BOSTON — A report on a popular website has become an urban legend that goes like this: Catholic Charities in Boston promotes adoptions by homosexuals — and practically prefers them.

It’s an enormous exaggeration, but Catholic Charities has indeed helped homosexual couples adopt some children, said Father J. Bryan Hehir, president of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Boston and the former president of Catholic Charities USA. He said exaggerated stories have made the rounds on the Internet and outraged the faithful.

 “As far as we can tell, we have placed five children over the past 10 years with same-sex couples,” Father Hehir said, “which amounts to less than 1% of the adoptions we’ve done in that amount of time.”

But critics say even that is too many.

“That’s a little bit like saying, ‘We’ve aided and abetted only a few abortions,’” said G. Daniel Harden, who serves on the board of directors for the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, an organization based at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio.

Father Hehir said the five adoptions to homosexuals involved children ages 5 and older — and no infants — who were wards of the state in the Massachusetts foster care system. Massachusetts allows single homosexuals and same-sex couples to care for foster children, and occasionally they adopt through Catholic Charities.

“These are kids who have been in foster care, are eligible for adoption, and few people are willing to take them,” Father Hehir said. “Even in those instances we do everything we can to avoid placing them in same-sex situations, but in order to be licensed for adoptions we have to sign a contract with the state that says we won’t discriminate based on sexual orientation.”

Harden said the Vatican has made it perfectly clear that adoption of children by homosexual couples, under any circumstance, is unacceptable. A 2003 document, issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, stated that homosexual adoptions “mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development.”

Father Hehir said it’s “never a good fit” for Catholic Charities to participate in adoptions that involve homosexual adults. He said he’s exploring options to never again place children with homosexuals, but has no answers yet.

Father Hehir said he’s trying to find ways around state adoption licensing that requires Catholic Charities to comply with a non-discrimination clause.

“The only civil disobedience I’ve been able to come up with involves simply refusing to sign the agreement, and the state would respond by simply pulling our license and we would be out of the adoption business,” Father Hehir said. “I’ve opted not to do that, because I think children are better served if we stay in the adoption business.”

Harden, a religion scholar and professor of education law at Washburn University in Topeka, Kan., said secular law often pressures Catholic administrators of schools and other institutions to cooperate with evil. In Colorado, he explained, legislators voted in April to force Catholic hospitals to inform rape victims about the so-called “morning after pill,” which causes abortion. Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican and Catholic, vetoed the bill and sponsors hope to override him.

“Am I engaged in material cooperation in order to stay in the game?” Father Hehir said of the non-discrimination contract. “Yes. State law places real tension between aspects of Catholic teaching, which I respect and value, and what I’m doing professionally. Do I think it’s best to take us out of the adoption service? No.”

Kathleen Dooley-Polcha, national chairwoman of the Children Youth and Family section of Catholic Charities — which develops policies and procedures for adoption — said she’d be surprised if any Catholic Charities chapter in the United States places a significant number of children with homosexuals. She said the percentage would be small, probably less than 1%, even if one includes hard-to-place foster children in states that forbid discrimination.

All Catholic Charities chapters, Polcha said, base their traditional infant adoptions on the desires of the birth mothers — who almost never request homosexual adopters. Most state adoption laws, Polcha explained, allow mothers who are placing children for adoption to have substantial input in deciding who gets the child. In the case of foster children, she explained, the state serves as surrogate birth mother.

“Ultimately, Catholic Charities would concern itself only with the best interests of the child when choosing adoptive parents,” said Harden, who was adopted as an infant. “Realistically, the birth mother usually gets to decide because in most cases she can simply decide against the adoption if she isn’t happy with the process.”

In her national role, Polcha said she communicates with the agency’s adoption personnel throughout the country. Some agencies, she said, participate in state foster care programs that forbid discrimination based on sexual orientation. She said those laws, however, have no effect on the traditional infant adoptions that are guided by birth mothers.

Polcha said in 18 years of directing adoption services in New York, her agency has never encountered a birth mother who sought homosexual placement for a child.

Catholics have reason to be cautions about homosexual adoptions. Research into the clergy sex abuse scandal found it to be largely a problem of homosexuals preying on young people.

From the Village People song “YMCA” to the Showtime television show “Queer as Folk,” homosexual culture has long celebrated sex with teens. One of the most-often searched for pornography terms on the Internet is a homosexual slang word for underage teen-age boys. In The Gay Report, by homosexual researchers Karla Jay and Allen Young, the authors report data showing that 73% of homosexuals surveyed had at some time had sex with boys 16 to 19 years of age or younger.

        Wayne Laugesen writes

from Boulder, Colorado.