Legal Discrimination? It’s Coming

The Illinois Senate is right now considering legislation that would allow religious organizations to deny adoption and/or foster parenting to people in civil unions if doing so would violate the organization’s “sincerely held religious beliefs.”[i]

What this really means: If the legislation passes, religious-based adoption and foster care agencies (Catholic Charities, for example) would be allowed to turn away qualified candidates strictly because they are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. In short, legalized discrimination.

I have two arguments against this: legal and personal. Let’s get the legal stuff out of the way first.

The Illinois Human Rights Act expressly forbids discrimination based on a person’s sexual orientation.[ii] And last year’s civil unions law requires that a civil union be treated as a marriage under state law.[iii] This proposed amendment would violate both laws by allowing these agencies to actively discriminate against GLBT people in civil unions.

But wait, I hear some of you saying, what about freedom of religion? The government can’t tell churches what they can and can’t believe.

I absolutely agree. These groups are free to believe anything they want about homosexuality. They are free to decide not to adopt to same-sex couples. But here’s the problem: many of these religious groups are subsidized by the government to perform social services, like adoption. (In the case of Catholic Charities, nearly 70 percent of its funding in 2009 came from governmental sources.[iv]  Illinois alone gives Catholic Charities about $30 million each year to handle adoptions and foster placements.[v])

If a group receives government funding to provide a service, that group needs to follow government laws when providing that service, including nondiscrimination laws. That’s not me talking; that’s the law.

I’m not picking on Catholic Charities; they do honorable work in the community, and there are other agencies in similar situations. But I chose Catholic Charities as an example because it is well known, accounts for a large number of adoptions and foster placements in Illinois, and has been very outspoken on this issue.

Their representatives have said publicly they will not process applications for adoption or foster parenting submitted by couples who are gay, because that’s against the Catholic Church’s beliefs. And they are holding children hostage over this debate: they have publicly lamented (one could say threatened) the emotional trauma that awaits foster children in their system if the government pulls its financial support over this issue.[vi]

This is where the personal argument comes in. Isn’t the point of all this to find families for children without them? Children need someone to love them, care for them, protect them, guide them into adulthood. Someone to make their lunches, wash their hair, kiss their boo-boos. Someone to celebrate their successes and give perspective to their failures. I challenge you to tell me which of these is something only straight people can do.

I know gay parents with straight children, and straight parents with gay children. (I also know straight parents with straight children but, oddly enough, no gay parents with gay children.) I know a lesbian foster mother and a gay couple waiting patiently for a baby to bless their lives.

Believe me when I say that all these people put me, a straight mom, to shame as a parent. They are among the most loving, caring, dedicated parents I know, and beyond anything a child desperate for a family could possibly hope for. Yet these same people are deemed unworthy of the job by organizations like Catholic Charities. 

Which is better: two moms, or none at all? Ask the kid with none.

I don't normally believe in endnotes, but I felt in this case I needed to show my sources.

[i] You can read the entire proposed amendment at http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/97/HB/09700HB3184sam002.htm

 [ii] You can read the entire Illinois Human Rights Act at http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs4.asp?DocName=077500050HArt%2E+1&ActID=2266&ChapterID=64&SeqStart=100000&SeqEnd=600000

 [iii] You can read the entire Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act at http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=&SessionId=76&GA=96&DocTypeId=SB&DocNum=1716&GAID=10&LegID=44423

 [iv] Statistics found on www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/04/faith_poverty.html

 [v] Statistics found on http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/05/catholiccharities-gay-adoption_n_858133.html

 [vi] ibid.