FoxNews is running an article about a kindergarten student who was disinvited from enrolling in first grade at a Catholic school on the basis that the student has two co-habitating mommies.
I'm struggling with this one.
Archbishop Chaput's defense of the school's action-- as quoted in the article -- is about the best I can imagine at the moment:
"To allow children in these circumstances to continue in our school would be a cause of confusion for the student, in that what they are being taught in school conflicts with what they experience in the home," he wrote on the church Web site.
I see how this is valid. Why would an openly gay parent want to send their child to a school that would teach them that their household was inherently immoral?
But I do see two problems with this.
First, does the school apply the same argument to every student living with heterosexual couples who are cohabitating outside of marriage?
For a moment, I thought that the same might apply if the parents were simply non-Catholic, but I think that's a rather different matter. Worshiping God the wrong way seems less objectionable than publicly advocating an inherently immoral lifestyle. But what if the parents were both public supporters of abortion? What if one of them was a pro-choice congressman? How consistently is this applied?
Second, isn't a child in such a household in even more need of formation?
It's similar to the long-standing tradition where girls would have to leave Catholic high school if they got pregnant. I've always been uncomfortable with that policy. It seems like it would be more pro-life to teach mercy and find ways of keeping the girls in school.
With the issue of homosexuality, however, the school's position might actually be more tolerant than not. While, on the one hand, the school looks like it is being intolerant of the homosexuality, on the other hand, the school is respecting the parents' rights to raise their child as they see fit. Chaput's argument is that we can't possibly help you raise the child in accordance with your wishes. He is arguing that the Catholic school would by necessity have to teach the child in a way that was divisive from the parents...which would be disrespectful to the parents. But the school cannot not teach the child otherwise without disrespecting the wishes of the rest of the parents.
Chaput is admitting that the purpose of Catholic education is to teach doctrine -- to, by definition, indoctrinate. He is saying that the lesbian couple is asking the Church to indoctrinate their child in a way antithetical to the beliefs of the parent--which also seems to go against the Church's belief in parental rights. In a way, he's conceding the parental rights of the lesbian couple more by not allowing them to enroll their child than if he did enroll the child.
I can also see how it might be better to address the problem sooner than later. If the student is admitted, it would create quite the tangled web. Not only will the student be confused over sexual teachings down the line, but the student will also have to encounter all the Church teachings on fatherhood. What's going to happen around Father's Day? Is there a Father/Daughter dance? Granted, children in divorced families or children who have lost parents deal with these issues as well, but for very different reasons.
It seems like it would be potentially disruptive for other children's learning experiences as well. Parents, assumably, want their children to go to school at a safe environment where they can grow in their faith until they are old enough to confront such challenges to their morality. If the lesbians decide to closet themselves, they wouldn't be honest to themselves. If they don't closet themselves, they will be disrupting everyone else's experience.
In this regard it is also like the debate over special education. Does introducing special-needs students into mainstream classrooms really help students, or do the obstacles create a net loss in education? In a way, the child of a gay couple is very likely to be a morally-challenged student...unless that student has the clarity to see that his or her parents are living an immoral lifestyle.
It's a hard call.
Thoughts?
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