ago when my husband and I waited in line in Beverly Hills to get our marriage license. In front of us was a couple who spent the entire time in line arguing. When they got to the window one could not produce the evidence of his previous divorce, which they fought about. I remember being struck how odd it is that those two people who so clearly wouldn't be married long enough for the ink to dry had more rights than my gay friends who had been together in committed relationships for decades. Please vote No on Prop 8.
Posted by: Married with Child | November 03, 2008 at 05:29 PM
Blake, Samuel and Sara Beth;
You are wrong.
You are wrong when you say that every culture recognizes marriage as being between a man and a woman. There are many cultures in the U.S. alone that recognize marriage as something differently defined, not to mention those in other countries.
You are wrong when you say that to compare homphobia to racism is wrong-minded. Each discriminates based upon the idea that, because someone was born differently, that they should be treated differently. Each assumes that, because someone is different than what one is used to, it is appropriate to hate them and everything they are about. Hate is hate, Blake. Discrimination is discrimination. Regardless of the reason.
Prop 8 DOES disriminate. It discriminates against gay men and women. There is no such thing as restoring traditional marriage as being between one man and one woman. The traditional meaning of marriage differs as does the traditional meaning of anything else from one culture to the next. Prop 8 simply imposes upon everyone - not just homosexuals - the beliefs of a few who are angry that the California Supreme Court refused to allow their restrictive beliefs to be imposed upon others without their consent.
What's next? Will you also make it illegal to bear children outside of marriage? Will we go back to the time when interracial marriage was illegal? Who's next? Once one begins discriminating against others, it becomes easier to discriminate against still others. In the end, all that is left to discriminate against is you.
The concept of marriage does not need to be defined or cemented. It is the union of individuals who have agreed that their lives and assets will be joined for the benefit of one other, and any offspring brought about as a consequence of the union. THAT is what everyone agrees marriage is, not simply the union of one man and one woman.
One final thing for the three of you:
If marriage is to be protected, it should be protected from divorce. This is marriage's only natural predator.
Posted by: Audrey | November 03, 2008 at 03:42 PM
I am tired of the Gay community comparing homosexual behavior to that of being born Black prior to the civil rights movement in the 60s.
Proposition 8 does not discriminate against gays; it simply restores the meaning of marriage and protects it as an essential institution that has benefited mankind since the beginning of time. Every culture in the world understands that marriage is between a man and a woman.
Vote Yes on Prop 8
Posted by: Blake | November 03, 2008 at 08:29 AM
HOW SAME-SEX “MARRIAGE” AFFECTS MASSACHUSETTS
We do not need to guess or speculate on what will happen if Proposition 8 does not pass. No, all we need to do is look east and view a 5-year case study of Massachusetts for ourselves. This isn’t rocket science. What is happening in Massachusetts CAN and WILL happen in California if Proposition 8 does not pass. Knowledge is power – know what you are voting for on Tuesday. Click link for Massachusetts case study.
http://www.massresistance.org/docs/marriage/effects_of_ssm.html
Keep in mind, under California law, “[D]omestic partners shall have the same rights, protections, and benefits, and shall be subject to the same responsibilities, obligations, and duties under law…as are granted to and imposed upon [married] spouses.” (Family Code §297.5) Prop 8 will NOT take away any of those rights.
If there is any doubt, whatsoever, that what happened in Massachusetts could not possibly happen in California, the following just occurred recently:
During a celebration of National Ally Week, Tara Miller, a teacher at the Faith Ringgold School of Arts and Science in Hayward, Calif., passed out cards produced by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network to her class of kindergartners. Yes, in California.
School Clams up on ‘Gay’ Pledge Cards given to Kindergartners
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,445865,00.html
Prop 8 is not an attack on the gay lifestyle. Prop 8 is all about protecting the ideal of marriage as being a union between one man and one woman. And now, you have had a chance to review a 5-year case study of Massachusetts for yourself.
Please vote Yes on 8.
Posted by: Samuel Newell | November 02, 2008 at 07:55 AM
Fitz, Coretta Scott King was on record as supporting same-sex marriage, and she stated repeatedly that she was sure Martin would have been, had he lived. In fact, one of King's closest advisers, and the PRINCIPAL organizer of the March On Washington, was Bayard Rustin, a proud and openly gay man.
Don't use the remarks of one worker on the March on Washington to justify your bigotry.
Posted by: Rational Thought | November 01, 2008 at 11:46 PM
"Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union. A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages." -- Coretta Scott King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr & Civil rights activist (Associated Press 3/24/2004)
"I see this as a civil rights issue. That means I support gay civil marriage." -- Julian Bond, Former NAACP President, SPLC Director and Co-Founder of SNCC
"I believe in equal human rights, before the law, for all human beings, and race, gender, disability, class or sexual orientation should not be a factor under the law. Even though we live under the law in a secular democratic society, religious groups must still be able to maintain their spiritual and moral option to either give or withhold a religious or sacred blessing to such unions. However, the government should not have that option. It must affirm the human and legal rights of everyone." -- Al Sharpton (HRC Presidential Candidates' Questionnaire, 07/03)
Posted by: Greling Jackson | November 01, 2008 at 09:50 PM
"California domestic partnerships almost identical to marriage..." - Sarah Beth
So I guess "almost identical" will have to do. Some kids will go to school and tell their classmates I have a domestic partner and a domestic partner. I don't have parents.
The Court did NOT tell you what to call YOUR marriage, Sarah Beth, or what to tell YOUR children.
You haven't LOST anything, but your common sense.
Posted by: Leslie | November 01, 2008 at 02:21 PM
I'm part of a straight couple who has been together thirteen years, plans on having children soon, and plans on being together the rest of our lives. What we do not plan to do is get married, or at least not until gay couples can marry everywhere in the country. I would rather not sound high-and-mighty or holier-than-thou, but as recently as forty-one years ago there were fourteen states in which it was illegal for a black person to marry a white person, and I believe that in forty more years it will seem just as incredible and appalling that at one time the law prohibited gay people from marrying one another. I am hoping that voters in California will get on the right side of history.
Posted by: MichaelJOBrien | November 01, 2008 at 11:32 AM
"Marriage is neither a conservative nor a liberal issue; it is a universal human institution, guaranteeing children fathers, and pointing men and women toward a special kind of socially as well as personally fruitful sexual relationship. Gay marriage is the final step down a long road America has already traveled toward deinstitutionalizing, denuding and privatizing marriage. It would set in legal stone some of the most destructive ideas of the sexual revolution: There are no differences between men and women that matter, marriage has nothing to do with procreation, children do not really need mothers and fathers, the diverse family forms adults choose are all equally good for children. What happens in my heart is that I know the difference. Don't confuse my people, who have been the victims of deliberate family destruction, by giving them another definition of marriage."
Walter Fauntroy-Former DC Delegate to CongressFounding member of the Congressional Black CaucusCoordinator for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s march on DC
Posted by: Fitz | November 01, 2008 at 10:12 AM
Any supporters of Prop 8 who think they’re voting for a sensible, non-discriminatory, non-hateful amendment that would simply preserve traditional marriage without harming the rights of same-sex couples are deluding themselves.
These foes of the gay and lesbian community, from California to Florida, are cut from the same cloth; they’ll use language to appeal to tolerance-minded folks, who rightly do not want to see second-class citizenship enshrined in the law for the gay community. Yet make no mistake, the agenda of these bigots is just the same: to roll back the gains gays and lesbians have made on state and local levels.
Here in Florida we are faced with Amendment 2 on the ballot, which reads:
“In as much as marriage is the legal union between only one man and one woman as husband and wife, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized."
Thus the progress on civil unions thus far would be wiped away with this amendment.
The organizers of these ballot initiatives are not only harming the gay and lesbian community, but our way of life as a nation. The human conscience itself, these intolerant people demand, should only be affirmed by way of public referenda. Should one’s moral conscience, on sexual identity issues or otherwise, lead them to a minority viewpoint — even a slim one at that — they will find themselves literally and figuratively on the wrong side of the law.
Thus, above all, these ballot measures on gay marriage offend broader American ideals, not just one particular community.
Timothy Rieger
Posted by: Timothy Rieger | October 31, 2008 at 05:12 PM
I find it baffling that anybody would fight to keep a loving, committed, happy couple made up of two consenting adults from a simple legal marriage license to seal their bond in the eyes of the law 'til death do them part. Who is to say: "I approve of your relationship so you can be legally married, but you I don't approve of so I'm gonna make sure you can't be legally married." What a horrible thing! It is no one else's business! How would YOU like it if someone took away your right to legal marriage because your relationship didn't meet with their personal approval?
Posted by: MIchael in Merced | October 31, 2008 at 03:36 PM
Sarah Beth, so called "religious groups" used the same arguments at one time about placing adopted children with interracial married couples.
Prop 8 is only an issue because many of you fine KKKristians can't bear the thought of people different than you being equal in the eyes of the law.
You use religion to justify your bigotry, just like the segregationists of yore. You are on the wrong side of history and justice.
VOTE NO ON PROP 8.
Posted by: Rational Thought | October 31, 2008 at 02:26 PM
Maybe these religious organizations became more worried about same-sex couples adopting when they realized there was an activist movement that wanted to redefine the definition of "marriage" and "family" for the whole society. California domestic partnerships almost identical to marriage, and because it did so, the court overstepped its constitutional bounds (according to two of its own justices) and forced the state to start calling those unions marriages. No wonder religious groups and others are worried about constitutional rights be infringed on by activists and courts--it has already happened.
Posted by: Sarah Beth | October 31, 2008 at 02:00 PM
A nice, coincidental update: Today, President Bush declared November to be National Adoption Month, with words of praise for the people who provide stable homes for otherwise unwanted children--especially hard-to-place foster kids:
"My Administration is committed to helping young people find the love, stability, and support that a family can provide. We have joined with community and faith-based organizations to raise public awareness of foster children awaiting adoption. With the help of the Congress, we are assisting families in overcoming the financial barriers to adopting children through programs such as the Adoption Incentives Program. In addition, the Collaboration to AdoptUsKids project, which can be found at adoptuskids.org, provides guidance and resources for parents exploring adoption.
" During National Adoption Month, we honor adoptive and foster parents who have shown America the depth and kindness of the human heart. Their love and dedication inspire the next generation of Americans to achieve their dreams and demonstrate the true spirit of our Nation.
" NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim November 2008 as National Adoption Month. I call upon all Americans to observe this month with appropriate programs and activities to honor adoptive families and to participate in efforts to find permanent homes for waiting children."
(Note that the president wisely didn't differentiate between straight and gay people who provide for these chldren.)
Posted by: Karin Klein | October 31, 2008 at 12:42 PM