WASHINGTON -- Two Republican lawmakers have introduced new legislation aimed at allowing adoption and foster-care agencies to deny services based on their religious beliefs or moral convictions, but critics charge the bill would simply enable agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples.
With same-sex marriage bans dropping like flies in front of the
Christian Right, the next strategy has taken its cue from their erstwhile
victory with Hobby Lobby: "the right to discriminate is still OURS!"
"The Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act of 2014" would "ensure that organizations with religious or moral convictions are allowed to continue to provide services for children" by prohibiting state and federal governments from terminating funding or contracts with local agencies over anti-discrimination laws."
To so many, the "Inclusion Act" is a downright act of
exclusion, but the bill's sponsors, U.S. Senator Mike Enzi, (R-Wyo.), and Rep.
Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), don't see it that way.
From Enzi's website:
"This bill is about fairness and inclusion. It is about ensuring that everyone who wants to help provide foster or adoptive care to children is able to have a seat at the table," said Kelly. "Faith-based organizations have historically played a downright heroic role in caring for our nation's most vulnerable and needy kids. In so many ways their work is unparalleled. There is no good reason why any of these care providers should be disqualified from working with their government to serve America's families simply because of their deeply-rooted religious beliefs."
But "everyone" surely doesn't include same-sex couples,
does it? To give gays a "seat at the table" would definitely be
against someone's "deeply-rooted religious beliefs."
United States Conference of
Catholic Bishops endorses the
Act, perhaps because several Catholic agencies have had their funds curtailed
in the states of Massachusetts, California and Illinois, states where same-sex
marriage is legal. A chief endorsement came from San Francisco's own Archbishop
Salvatore Cordileone, an architect of Prop 8 (surprise!).
Old Demon - New Strategy
Bryan
Fischer, the Christian Right's chief demonizer, stated back in 2012:
"There is a myth that homosexual couples can be just a good of
parents to children as heterosexual couples, as married moms and dads," Fischer
insisted. "Absolutely, flatly, totally, completely not true. Same sex parenting
is bad for kids period."
"The bottom line, ladies and gentlemen, to put kids into this environment, it's
a form of sexual abuse all its own. To adopt kids into a same sex environment
is a form of child abuse."
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