It has been said that the only fashionable bigotry in modernity is intolerance of Christianity. The truth of this adage is demonstrated by nationwide efforts, coordinated by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Movement Advancement Project and others, attacking faith-based child placement agencies.
After the Supreme Court established the right to same-sex marriage, many states enacted protections for people of faith to allow those with religious objections to such unions to continue to serve in areas that benefit the common good, such as child welfare. In a pluralistic society, such arrangements enable those with diverse viewpoints to work together. But rather than accepting the practical wisdom of such democratic compromises, the ACLU is suing to throw out adoption protection acts in Michigan and Texas, and fighting similar pending legislation in Georgia, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
In each of those states, the statutes are defensive measures that preserve the status quo. No changes would occur in the current practices of faith-based child welfare providers. Nevertheless, this week in a hearing on the proposed Adoption Protection Act in Kansas, Vignesh Ganapathy, Policy Director of the ACLU of Kansas, offered testimony opposing the bill that went over the top with its hyperbole: “The sweeping language of this bill could have devastating effects for the children in [the] Kansas foster care system and irrevocably harm vulnerable children across the state.”
The rhetoric accompanying the ACLU’s legal efforts is represented by two professionally produced, inflammatory video campaigns. One, titled “Kids Pay the Price,” caricatures religious child welfare workers as bigots and child abusers. A second. titled “Will We Go Back?” portrays religious business owners, such as florists and bakers, as the modern versions of Jim-Crow-era racists.
Casting the gay rights movement as the moral successor to the civil rights movement, they have characterized faith-based agencies as right-wing extremists who seek to exclude same-sex couples from participation in the child-welfare system altogether, and who elevate a discriminatory animus over the best interests of children. Deflecting attention from their own belligerent agenda, they portray faith-based foster care and adoption agencies as the architects of an aggressive plan to carve out a new right for themselves to discriminate.
Ironically, their offensive rhetoric demonstrates the pressing need for even more states to pass these measures to protect their faith-based social service organizations. “If the ACLU gets their way,” warned Eric Teetsel, President of the Family Policy Alliance of Kansas, “any agency that declines to embrace their sexual politics would be prohibited from partnering with the government to provide social services to those in need, like caring for the sick, feeding the hungry, counseling prisoners, and finding homes for kids in need. To see such disdain for the viewpoints of others is disappointing; that it results in fewer services for those in need is unacceptable.”
Contrary to the ACLU’s misrepresentations, faith-based agencies are not trying to exclude same-sex couples from the child welfare system. Same-sex couples are permitted to adopt children or be foster parents in every state, and the continued presence of faith-based agencies in the child welfare system does not put this at risk.
The proposed legislative initiatives do not create any new rights, much less a “right to discriminate,” or change the status quo in any way. In states like Georgia, Kansas, and Oklahoma that are considering protective legislation, faith-based child placing agencies already operate in accordance with their sincerely held religious beliefs in the recruitment of prospective foster and adoptive parents and in the placement of children.
It is unreasonable to assume that faith-based agencies are supporting these protective measures out of animus toward same-sex persons. An important point that has gotten lost in this debate is that adoption is about what is in the best interests of the child – not about fulfilling the desires of adults. Pope Francis articulated one such interest of children in Amoris Laetitiae: That “every child has a right to receive love from a mother and a father; both are necessary for a child’s integral and harmonious development.” Many faith-based adoption organizations operate from this assumption. And in fairness, all child placement agencies employ some standards or philosophical criteria in determining what’s best for children.
When my husband and I first explored various adoption agencies to facilitate our adoption efforts, we encountered numerous restrictions, some of which disqualified us from working with certain agencies. For example, some agencies have age limitations. Others agencies required us to affirm certain religious tenets or to confirm we were practicing members of our faith through the provision of a recommendation letter from our pastor. Yet another agency required us to have given up on fertility treatments and to confirm that we had “come to terms” with our infertility emotionally.
Reasonable people can disagree about these standards, but this does not make them bigots.
While the ACLU is seeking to characterize people of faith as bigots, it is actually their efforts that constitute discrimination – only the more fashionable kind. The ACLU is a culture-war aggressor, attacking faith-based organizations all around the country that have been going about their business in some cases for more than a century. This discriminatory attempt to purge people of faith from the child welfare system is harmful to the 400,000 children in the system nationwide. It is intolerant of mothers who might prefer to place their children for adoption with the support of an agency informed and inspired by a shared faith and equipped to find parents who share that faith as well.
It is intolerant of the well-considered views of serious scholars in numerous disciplines (including Pope Francis) who maintain that the understanding of marriage as a loving, faithful and permanent union between a man and a woman is the best environment in which a child should be raised.
Elizabeth Kirk is a lawyer, writer, and consultant who has a special interest in adoption law and policy.
