Catholic Agencies Ordered Child Transfer After Gay Law

Illinois’s state child welfare agency – already embroiled in a scandal for administering psychotropic drugs to children – is moving to transfer children from Catholic orphanages and dioceses because of a new gay civil unions bill.

Lawyers for Catholic Charities are protesting the move by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), particularly raising the question of why an agency mired in scandal should take in more children who already are being cared for in safe surroundings, according to LifeSiteNews.com.

“Why is the DCFS, particularly in light of the scandal that it is handling now, dealing with [Catholic Charities’] workload in a hasty manner,” asked attorney Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society, who is representing Catholic Charities, in an interview with LifeSiteNews.

Breen pointed out that the state agency has only imposed the accelerated time frame on the three affiliates that are appealing the court decision that effectively pushed Catholic Charities out of adoptions because it won’t comply with the state’s new homosexual civil unions law.

Catholic Charities of the Peoria Diocese, which is not included in the appeal, has been allowed to operate “business as usual” until January 31, 2012. The other agencies, however, have only been given until November 30th to transfer the children in their care to secular agencies, or religious agencies that do not share the church-run agencies’ beliefs about gay unions.

That means that all children will already be transferred from the three Catholic Charities agencies before a court ever has a chance to hear their appeal.

“The DCFS has never in its history had to transfer this many children from this many counties from this many agencies,” said Breen. “This is a unique event in the history of the DCFS, and the DCFS staff are expediting the process for no reason that it has given to the public.”