‘No’ to Gay Means ‘No’ to AA: Why the ‘Sandbox’ Argument Is Misleading
The classic example used to illustrate the sandbox effect is Catholic Charities, which stopped providing adoptions in Massachusetts after a law was passed requiring adoption agencies to serve gay and lesbian families. The lesson here is supposed to be that a religious exemption would have allowed Catholic Charities to continue operating and saved the children, in some general pathos-inducing way. This new AA story fits right into that neat little narrative.
The problem is that the story is basically false. Catholic Charities, for example, didn’t close because it was not willing to place children with gay and lesbian couples-in fact, it already had been placing children with gay and lesbian couples. The problem was that once Massachusetts started to consider a law requiring that it do so, the church hierarchy started paying attention, realized that Catholic Charities had already been doing it, and then closed the branch down rather than allow them to continue doing what they had already been doing anyway.
So yes, in some sense Catholic Charities ceased operating because of the law, but not in the way the story implies-not in a way that actually tells us all that much about the impact of religious exemptions.
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