My mother has late-stage dementia. I handle her finances, which includes making annual donations in her name. One of the aides who cares for her has asked me to make a donation to the aide’s church. I said I would, but when I looked up the church I saw that they will not perform same-sex weddings and that they believe homosexuality is a sin. As a gay man, I won’t support any organization that doesn’t support me. While my mother’s money is not minemanila game, is it wrong of me to deny her aide’s request? — Name Withheld

From the Ethicist:

Your job, as a trustee, is to represent your mother’s values and interests. In general, you should use her money to support causes you think she would want to support, at least within reasonable bounds. Before her current condition, you could have discussed the matter with her, expressing your deep personal misgivings. Sadly, you’ll have to proceed without consultation. If you’re uncertain whether she would have wanted to make the donation, you’re free to have second thoughts and decline to add to the church’s collection plate. If you’re certain she would have wanted to make the donation anyway, you should do so, as an expression not of your values but hers.

It isn’t enough to have ethical objections to a prospective beneficiary: A number of contentious issues divide our society, such that people on either side have ethical objections to the other. I’m not saying that any donation is OK; I am saying that, unless you stick to a very minimal notion of what’s morally acceptable, you may simply be supplanting her views with yours, and to your credit, you’re clearly worried about doing so.

There are other considerations. A church with backward views about homosexuality could also be making many positive contributions. It may even insist, like the official Roman Catholic Church — which has more than 50 million members in this country — that its members should treat people who have what their catechism calls ‘‘deep-seated homosexual tendencies’’ with ‘‘respect, compassion and sensitivity.’’ Pope Francis, whatever his frailties, has backed civil unions and condemned laws criminalizing gay sex.

Supporting an organization isn’t supporting every one of its policies. According to a 2023 survey, more than two-thirds of Catholics in the United States support same-sex marriage. And surely most of us think that the political party we support is wrong about some things, including some important things.

A further consideration has to do with your relationship, and your mother’s, to this aide. Here’s someone who spends her days caring for your mother. Whatever you finally decide, she shouldn’t be left to feel that she has been treated in an uncaring way herself.

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