The Tennessee Legislature is starting off the new year by passing a bill that will allow adoption and foster care agencies to discriminate against LGBTQ people and others.
The legislation, which Governor Bill Lee’s (R) office has said he will sign, says that child service agencies may refuse to “perform, assist, counsel, recommend, consent to, refer, or participate in any placement of a child for foster care or adoption” if the placement would “violate the agency’s written religious or moral convictions or policies.” That means that otherwise-qualified LGBTQ, single, and divorced people, as well as those of faiths different from the agency, could be turned away from giving a child a home. Not only that, but even if agencies do turn them away, the agencies can still receive state contracts, participate in government programs, and receive state grants, which are all funded by taxpayer money.
This will make Tennessee the 11th state to permit such discrimination, after Alabama, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Virginia; all but Alabama and Michigan allow them to do so even if they receive taxpayer money. Additionally, last November, the Trump administration issued a new rule that allows all recipients of grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including foster care and adoption agencies, to discriminate on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and religion.
Tennessee already passed a broad religious exemption bill in 2009, and in fact, one Republican state senator noted in the Tennessean that the current bill seemed to duplicate it. Passing a second bill specific to child service agencies seems to me designed only to further bully and belittle LGBTQ people and those of different faiths and beliefs.
Another Republican senator, Steve Dickerson (R-Nashville), worried that passage of the bill could negatively impact the state’s economy, as representatives of various conventions and large events have already asked about the bill’s status. (Remember that North Carolina’s anti-transgender bill is estimated to have cost the state over $600 million in lost revenue for similar reasons.) Yet Dickerson was the only Republican to join five Democrats in voting against it. The bill passed 20 to 6.
AdoptUSKids tells us, “On average, there are approximately 7,500 children in foster care and around 350 children in full guardianship (available for adoption) in Tennessee who don’t have an identified adoptive home. Approximately 1,000 children age out of care in Tennessee every year.” That means children are in need of homes, and anything that reduces that number for reasons having nothing to do with a person’s ability to parent (like allowing publicly funded agencies to turn away parents on religious grounds) is shameful.
There are more than 184,000 LGBTQ people in Tennessee; 26 percent of them, or nearly 48,000, are raising children, according to the Movement Advancement Project. If those tens of thousands of parents weren’t, on the whole, doing a good job of it, there would be headlines. There aren’t. And let’s face it, this is 2020. We LGBTQ parents have been around for decades now; many of us are grandparents. We shouldn’t really need to keep proving ourselves. Same goes for single and divorced parents and parents of all religions and beliefs.
Want more arguments for why legislation like this is a bad idea? Have a read of HRC’s report, “Disregarding the Best Interest of the Child: Licenses to Discriminate In Child Welfare Services.”
As I wrote last year, several pieces of federal legislation could help stop religiously based discrimination in child services. Here’s a bit about each, with links to learn more, contact your members of Congress, and contribute your own stories to build support:
- The Every Child Deserves a Family Act, introduced with bipartisan support in the past six Congresses, would withhold federal child welfare funds from states that discriminate against prospective parents or youth in care on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity (and for prospective parents, marital status), and allow redress in federal courts. The Every Child Deserves a Family (ECDF) campaign is building bipartisan support for the bill. Here’s how to support ECDF.
- The broader Equality Act, which passed the House in May 2019, is meant to “prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation” in a wide variety of programs and services, including foster care and adoption. It faces an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled Senate, however. Here’s how to support the Equality Act.
- The Do No Harm Act, introduced in both houses February 28, 2019, would ensure that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, meant to prevent the government from “substantially burden[ing] a person’s exercise of religion,” cannot be used to allow discrimination. Here’s how to support the Do No Harm Act.
It also bears repeating: This is not a ban on LGBTQ people adopting or serving as foster parents. Many child service agencies are even doing specific outreach to LGBTQ people. Religious exemption laws will indeed negatively impact many, especially in regions where faith-based organizations provide most or all of the child placements—but this should not stop you from trying to form or grow your family through foster care or adoption. If you feel you have been discriminated against in adoption or foster care because of your sexual orientation or gender identity, however, you can contact one of the hotlines run by LGBTQ legal organizations to discuss your options: