The hate merchants at The Family Foundation - Virginia's affiliate to Focus on the Family and Family Research Council, a registered hate group - and its prostitute like puppets in the Republican Party of Virginia have been gleefully celebrating the anti-gay adoption bill that was rammed through the Virginia General Assembly last week. Some suggest that this example of GOP arrogance and overreaching may come back to bite the Christofascists as early as November when sane and moderate Virginians may retaliate by voting against GOP candidates. But, as Timothy Kincaid suggests at Box Turtle Bulletin, the provisions in the bill that allow religious based discrimination could ultimately be used against Christianists seeking to adopt. Polls show that among the larger public, few groups are viewed as negatively as the Christian Right. It would be all to sweet to have some uber-Christians denied adoption and/or foster care placements due to their extremism. Here are highlights of Kincaid's analysis:Anti-gay activists in Virginia are dancing with delight. They stood up to Teh HomoSEXshull Agenduh and showed them librulls that they don’t cotton to Teh Ghey so much in the Old Dominion State. The Virginia Senate Republicans, who have a strong majority in that red red state, just passed a bill allowing adoption agencies to deny access to gay couples or individuals on religious grounds.
Except, of course, they couldn’t just say “No gays! We hate ‘em” so they couched their bill in language of “religious freedom”. And in their arrogance, they never stopped to consider how else this bill could be used. Look at the wording:No private child-placing agency shall be required to consider or consent to any placement of a child for foster care or adoption when the proposed placement would conflict with the religious tenets of any sponsor of the agency or other organization or institution with which the child-placing agency is affiliated or associated. The Commissioner shall not deny an application for an initial license or renewal of a license or revoke the license of a private child-placing agency solely on the grounds that the agency has refused to consider or consent to any placement of a child for foster care or adoption in such cases. Refusal of a private child-placing agency to consider or consent to any placement of a child pursuant to this section shall not form the basis of any claim for damages. [emphasis added]
Now I’m sure that all those good ol’ Southern Baptist boys thought that this gave them the power to discriminate. It did. . . . . But it also empowered others to find that certain cultural views are repressive and dangerous to children and that their faith prohibits the exposure of children to that element. For example, Quakers may find that military families are unfit based on their religious beliefs. . . . And we know that Mormons will be automatically disqualified from most taxpayer-funded but church-administered adoption or fostering programs.
If your entire faith system consists of nothing more than “I hate those people over there”, I promise you that you can find others who agree and who will happily join together, form a church, and say that God told them so. Only a pack of fools would look at that reality and decide that the widely ranging, vastly differing, and often irrational beliefs and rules about a subject which is, by its very nature, unknowable is the basis on which adoption and fostering policy would be based.
And let’s be real. Who works in the child advocacy field, anyway? Sure, there are a few good family-first quote Leviticus fire-brands, but it’s mostly a bunch of bleeding heart liberals. And you know, you just know, that the real losers in this deal are going to be the idiots who just voted for the thing.
Let's hope that anti-Christianist bias grows and this law ends up being used against them. Or at least until it gets struck down as unconstitutional.
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