GOP Senators Want to Give Religious Adoption Agencies A "License to Discriminate"

The Republican Party's quest to grant special rights to Christofascists seems to never end.  And the irony is that what these pandering, self-prostituting GOP politicians is 180 degrees opposite of what was once the party's mantra, at least when it came to funding the National Endowment for the Arts.  Back then, arguments that artists' freedom of speech was limited by a move to de-fund those not complying with GOP moral standards was that these artists could do whatever they wanted, all they had to do was not take government funding.  Fast forward to today when religious affiliated adoption agencies line up like pigs at a trough for state and federal taxpayer funded money.  They want not only to gorge on taxpayer funds, but they also want to discriminate at will against various citizens they don't like, especially gays.  Otherwise, they claim their freedom of religion is being attacked.  There is, of course, an easy solution: stop taking taxpayer funds.  That, of course would not allow self-prostitution by GOP politicians.  As The Advocate reports to Republican U.S. Senators are pushing a bill that would allow religious affiliated adoption agencies to discriminate against gays.  Here are highlights:

A new piece of legislation introduced by two Republican U.S. Senators would effectively guarantee that any religiously based child-welfare services can refuse to place children with same-sex couples, without fear of losing federal funding. 

The "Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act" was introduced Wednesday by Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi and Pennsylvania Sen. Mike Kelly, both of whom are Republicans. Zack Ford at ThinkProgress keenly notes that while the bill is positioned as an effort to protect faith-based institutions that provide child welfare services from placing children with families that don't meet the organization's religious standards, what it actually does is force the federal government to continue contracting with faith-based groups that flout federal nondiscrimination policies. 

"The bill would force the government to continue to contracting with any organization that provides services to children, regardless of how their religious tenets affect the way they provide those services," explains Ford.

Regardless of a given state's nondiscrimination law, under the draft legislation, any state that denies funding to a religiously based adoption group that won't serve same-sex couples would lose 15 percent of its federal funding to support child welfare programs.

Framing the bill as intended to "ensure that organizations with religious or moral convictions are allowed to continue to provide services for children," the legislation piggybacks on a false choice frequently trotted out by religious charities that oppose marriage equality but provide welfare services, including adoption and foster home placements. Those groups — most notoriously Catholic Charities — claim that if marriage equality or civil unions are enacted in a given state, the organization will be forced to discontinue its work seeking adoptive and foster homes for children because the law would require the group to place children in homes with eligible same-sex couples, which the groups say violates their sincerely held religious beliefs. 

As LGBT legal group Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders notes, in every state where Catholic Charities has claimed to have been "forced out" of the adoption business by LGBT legal relationship recognition, the charity has voluntarily chosen to stop services rather than comply with state law. In each instance, the charity did have the option to continue providing services to children and refusing to serve same-sex couples hoping to adopt children, but the organization would lose its state funding as a result.

While Enzi and Kelly's statements in introducing the bill don't directly connect the legislation with the recent executive orders regarding employment nondiscrimination against LGBT people signed by President Obama earlier this month, the timing of this bill's introduction is curious, given that the federal government just stepped up its refusal to contract with organizations that discriminate against LGBT people in their employment practices.

The Human Rights Campaign denounced the legislation in an email sent to supporters Thursday, saying if passed, the bill's consequences would be "immediate, random, broad, and disastrous." 

"It’s increasingly clear that, post-Hobby Lobby, some in positions of power believe that religious freedom should only belong to a few,"

Call your senators and tell them to vote AGAINST this bill!