A few months ago, Michigan reversed its law stating that faith-based agencies would not be forced to allow same-sex couples to adopt children if it was against the agency’s religious beliefs. This was due to Buck v. Gordon, a case where the ACLU successfully argued a faith-based agency discriminated against a gay couple wanting to adopt. However, new evidence shows the ACLU of Michigan didn’t just happen to find a same-sex couple who wanted to adopt and couldn’t. The ACLU worked for two years to recruit just the right same-sex couple to challenge the law and force the faith-based agencies to violate their religious consciences.
This documented, purposeful targeting demonstrates just how bigoted the ACLU really has proven itself to be: The ACLU was willing to conjure up a scandal where there wasn’t one, resulting in an enormous waste of resources and time on behalf of the religious agencies, and an infringement of their religious liberties.
In a brand new brief filed just this month, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has been defending several faith-based couples and agencies, meticulously documents just how targeted the campaign against these groups have been.
The timeline goes like this.
On March 21, 2016, a Facebook group for a local LGBTQ community posted a message explaining that “the ACLU of Michigan is planning to challenge a state law that authorizes adoption and foster care agencies to discriminate against prospective parents based on religious criteria,” and that “the ACLU would very much like to speak confidentially with same-sex couples who are considering adopting children from the foster care system now or in the future.”
As a result of the post, Kristy and Dana Dumont began communicating with the ACLU. Roughly two months later, the Dumonts reached out to two, and only two, adoption agencies: St. Vincent and Bethany Christian. By my count, there are at least a dozen adoption agencies in the area, both religious and secular. The Dumonts admitted that they had not contacted a single adoption agency before they spoke with the ACLU, and they did not attempt to contact any other adoption agencies after their outreach to Bethany Christian and St. Vincent.
When asked under oath why they had not pursued adoption with other agencies, the Dumonts stated “they have not begun the adoption process with another agency because through this litigation they seek to better understand the full scope of their constitutional rights and the options available to them with respect to fostering and/or adopting in Michigan.”
The Dumonts then sued the State of Michigan, not in the Dumonts’ home forum of the Western District, but in the Eastern District of Michigan, on September 20, 2017. The lawsuit sought to force the state to change its policy of partnering with private, faith-based child placing agencies like St. Vincent, even though they did not assert any claims directly against St. Vincent or any other adoption agency.
If faith-based adoption agencies are so awful, why was this scandal manufactured? When these lawsuits were originally filed, the ACLU maintained that they were doing so to prevent discrimination and most importantly, to advocate for the thousands of children waiting to be adopted. Their web site on the case reads: “There are currently 13,000 children in the state welfare system. Our lawsuit states that the State of Michigan is hurting its most vulnerable children and violating the Constitution by allowing taxpayer-funded child placement agencies to deny these children qualified foster and adoptive families based on religious eligibility criteria that have nothing to do with the ability to care for a child.”
If so many gay couples were being discriminated and children were missing out on being adopted, languishing at the hands of the overwhelmed state, why did the ACLU have to find a couple to manufacture the concept of being discriminated? If it was a true crisis, shouldn’t they have been clamoring at the ACLU’s door in need of legal representation?
The ACLU spread false information about the current state of the law and this, not faith-based foster and adoption agencies, is what is causing same-sex couples not to adopt. No same-sex couple is prevented from fostering or adopting in any state, and to say otherwise is what actually hurts children in need who are waiting for loving families.
States across the country are working hard to make it easy for same-sex couples to foster and adopt. This is a good thing given the thousands of children looking for a loving home today. But encouraging same-sex couples to foster and adopt does not require these same states to close the hundreds of effective faith-based foster care and adoption agencies that are currently serving thousands of children in need across the country. States can encourage same-sex couples to adopt while still valuing their partnerships with faith-based foster care and adoption agencies like St. Vincent.
This case shows that the discrimination lay in the hands of the work of the ACLU: The bigoted legal organization tracked down a couple who would feign discrimination when they purposely only targeted those faith-based organizations which would stick to their beliefs, as the law at the time upheld. In the brief, the Becket Funds asks that the state intervene and grant an injunction so that St. Vincent’s can continue to operate. Time will tell if that’s granted.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
