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Published: April 8, 2008

Has San Francisco Catholic Charities become a homosexual-activist organization?

A faithful layman explains why he will not contribute to CCCYO at this coming Sunday’s special collection

News from the Trenches

On April 13, the parishes of the Archdiocese of San Francisco will hold their annual special collection for Catholic Charities CYO (CCCYO).

I won’t be donating.

In 2005, we learned that CCCYO was facilitating adoptions by homosexual persons. Vatican teaching clearly states that such adoptions are unacceptable and the Vatican insisted this stop. CCCYO didn’t agree, so in consultation with openly gay Supervisor Bevan Dufty, they came up with a “compromise” that they claimed allowed them to continue to do adoption work (and accept public funding) while remaining faithful to the teachings of the Church. Instead of doing adoptions themselves, they provided paid staff (actually doubled the staff) to “Family Builders by Adoption,” who call themselves the “gayest adoption agency in the country.” This was termed “remote cooperation.” That is: CCCYO provided staff, but would have no say in where, or to whom, the adoptive children go. On the “GLBT Youth and Families” page of the “Family Builders” web site, we find this sentence: “In the state of California, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals have the same rights as anyone to adopt a child.”

Remember, CCCYO and the archbishop, guided by theologians, justified CCCYO’s staffing Family Builders only in so far as they had no knowledge as to where the children go. So now, “Family Builders” is facilitating not only gay and lesbian, but also transgendered” persons to be adoptive parents. They are using staff paid, in part, from special collections taken at Masses. And by the terms of their own “compromise” -- the compromise the archbishop declared he was “very happy with” -- the archbishop, the theologians and CCCYO can say nothing about it.

The preceding was sent as a letter to the editor of Catholic San Francisco, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. It wasn’t printed, which makes sense, since a letter arguing against giving money to an organization whose chairman of the board is also publisher of the newspaper will seldom get printed. But how did the situation described come about?

Family Builders by Adoption is a homosexual activist organization. Did CCCYO know with whom it was dealing? Yes. One of Family Builders’ board members is open homosexual Glenn Motola, himself a homosexual adoptive “father.” At the time the partnership between Family Builders and CCCYO was formed, Motola just happened to be director of Programs and Services at CCCYO.

Family Builders received grants from the Horizons Foundation, a big-league, homosexual-activist funding organization, in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2007. An openly lesbian lady named Nanette Lee Miller sits on the Audit Committee of the Horizons Foundation. She also just happens to be treasurer of CCCYO. Another of the groups funded (2002-2007) by the Horizons Foundation is the Transgender Law Center, an organization whose purpose is “equality” for “transgendered” persons. Their board chair is a man who goes by the name of “Lisa Rae” Dummer, who produced the 2007 San Francisco Transgender Cotillion and who is a Eucharistic Minister at notorious Most Holy Redeemer Church. His fellow acolyte and lector at MHR just happens to be Nannette Lee Miller, who, as mentioned, is treasurer of CCCYO, and sits on the Audit Committee of the Horizons Foundation, which funds Dummer’s organization.

At the 2007 CCCYO “Red House” fundraiser, the emcee was transvestite “Donna Sachet.” Sachet sits on the board of the Equality California Institute, a group whose purpose is the legalization of same-sex marriage in California. In 2005, Equality California received a grant of $7,500 from the Horizons Foundation. Are we seeing a pattern yet?

Two of the highest-level recent/current members of CCCYO hold upper level board and committee positions in homosexual-activist organizations. Nanette Miller is also a past president of the “Golden Gate Business Association,” the “first GLBT Chamber of Commerce.” As mentioned, she also serves as an acolyte and lector at Most Holy Redeemer Church. She is also a member of the Liturgy Planning Group at MHR. To a faithful Catholic, the question immediately arises: How in the world did CCCYO allow people who are important members of homosexual-activist organizations to obtain such positions of authority? Was it negligence, or did they have the wool pulled over their eyes? The answer is simple: CCCYO has become, to a significant extent, a homosexual-activist organization itself.

Some history

In 1997 CCCYO was faced with a choice -- offer equal benefits to the “partners” of its homosexual employees or lose city funding. What is significant is that CCCYO employees came out forthrightly against the teaching of the Church and supported the city in this dispute. Catholic teaching lost, CCCYO won, and homosexual relationships were recognized as equal with natural marriage.

Three years later, in 2000, CCCYO began allowing adoptions by homosexual couples, again in violation of Church teaching. (Remember, while all this goes on, the archdiocese is mandating annual special collections at Masses to support CCCYO.) In 2005, these adoptions were made public -- and the Vatican ordered them stopped. Again, the archdiocese was faced with a choice: be true to Catholic teaching, or lose public funding. Again, opposition to Church teaching came from CCCYO. But this time the opposition to Church teaching came not from lower level employees, but from the executive director of CCCYO himself, Brian Cahill. And once again, the archdiocese came up with a compromise. This compromise resulted in CCCYO providing staff to “the gayest adoption agency in the country.” That same agency is now pitching children not only to gay and lesbian people, but to “transgender” people as well.

And who brokered this compromise? According to the San Francisco Chronicle, it was openly gay Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who represents San Francisco’s Castro District, and who is himself a gay adoptive “father.” Dufty is a welcomed guest at Most Holy Redeemer; he has attended CCCYO fundraisers; he was the emcee at Family Builders’ 30th Anniversary party. Dufty was also one of the supervisors who signed resolution 168-06, which condemned the Catholic Church as hateful and bigoted for teaching that adoptive children should be placed in a home with a mother and a father.

Finally, as mentioned above, at CCCYO’s 2007 “Red House Fundraiser,” the emcee was transvestite “Donna Sachet.” This is significant. Sachet is a serious homosexual-activist, sitting on the board of the Equality California Institute. Sachet also hosted the VIP Party at the “Marriage Equality California” awards dinner in Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office in 2006. Sachet has appeared at numerous s/m events in San Francisco: the “Golden Dildeaux Awards,” the Folsom Street Fair, etc., including some at Most Holy Redeemer Church. Sachet’s presence at a CCCYO fundraiser indicates they no longer feel a need to hide the true nature of the organization.

Is any of this important? Yes. The first responsibility of the Church is the supernatural welfare of the children of God. The Church was created by Jesus to be the means of the reconciliation of God and man. Also, right from the beginning, the Church took responsibility for our natural welfare. It’s rare that there is a conflict between these two responsibilities. But if there ever is a conflict, the Church simply has to remember that supernatural welfare must come first.

With CCCYO such a conflict has occurred. Those supporters of the new adoptions policy said over and over again that their concern was the good of the children. But from a Catholic point of view, that’s insufficient. What wasn’t considered was the good of the homosexual/transgender adoptive persons. And from God’s point of view, they are every bit as important as the children. The Vatican said that allowing children to be adopted by homosexual persons amounted to “doing violence to the children.” But what was never said is that allowing adoptions by homosexual/transgender persons does violence to those persons. No adoption agency would give a child to a person they considered unfit. CCCYO allowed homosexual persons to adopt until the Vatican ordered it stopped, and it now staffs an agency that specifically targets homosexual/transgender adopters. CCCYO thus implicitly asserts that it’s OK to live a homosexual/transgendered lifestyle.

But since homosexual behavior is sinful, and sin alienates one from God, the Church must never say that it is OK. By doing so, they are abandoning the homosexual/transgender persons.
In approving this compromise, the archdiocese is saying to them: “We don’t care about you, except insofar as you can provide a materially decent environment to this child.” The archdiocese thus violates one of the most basic precepts of Catholic moral philosophy: they are treating persons as means rather than ends. The homosexual (and now transgender) adoptive parents are treated as just that, as parents, as functions, rather than as persons, as souls infinitely precious to God. As souls, as persons, they are considered expendable. But no human being is not a person, and no person is expendable. Not gay people, not “transgendered” people. No one.

The Archdiocese of San Francisco has been maneuvered into a position where its divine duty, the salvation of souls, has been subordinated to the mundane purpose of social work. It must radically change CCCYO, or sever ties with the organization.

(Editor’s note: The author of this article, Gibbons J. Cooney, is a Catholic living in San Francisco.)

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