So let’s see what good thing Rep. Pete Stark will burn down in blind faith to his liberal idol worship these days. Ah. here it is. In his effort to push anti-gay discrimination laws into every nook and cranny of American civil society whether or not it’s needed, Democrat Pete Stark (CA-13) appears willing to destroy much of the adoption infrastructure in the U.S.
His so-called “Every Child Deserves a Family Act” —as long as it is a Gay family— (H.R. 3827) seeks “To prohibit discrimination in adoption or foster care placements based on the sexual orientation, gender identification, or marital status of any prospective adoptive or foster parent.”
Like a finger looking for any eye to poke this measure would effectively ban government partnerships with any public or private agency that chooses not to place children with same-sex couples. It also raises the very dangerous possiblities of organizations being banned from receiving state certification whether or not they receive government funding, based on over reaching discrimination rules proposed by Stark and others as the new liberal trump card.
The clear irony of Stark’s willingness to cut off the nose to spite the face is that while claiming to advance tolerance, his bigoted legislation works to marginalize groups because of their sincerely-held convictions.
While purporting to value diversity, Stark and the usual suspects seek to cut off a large and vibrant segment of the nation’s response to the needs of foster youth. We’re not surprised.
And while declaring its goal as being to help children find families, it essentially erects barbed wire between government offices charged with finding homes and the organizations and families that have proven most willing to provide them.
If Wild-Eyed Pete and his pals were truly wanting to advance the “best interests” of the child, they would recognize that private agencies, many of them Christian, have more licensed foster care homes than the state. Think what this bill would do to the number of available homes!
Not to mention constant reintroduction of ENDA restrictions. So not only can you not not place a child in a not gay home, you must only hire gays or be taken to court for discrimination against gays.
Protecting the dignity and public-legal and civil rights of homosexuals ought not cause the destruction of the entire infrastructure of adoption in the U.S. while trampling on both clauses of the First Amendment. Such blatant partisan overreach, religiously driven in its own right, only shows that adoption is hardly the concern of this legislation.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
I respectfully disagree that gays are a problem as parents. I am the father of a gay as well as being an adooptive parent who also worked for many years in the foster care business. Kids deserve a stable home. What about kids adopted by straights and molested, abused or ignored. Nah,gay, straight, mixed. I don’t care Get over it. Gay is not a perversion any more than being left handed or nearsighted, research is showing. Keep the real creeps out of childrens’ lives, be they gay, straight or Republican.
It’s been said many times, but bears repeating: homosexuality is not similar to ethnicity. Homosexuality has to do with behavior and self-identification. These people want us to believe that they are the new black. No. They are the old perverts. They demand, yes, demand, that people agree with them and validate their perversions.
They are the most intolerant people I know.
There is a lot of things that Bill and I could be called in taking the DIFFERENT sides in this issue, pedantic, egotistical, hubris, sarcastic, snide, myopic, literal come to mind, and those are just a collection of our mutual good points/ But Aryan? Come on have you ever taken a good look at my nose?-> my very Greek-Italian and Near Eastern maybe parts unknown, nose. And my skin tone- hell I was born tan. I was even in the back row of the nursery. When I was in Saudi Arabia people came up to me and asked for direction in Arabic. As for Bill, true he is one shade short of Albino, but he is more Santa Clausian than anything that would pass for Aryan. Geezzz…
Hi Annie, thanks for the calumny and insight. BTW, I have your eyeballs here at my office. You might want them so you can actually see, read, and understand the debate even though it’s so much easier to simply call people names, piss on the rug and leave in a huff.
Edi & BGR,
You sound like a couple of aryan nation bigots.
I feel sorry for anyone who reads this dribble
Edi, your are so kind to point out the language of the PROPOSED BILL. Yes it’s a fact Starks raving blind law would strike down all current law, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and be challenged constitutionally as Establishment of secularism as the only worldview allowed to play in the public square.
Making Adoption and other licenses dependent on abandoning an organizations’s faith-based standards, including hiring, is not lawful and not constitutional by any sane understanding of the development of pertaining law in the past 5 decades.
Your less than trenchant analysis allows the fallacy that it is “my money” or “your money” that should not be used in certain ways. Once the tax is collected it is public monies and not up to the whim of “not with my money” which needs to be hashed out at the ballot box.
Besides, except for your dismissive ness concerning the topic itself, a hidden screed at that, by posing so many rhetorical questions, it is hard to really respond.
Fact Check:
It is correct that the bill states that it applies only to those entities that seek Federal money:
Section 3-a-1
PROHIBITION- An entity that receives Federal assistance and is involved in adoption or foster care placements may not–>
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.3827:
The one side here is saying that religious organization have a right to discriminate based on sexual orientation.
Both sides agree that the discrimination is taking place in religious organizations.
The other side is saying in fact ‘not with my tax dollars’.
The question remains will the number of adoptions go up in the long run because of the prohibition of linking Federal dollars with anti discrimination?
If the number of religious groups pull out because of their refusal to comply with the non-discrimination will those dollars then be channeled to the remaining facilities and new facilities to promote the base cause of getting kids into homes?
Or…
are we in a situation that the practice and policy of SOME religious groups should still be supported by Federal money for the ‘greater good’?
There comes a time when discrimination is not tolerated with Federal Money. Are we at that time?
(I now return you to your regularly scheduled screed that usually follows when the subject has anything to do with religion or gays.)
So parenting is now based on what infants and children want with all their experience and wisdom?
Gays do go to these agencies just to set them up for a predatory lawsuit.
No one is limiting options for children as there will always be government based adoption that will place kids anywhere. Including kids to gay homes that now need to be placed elsewhere as you point out re Florida
How can anyone claim it is irrelevant what sort of home children ought to be placed in? That’s the path to ruin.
Protecting the freedom of conscience of all agencies is the issue not
prohibiting options for children
What is irrelevant is the argument that no one who hasn’t adopted can’t have an informed opionion about adoption policy and first amendment rights
Have you bothered to ask the kids it affects what they think? I work with a lot of foster children and I don’t know a single one of them who would prefer to live in a group home or a make-a-buck foster home over a permanent gay family. All they want is to be loved. Why do you continue to limit their options? No gay couple is going to go to your conservative agency to get licensed. This is only going to affect those that purport to be open-minded but aren’t. It will stop the state of Florida from denying foster children in gay homes from being adopted and having permanent families. THERE AREN’T ENOUGH HOMES FOR THESE KIDS. Saying that they would be better in a traditional family is irrelevant because there aren’t enough of those. How many foster kids have you adopted?
I am not arguing that what happened in Mass. was an oopsy, but if you read the actual bill word for word, i states only states and agencies that recieve federal funding. Clearly, black and white. If the “Baptist Home for Boys” doesn’t recieve state funding, then not getting it because of the bill passing into law, wouldn’t affect them. In turn if the State agencies complied, they are not allowed to be restricted because of a private practise. I am trying very hard not to be biased, however, I am a resident of the state of Arkansas, and if you are not aware we have the horrible act one where it outright forced the state to conform to MARRIED Male and Female adoption and foster care only. Before it was a case by case baisis, hwo I believe it should be. H.R. 3827 would effectly overturn the state’s Act 1. The state of Arkansas in 2008 served a total of 6,974 foster children. (www.arkansas.gov/dhs/chilnfam/index.htm) In Arkansas, there are approximately 3,014 children in the foster care system currently, with an average stay in foster care of 21 months. However, there are only about 1,076 licensed foster families in the state to meet the need for foster homes. So I say pass H.R. 3827.
While this case does have a lot to do with protecting religious liberties guaranteed by the FIrst Amendment, at bottom it has nothing to do with Church and State, in that Rep. Stark’s bill would require every state to forbid every agency that it licenses from preferring mother-father families over gay families or single parents. This need not be a church issue. Its one size fits all forcing of the square peg into the round hole for the sake of ideological zealotry is a dangerous precendent and blockhead law making.
As for the impact of Stark’s blind rage on the social service landscape and faith based communities serving these needful communities, several years ago Massachusetts enforced this same “no discrimination” requirement on all adoption agencies. There was an immediate consequence–but not the one Rep. Stark has in mind. Catholic Charities of Boston refused to abandon its judgment that the best adoptive homes have both mothers and fathers. But the state insisted. To Massachusetts officials, just as to Rep. Stark, it was not enough that many agencies already placed children with gay couples or individuals. No, every agency in the state would have to follow that same judgment about the suitability of homes and families. So, after decades of service placing some of the most challenging children, Catholic Charities of Boston had to abandon adoption services.
Attacking the freedom of faith-based adoption agencies to make their best judgments about placements is no way to promote more adoptions. Nor does it respect their religious freedom. Nor does it respect America’s diversity of convictions about serious issues.
Rather than wipe out an entire class of service provider why does not Stark’s bill encourage government to neutrally nurture a diversity of providers so everyone can find a provider that serves their needs the best, instead of establishment of one bigoted government approved worldview as proper and acceptable for the Public Square?
Background reading:
Maggie Gallagher, “Banned in Boston,” The Weekly Standard (May 15, 2006).
Daniel Avila, “Same-Sex Adoption in Massachusetts, the Catholic Church, and the Good of the Children,” Children’s Legal Rights Journal (Fall 2007).
1.) H.R. 3827 only covers sexual orientation, gender identification, and marital status, because they are the ones with blockades against them. The maritial status part includes heterosexual couples, who for whatever reason, have chosen not to get married. (H.R. 3827, 2009)
2.) From your articel “If Wild-Eyed Pete and his pals were truly wanting to advance the “best interests” of the child, they would recognize that private agencies, many of them Christian, have more licensed foster care homes than the state. ” Where H.R. 3827, section 3, (a), (1) An entity that recieves FEDERAL assistance and is involved in adoption or foster care placement may not….(d), (3) authority to withhold funds, if a STATE, fails to comply with this section, the secretary may withhold payment to the state. PRIVATE, AND CHRISTIAN, INSTITUTIONS WILL NOT BE AFFECTED UNLESS THEY RECIEVE FEDERAL FUNDING. Seperation of church and state anyone?
3.) Stepping away from facts, I did not like you article, it does not inform the reader, it OVERLY state your opinion. It is clearly a persuasive paper, and is organized roughly as if you scrambled to throw your thoughts down. I belive in sharing opinions especially those diffrent than my own. However, I do believe it to be your critical responsiblity to back these statements up with facts and sources, and not a single idea through the entire piece, which is clearly that you do not approve.
Same problem in D.C. with Catholic Charities running up against over zealous anti-discrimination laws
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/11/AR2009111116943.html
Stark and other secular zealots are going to drive out most of what makes up the social service infrastructure in the U.S.
Does prohibition against race and religion discrimination restrict the current Foster Care agencies?
Gay Christians – is this a non-sequitor within the definition of Christian as used here?
To take legislation that prohibits discrimination against Gays and then equate it to forcing ‘Only Gay adoption’ is like saying that marriage laws may not restrict inter-racial marriages is forcing only inter-racial marriages.
What specific Foster Care agencies would specifically object to a Gay Foster Family? How would they handle the situation? Considering that there is a massive LACK of foster families I wonder if there would be a referral to the state or another agency if an objection was found.