Garvey's op-ed

I was pleased to see Dean John Garvey's op-ed on the Catholic Charities / adoption issue in Massachusetts; thanks to Rob for the link.  Unlike Rob, though, I do see this as, at its core, a religious-liberty issue.  The state has decreed that Catholic Charities may not engage in what is, for Catholic Charities, an act of Christian ministry and witness, not because Catholic Charities proposes to do anything that might cause any harm to a third party, but because the state objects to the moral constraints under which Catholic Charities believes itself to be operating.  Rob asks, do we "want a marketplace of moral norms when it comes to the adoption of children?"  Well, I suppose everyone would agree that the public authority may and should insist that parents who adopt children are fit and may impose some kind of a uniform standard of "fitness."  That said, I see no problem with a "marketplace" of adoption providers, who act in accord with different moral norms, consistent with the baseline requirement of child welfare.  That Catholic Charities refuses to facilitate certain adoptions does nothing to threaten the requirement that it promote and protect child welfare in the context of those adoptions is does facilitate.