For over 100 years the adoption arm of the Catholic Charities organization of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has provided adoption services for the state’s adoption agency, helping to find homes for some of the most-difficult-to-place children.

It was a valuable and almost irreplaceable service to the community and it has now been destroyed thanks to one of those politically correct laws enacted under pressure by a minority group with political influence that far outweighs their numbers.

Under Massachusetts law it is unlawful to discriminate against gays and lesbians. Forbidding gay and lesbian couples from adopting children is therefore considered to be a violation of the law.

Under the ancient doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, however, homosexual activity of any kind is deemed to be gravely immoral and forbidden under any circumstances. The Church cannot sanction or participate in recognizing same-sex marriage by granting homosexual couples the right to adopt children.

Thanks to demands from the gay and lesbian community the full weight of the state came crashing down on Boston’s Catholic Charities organization, which was ordered to get with it and ship innocent children to gay and lesbian households.

That they could not do, and remain Catholic, so Boston has lost a valuable ally in the struggle to find homes for some of the most-difficult-to-place youngsters.

This is an outrage brought on by homosexual activists. It’s all about them, it’s not about religion, it’s not about anybody’s beliefs, and it’s not about the welfare of children. They want to force all organizations including religions to accept their abnormal lifestyle as normal.

It’s not going to happen no matter how many laws they pressure politicians to enact.

They want people to accept the idea that gay families are no different than heterosexual families; that children having two daddies or two mommies – instead of a father and a mother – is normal. They want same-sex marriages to be equal with traditional marriages, and they want government to guarantee it .

They cite the high divorce rate between heterosexuals as proof that heterosexual marriage can be harmful to children. They say that this proves that gay and lesbian people should be able to adopt children to keep them from suffering from the trauma of broken homes. They ignore the obvious fact that exposing children to an abnormal home life can be devastating to children who need only to look around them and see the majority of their friends living in normal heterosexual households to recognize that they are the odd ones out.

If we want to stop homosexuals and lesbians from pointing to the heterosexual divorce rate, and pleading “give us a shot at raising children,” then we have stop the destructive behavior that culminates in divorce.

What this tells us is not that heterosexual divorce justifies gay adoption, but that we have to start taking our marriage vows seriously. Too many couples take their marriage vows with their fingers crossed, seeing marriage more as a date than a lifetime arrangement. So when the going gets a little rough – as it always will and always does – they just walk away and their children become victims of their selfishness.

Of course divorce harms children, but the remedy is not to fend them off on a same-sex couple living a freakish lifestyle. The remedy is to accept marriage as it is meant to be – a permanent commitment – and if a couple cannot make that commitment they should forget about tying the knot.

Sooner or later, there is going to be a massive backlash against the intense pressure homosexual activists are applying in many areas of our national life. We’ve already seen evidence that it is beginning to happen in, of all places, Hollywood, where we just saw the Motion Picture Academy members turn thumbs down on a best-picture award for the pro-gay movie “Brokeback Mountain” despite weeks of incredible lobbying by the gay and lesbian community. Even Hollywood had to say, “Gosh, we’ve got to have some standards here.”

©2006 Mike Reagan. If you’re not a paying subscriber to our service, you must contact us to print or web post this column. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc. Cari Dawson Bartley email Cari@cagle.com, (800) 696-7561