Mass. bishops to seek exemption from gay-adoption requirements

The Boston Globe reports:

The four Roman Catholic bishops of Massachusetts plan to seek permission from the state to exclude gay couples as adoptive parents, according to two board members of the church's largest social service agency who were briefed on the plan.

The decision follows a three-month study of the theological and practical impact of having Catholic Charities of Boston, the Boston Archdiocese's social service arm, place children with gay couples, given the Vatican's teaching that describes such adoptions are ''gravely immoral."

This decision to seek an exemption from state anti-discrimination rules pits the bishops against the 42-member board of Catholic Charities of Boston, which is made up of some of Boston's most prominent lay Catholics. The board voted unanimously in December in support of continuing to allow gay couples to adopt children. . . .

If the bishops obtain an exemption, they could continue to handle adoptions while excluding gay or lesbian applicants from consideration. However, if they do not win an exemption, they either have to allow gay adoptions to continue or risk having their adoption license pulled and being barred from adoption work in the state altogether. . .

A move to stop gay adoptions by Catholic Charities may also prove troubling for the philanthropic agencies that donate only to organizations meeting certain antidiscrimination rules. Catholic Charities in Boston collected nearly $7 million, roughly 20 percent of its total income in the last fiscal year, from corporations, foundations, and individual donors, said Reynolds.

Let's assume that Catholic Charities is unable to secure an exemption, and assume also that no such exemption is constitutionally required.  I'm sure the bishops have consulted people more learned than I am in these matters, but it is not clear to me that it follows from the Church's teaching about the morality of homosexual conduct that Catholic Charities could never participate in or facilitate the placement of a child -- particularly a hard-to-place child -- with a gay foster parent or gay foster parents, or even that CC could not facilitate the adoption of such a child by a gay foster parent or gay foster parents.  What's the argument?