Gay Adoption and Religious Liberty

Boston College law dean John Garvey has weighed in on the gay adoption controversy in today's Boston Globe.  An excerpt:

The issue is not whether the Church or the state has the better of the debate over gay families. When freedom is at stake, the issue is never whether the claimant is right. Freedom of the press protects publication of pornography, blasphemy, and personal attacks. Freedom of religion is above all else a protection for ways of life that society views with skepticism or distaste.

I appreciate the argument, but I'm not sure that religious liberty gets us all that far in this context.  We're not talking about the protection of religious speech or a community's internal affairs.  An organization's selection of adults to serve as parents for children with whom they have no natural relationship seems a prime target for the enforcement of public norms.  And while I often defend the flourishing of plural moral norms, even in the public sphere, through a marketplace approach, do we really want a marketplace of moral norms when it comes to the adoption of children?  (I don't intend that as a rhetorical question -- I'm honestly not sure.)

Rob