In a move that would punish same-sex couples wishing to adopt children, the House Appropriations Committee voted last week on an amendment (p. 29) that would withhold funding to any state that requires taxpayer-funded adoption agencies to serve all clients regardless of their religion or sexual orientation.
The 29-23 vote, with all the support coming from Republicans, was meant to support faith-based agencies that want to discriminate against gay people while still receiving funding from the state.
According to LGBTQ Nation,
The amendment appears on a funding bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. If it remains in the final bill, the amendment would cut 15% of federal adoption funding to states and localities that penalize adoption agencies that refuse to place children in families that conflict with the agency’s “sincerely held religious beliefs or convictions.”
The amendment also bars the federal government from refusing to work with adoption agencies that discriminate.
The end result would means more kids spending the majority of their childhoods in foster care, when they could be raised in loving families.
It gets worse:
In addition to LGBTQ people and same-sex couples, the amendment would also impact interfaith couples, single parents, married couples in which one prospective parent has previously been divorced, or other qualified parents to whom an agency could have an objection.
When religion is cover for discrimination, anything goes.
But why stop there? Why not ban adoptions by people who have had premarital sex, or watched porn, or masturbated, or didn’t suppress any feelings of lust? Why not just come out and say that no one except True Christians™ are allowed to adopt? (Even then, they would have to pass some kind of litmus test to prove those couples are the right kind of True Christian™.)
This is taxpayer-funded bigotry. If you receive money from the government to provide a service like adoption, you shouldn’t be allowed to pretend that same-sex parents (or mixed faith parents or interracial parents or whoever you think Jesus would rebuke) will somehow hurt the children. No evidence suggests that’s the case. Plenty of evidence points in the other direction.
The irony is that these kinds of laws would lead to more abortions. Why put your child up for adoption when it becomes even harder to find good parents? You’d think conservative Christians in Congress would realize this. But to them, sanctioning faith-based discrimination is more important than protecting children and giving women reasons to avoid abortion.
(Image via Shutterstock)
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