Republican lawmakers, with the urging of anti-LGBT groups the Family Research Council and the Heritage Foundation, have introduced a bill last week that would allow adoption providers and other child welfare service agencies to refuse to provide services that conflict with their “sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions.” Think it’s a thinly veiled attempt to stop LGBT people from adopting or fostering? You’re right. But an opposing bill that would withhold federal funds from adoption providers that discriminate against LGBT people now has record support — although it is far from passage.
The Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act (CWPIA), introduced by Senator Mike Enzi, (R-Wyo.) and Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), would require that the federal government and states that receive federal funding for child welfare services not take action against a child welfare service provider based on the provider refusing “to provide, facilitate, or refer for a child welfare service that conflicts with, or under circumstances that conflict with, the provider’s sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions.”
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which said that closely held corporations could object to laws they feel challenge their religious liberty, the CWPIA is a frightening prospect.
Emily Hecht-McGowan, director of public policy for the Family Equality Council (not to be confused with the Family Research Council), told me in an e-mail exactly why the CWPIA is a danger:
Not only does [the CWPIA] enshrine into federal law the ability to use federal dollars to discriminate, but it is does so at the expense of some of our most vulnerable children. The reason there are 400,000 kids in foster care — 107,000 of whom are available for adoption at any given time — is not because there’s a lack of agencies willing to do this work, it’s because there is a critical shortage of qualified parents who are willing to open their homes to these kids. We need to open up more homes, not further restrict the pool of potential parents — which is what the bill would do. A conscience clause bill has never made a child more safe or a family more secure. All these bills do is limit the ability of our most vulnerable children to find permanent, safe, loving homes.
LGBT families wouldn’t be the only ones harmed by CWPIA. As Family Equality Executive Director Gabriel Blau noted in a press statement, it could “serve as a barrier to placements not just with LGBT people but also with anyone who is single, has been divorced or who practices a different religion.” And Ellen Kahn, director of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Foundation’s Children, Youth, and Families Program, said in a statement:
It’s increasingly clear that, post-Hobby Lobby, some in positions of power believe that religious freedom should only belong to a few. If this bill passes, an Evangelical straight couple, a single father, or a committed and loving gay and lesbian couple could find their path to adoption blocked for no reasonable reason other than naked discrimination. Taxpayer funds should not be used to discriminate, and too many children need loving families right now for our elected officials to be playing these kinds dangerous political games. This bill has nothing to do with faith, and it must be condemned.
Family Equality and HRC are among the members of a broad coalition of child welfare, civil rights, faith, and LGBT organizations supporting instead the Every Child Deserves a Family Act (ECDFA), which would deny federal funds to adoption and foster care agencies that discriminate on the basis of marital status, sexual orientation, or gender identity. This is the third Congress where it has been introduced, and it now has more support than ever, with 18 Senate co-sponsors and 138 bi-partisan co-sponsors in the House. It gained over 20 new sponsors in the last month alone.
I find it unconscionable that some people think it is acceptable to use public funds to support discrimination and thus keep children from finding homes. Please write to your senators or representatives if they haven’t yet sponsored the ECDFA and urge them to support that, not the CWPIA.
