We acknowledge receipt of your letter of November 13. 1973
expressing concern that the provision of the Bahá'í marriage Law requiring
consent of living natural parents creates a double standard in your family
because you have adopted children as well as your own.
We appreciate your concern and are in sympathy with your
worthy aspiration to attain unity in your family group. However, the unity of
your family need not be imperilled because your adopted children when ready for
marriage must obtain consent of their natural parents. Just as love for one
person need not reduce the love one bears to another, so unity with the
adoptive parents need not destroy nor reduce the unity a child may have with
its natural parents, or vice versa. The characters and attitudes of the
individuals concerned will have an effect upon this.
You also state that unless there is a broader concept of the
meaning of ‘natural parent’, you feel the law creates disharmony. Perhaps the
following extract from a letter written on behalf of the beloved Guardian by
his secretary was quoted to you by your National Spiritual Assembly, but we
draw your attention to that portion we have underlined because it refers to the
special significance of the relationship between children and their natural parents.
Bahá'u'lláh has clearly stated the consent of all living
parents is required for Bahá'í marriage... This great law He has laid down to
strengthen the social fabric, to knit closer the ties of the home, to place a
certain gratitude and respect in the hearts of children for those who have
given them life and sent their souls out on the eternal journey towards their
Creator.
In short, love for the foster parents and unity with their
home should not exclude love for a child's natural parents, although it is
likely a child will become very much more a part of the home in which he lives
and grows up.
Of course, wherever the law of the land or the Agreement of
Adoption prohibits future contact between an adopted child and its natural
parents, the Bahá'í Law does not require the child to seek the consent of those
parents to its marriage. However, children may very well wish to obtain the
consent of their foster parents although not obliged to do so.
- The Universal House of Justice (From a letter
of the Universal House of Justice to an individual believer, December 11, 1973;
(compilation: ‘Lights of Guidance’)