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For quite some time now, I have been a regular reader of First Things, a magazine for religion, culture and politics. I have a tramendous amount of admiration and respect for First Things' editor-in-chief, Father Richard John Neuhaus. There is probably no living person who I agree more with on almost all important issues. His monthly column 'Public Square' is a must-read for the most insightful writing on current affairs. A paragraph in the latest issue of 'Public Square' cought my attention, and I decided to write to Fr. Neuhaus about it. To my great surprise and delight, he wrote back to me today! I was thrilled beyond words. I am including the whole exchenge here, together with the relevant background writing.

the excerpt from the 'First Things' read:

The editorial in The Economist carries the assertion in the subhead that "liberty should give way to equality." You can be sure that The Economist, a notorious running dog of capitalist hegemony, is not referring to the pay packages of CEOs or proposing an expansion of government regulation of business. No, the subject is the request of the Catholic Church, backed by the Church of England, that it should be exempt from a new law requiring adoption agencies to place children with same-sex couples. The request has been denied by the Blair government, and The Economist strongly approves. To the concern that such adoptions may not be in the child's interests, the editors respond that "there is virtually [no evidence] to suggest that the sexual orientation of parents affects the outcome." Of course, there is slight evidence because there has been very slight experience with same-sex adoptions. One outcome that common sense suggests is almost inevitable is that such children will have a very different understanding of human sexuality. In any event, the Blair government is quite prepared to subject children to a social experiment that is, in the view of many experts, filled with high risks.

The letter that I sent to Fr. Neuhaus is here:

Dear Fr. Neuhaus,

I am a long-term subscriber to The Economist and for a long while I
have been growing increasingly vexed with their editorials on issues
of culture and religion. Their otherwise sharp insights seem to have a
blind spot when it comes to those issues. So their inchoate
defense of the decision of the British government to place restriction on
Catholic adoption agencies came as no surprise.

The week before The Economist article came out I was having a debate
in one of the online discussion forums about the right of adoption
agencies to have their own standards when it comes to choosing the
adoptive parents. Knowing that in that particular forum arguments from
the standpoint of the freedom of religion won't have much of an
impact, I was pursuing arguments strictly along the
economic-libertarian lines. I simply argued that, at least in the case
of people who are giving up child for adoption, they should have the
right to choose what sort of family their child cold end up in. And
this is when things became surreal. The opposing argument was that
since the people giving up their child are not "responsible" parents,
they should have no right in choosing the fate of their child. I
realized that the same people who advocated the right for universal
abortion did not see the paradox here. Those same parents who could
not be trusted to do the best when it came to choosing the adoptive
parents of their children were somehow responsible individuals in
matters of terminating their child's life a few months earlier. I
think there is something profoundly evil going on in a society that
promotes unrestricted abortion and restricted adoption.

Sincerely,

Bojan Tunguz

And here is his response:

Dear Mr. Tunguz,

Thank you for writing.

You are right about both the Economist and the incoherence of the
argument against mothers having a voice in the adoption of their
children. I had not thought of it quite that way, and you put it very
nicely.

Cordially,

(The Rev.) Richard John Neuhaus

That really made my day!