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Published: May 28, 2007
An act of moral violence
San Francisco Catholic Charities ally has ad campaign to promote adoption by homosexuals
Local adoption and foster care agency Family Builders by Adoption unveiled an edgy new marketing campaign targeting LGBT people Monday, May 21 that puts a new twist on language often used by conservatives
 The ads feature same-sex couples and their adopted children standing behind the slogans, "Family Planning" and "Intelligent Design." Underneath the slogans are the phrases, "Our family was no accident – we planned for it," and "Before we started our family we considered all the options."
The city of San Francisco paid for a portion of the ad campaign, as part of a $100,000 contract. The ads were developed by San Francisco-based Better World Advertising, long known for its sometimes-controversial safe sex and syphilis prevention social marketing campaigns targeted at gay men.
Ads are planned to appear on Bay Area transit, billboards, web sites, and in numerous publications, including the Bay Area Reporter.
Supervisor Bevan Dufty spoke in support of the campaign at a news conference held Monday at the LGBT Community Center. The new interpretation of traditional right-wing phrases is expected to draw heat from conservative groups. "The religious right ... only seems to care about how a child gets here, and once they're here, they're somebody else's problem," Dufty said.
Trent Rhorer, executive director of the San Francisco Human Services Agency, which helped fund the campaign, spoke about the likelihood of receiving national attention for the campaign. "It's welcome," Rhorer said. "Bring it on."
The campaign comes a year after Catholic Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo stated that same-sex adoption was "an act of moral violence" against a child. The statement pitted the Catholic Church against LGBT parents, and created an awkward situation for Catholic Charities, which operates adoption services in many cities, including San Francisco. Catholic Charities in Boston came under fire and halted its adoption program. It was also revealed that Catholic Charities in San Francisco had granted adoptions to five same-sex couples over the last five years.
Last August, after Trujillo's statement, Catholic Charities in San Francisco elected to put its adoption staff and financial resources in a partnership with Family Builders, ensuring children could still be adopted by LGBT parents.
"I think Catholic Charities in San Francisco is very supportive of all our work, they're just restrained by church edicts," said Jill Jacobs, executive director of Family Builders.
Catholic Charities had no comment on the ad campaign, but praised Family Builders.
"We greatly admire the work of Family Builders by Adoption, and that is why we have partnered with them on the California Kids Connection Web site, to help find adoptive homes for the most vulnerable children in the foster care system," stated Executive Director Brian Cahill in an e-mail.
Almost 70 percent of the 1,767 children in San Francisco's foster care system are aged nine and older. Older children often have a harder time in the adoption system, as many adoptive parents want babies or very young children.
At the press conference, Jacobs discussed Family Builders' goal of finding permanent, lifelong families for kids. "In about two weeks, my oldest [adopted] daughter will turn 18," Jacobs said. "She still needs a mommy. And other youth in foster care need a mom or a dad to just believe in them, to support them."
According to a Family Builders news release, "approximately 2 million gay and lesbian Americans are interested in adopting children. If 15 percent of them chose to adopt from foster care, that would eliminate the over 100,000 waiting for permanent families."
"The LGBT community has come forward for us in so many ways," Jacobs said.
Jacobs also responded to concerns that LGBT parents would receive "B-list" children. "Just because you're LGBT doesn't mean you can't get a good kid," Jacobs said. "I'll be damned if anybody calls my kid a 'B-list' kid."
The Archdiocese of San Francisco did not respond to requests for comment on the campaign.
Posted Monday, May 28, 2007 5:46 AM By Gibbons in SF
That silence from the Archdiocese says it all. But once they "partnered" with "Family Builders" what grounds would they have to object--even if they wanted to?
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Posted Monday, May 28, 2007 6:14 AM By phil floersh
This is how the bishops of California obey the Vicar of Christ!
phil
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Posted Monday, May 28, 2007 6:31 AM By John Worden
The slippery slope just got a little slipperier!
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Posted Monday, May 28, 2007 9:21 AM By Edgar A. Suter MD
See the Catholic Medical Association, “Homosexuality and Hope,” http://www.cathmed.org/publications/homosexuality.htm and the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality http://www.narth.com.
Realize that perverts and heretics are sodomizing, contracepting, aborting and laicizng themselves into eternal oblivion. In the doomed effort of perverts to ape normality, they only have seduction, recruitment, and adoption. As Randy Engel has so well documented in her magnum opus "Rite of Sodomy," www.riteofsodomy.com, societies that tolerate the vice have more of it. All the vices and crimes against humanity must be recriminalized ---including sodomy, pornography, and ......usury! Look deeply to identify the financing, inspiration, and command of these diabolical movements.
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Posted Monday, May 28, 2007 10:58 AM By Frank Munoz
What is wrong with Catholic Charities, in Boston and San Francisco, are they a Catholic organization or not. They can't set their own policies and set themselves apart from the Catholic Church. They aren't a separate entity.
Let us pray for them and may God guide them.
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Posted Monday, May 28, 2007 11:15 AM By J Brown
We the laity control the purse strings of the Church. Stop supporting Catholic Charities. There are many good Catholic Charities that we CAN support.
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Posted Monday, May 28, 2007 1:54 PM By Kenneth M. Fisher
What can a true Catholic say except "God have mercy on Sad Francisco"!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher, Founder & Chairman
Concerned Roman Catholics of America, Inc.
www.crcoa.com
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Posted Monday, May 28, 2007 2:48 PM By stlouisix
What is so difficult about this? Catholic Charities of San Fransico is, pure and simply, NOT CATHOLIC! Why isn't that seminal Catholic truth publicly proclaimed by the Archdiocese of San Francisco? Could it possibly be that the Archdiocese itself is not Catholic? That conclusion is not illogical by a long shot. How can a Catholic diocese remain silent when a purported Catholic organization makes it easier to commit Mortal Sin, moreover, putting our children at grave risk of physical, psychological, and especially, spiritual, abuse. Is not anyone in the Archdiocese of San Francisco acquainted with Matthew 18:6, in particular, in relation to the well known DIRECT correlation between homosexuality and child abuse, i.e., pedophilia? There are innumberable refs in the literature attesting to this fact! Moreover, J. of Homosexuality authors, in published papers, have the audacity to tell parents that they "should welcome the loving pedophile into their homes" in the name of something diabolically called "intergenerational intimacy." How much clearer does it have to be for the Archdiocese of San Francisco to see that what they are de facto doing, by their silence, is the WORK OF THE DEVIL!
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Posted Monday, May 28, 2007 6:46 PM By Laurette Elsberry
"stlouissix" has said it pretty well. The Archdiocese of Sodom by the Sea is not Catholic. Not only that, the Archdiocese is under the control of the sodomites and socialists. In other words, those who run the city and the Church in San Francisco ARE doing the work of the devil. "By their fruits you shall know them".
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Posted Monday, May 28, 2007 8:34 PM By Margie
"See what days are coming-it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks-days when I will bring famine on the country, a famine not of bread, a drought not of water, but of hearing the word of Yahweh. They will stagger from sea to sea, wander from north to east, seeking the word of Yahweh and failing to find it."
Amos 8:11-12
The Archdiocese of SF is staggering, starved for the word of the Lord, failing to find it with its compromising ways with the world. Pray for SF, anorexic, starving for God's word.
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Posted Tuesday, May 29, 2007 7:37 AM By WB
I've been surprised to find that there are actually many good, orthodox Catholics in SF and surrounding environment. They're suffering quite a lot from bad leadership. But maybe this site and others can help bring them together, strengthen them and help them to have an impact on the archdiocese -- especially with ministries like Catholic Charities. With the grace of God it is possible. David did, in fact, defeat Goliath -- we have to try to do the same.
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Posted Tuesday, May 29, 2007 8:56 AM By Elizabeth
MY HEART IS BROKEN!!!
COME HOLY SPIRIT, COME TO MY ARCHDIOCESE AND ENLIGHTEN ARCHBISHOP GEORGE AND GUIDE HIM.
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Posted Tuesday, May 29, 2007 10:41 AM By ELIZABETH
I JUST FOUND OUT WE CAN WRITE OR CALL THE APOSTOLIC NUNCIATUER IN WASHINGTON D.C. TO VOICE OUR OPINIONS......
THE TELEPHONE NUMBER IS: (202) 333-7121
THE ADDRESS IS: 3339 MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE
N.W.
WASHINGTON D.C. 20008
PLEASE EVERYONE - TAKE A MINUTE AND CALL OR WRITE.
WE MUST SPEAK UP IN CHARITY AND IN A RESPECTFUL WAY.
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Posted Tuesday, May 29, 2007 11:53 AM By jim in sf
Thank you WB for contributing some balance and reason to this discussion. The overbreadth by which some judge the orthodoxy, commitment and adherence to the Magisterium of neary half a million Catholics in the SF Archdiocese is only further evidence of their intellectual deficiencies and psychological imbalance. Fueled, of course, by the conspiratorial fears of "sodomites" and "homosexual perverts" that are out to destroy the Church, society, and the world as we know it. By overreacting the way that they do, these frightened rad-trads only empower them more, in ways that they can never imagine.
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Posted Tuesday, May 29, 2007 12:11 PM By Kenneth M. Fisher
Elizabeth,
Thank you for posting the Apostolic Nuncio's phone number. I called there and they told me that I should contact the Archciocese. When I told them that I already have done so, they told me we must put it in writing. I then asked for a Fax number for the Nuncio and they gave it to me, here it is: 202-337-4036.
God bless, yours in Their Hearts, Kenneth M. Fisher, Founder & Chairman Concerned Roman Catholics of America, Inc. www.crcoa.com
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Posted Tuesday, May 29, 2007 6:25 PM By WB
jim in sf -- thanks, my friend. Yes, we should have a holy fear of God's punishment on our society but it goes too far when it's expressed in bitterness and rash opinions. As you said, it only empowers those who wrongly oppose the Church. They're watching our every move and waiting for us to act as crazy as they thing we are. But I actually see a lot of hope for San Franscico and all of California -- there's much more faith and devotion there than people think (this site is a good example). Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more -- there will be a lot of grace for the Archdiocese! It just takes our prayers and good efforts on a continued and confident basis - and we'll see more conversions and more lives turned around. A kind word, a prayer, a sacrifice unknown to all but God -- those things can convert people, even hardened homosexuals or atheists. I know people are angry and shocked by the horrible things of our society and even of the Church, but let our hearts be hurt by them without venting that hurt on others and we can do our best to stay cheerful and build a solid community of orthodox Catholics who support each other. We certainly need the help and support from each other because we're not going to get it from anywhere else!!
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Posted Tuesday, May 29, 2007 6:28 PM By WB
Mr. Fisher and Elizabeth -- thanks very much for posting the contact information. I will fax the Nuncio tomorrow. They need to take accountability for what has been going on.
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Posted Wednesday, May 30, 2007 6:12 AM By Edgar A Suter MD
"Jim in SF" hints that we should lighten up on the cabal, the lavender mafia, and those who enable the priests and prelates who rape minors (as if we have only paranoia and that there have been no sodomy-rapes and no cover-up conspiracy). If there is any "psychological imbalance" due Catholic concern, it is the "intrinsic disorder."
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