It amazes me how much the Christian press and fundamentalist leaders will just outright lie to their flocks. LifeSiteNews is whining about the “Every Child Deserves a Family” act, introduced by Rep. Pete Stark [D-CA]. The main purpose of the bill is to address the myriad number of kids who go homeless in this country every year, in part by denying federal funds to adoption agencies that discriminate against qualified loving parents, i.e. religious organizations that won’t place kids with loving gay couples. Here, let the Washington Blade explain:
The Every Child Deserves a Family Act, which has 33 original co-sponsors, would restrict federal funds for states that allow discrimination in adoption or foster care placement based on the sexual orientation, marital status or gender identity of potential parents — as well as LGBT children seeking homes. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is expected to introduce companion legislation in June in the Senate.
[...]
At the news conference, Stark billed the legislation as a means to ensure children living in the foster care system have access to a greater number of adoptive families — including households with single parents or same-sex parents.
“What’s in the child’s best interest is what the bill is trying to promote,” Stark said. “There is no information that shows that children raised by a single parent or gay or lesbian parent households have any more or less problems than all other children.”
According to Stark’s office, the U.S. government spends more than $7 billion each year on a foster care system against potential single and LGBT parents and allows around 25,000 children age out annually. More than 500,000 children are in foster care and 120,000 of them available for adoption.
See? It’s a two-fer. On the one hand, it’s about considering the children first, but it has the side effect of correcting an injustice for LGBT families. As you can read for yourself [because you are liberals], the bill, again, denies federal funds to groups that discriminate. It doesn’t force them to shut down. It just says, “here, if you are a bigot, that is fine, but get off the government teat.”
So how does LifeSiteNews breathlessly report this to their mouth-moving readers?
Ominous House Bill would effectively ban US
Christian adoption agencies
Holy crap, they lie in the headline!
A bill reintroduced into the U.S. House of Representatives this month proposes federal-level punishment for states that ban homosexual couples and non-married individuals from adopting children. Effectively, the bill would ban all Catholic and Christian adoption agencies or forbid them from acting on faith beliefs.
And they lie in the first paragraph! That federal-level “punishment” is simply a withholding of federal support. If you need to be a bigot, and also run an adoption agency, get your own damn donors! It is that simple.
Later in the piece, LifeSite decided to contact a hate group executive for his opinion:
Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies at the Family Research Council, agreed. “It would have the effect of either banning Christian adoption agencies or forbidding them from acting on their faith convictions and their moral convictions in terms of what is in the best interest of a child,” he warned.
Sprigg said that Christian organizations, such as Catholic Charities are among the “most effective adoption agencies” which have an “outstanding record”. Additionally, he said, “unique problems” associated with homosexual couples and non-married couples indicate that these homes are “likely to be less stable than a married husband-and-wife household.”
Uh huh. First of all, Peter is lying about “unique problems” making gay couples’ households “less stable.” We know this. We know how the FRC lies with research. There is NO credible evidence that kids do any worse with same-sex couples. And his remark about “forbidding [bigot agencies] from acting on their faith convictions and their moral convictions in terms of what is in the best interest of a child” is not true either. Again, they’re just losing federal funding. If they rely on that in order to stay open, well, sucks for them. The problem — for the bigots — is that “what is best for the child” is not open to religious interpretation. “Religious interpretation” for Christian Scientists would suggest that the “best interests” of a child with leukemia involve prayer. Irrefutable facts about the “best interests” of that child, on the other hand, would lead the parents to head to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis as quickly as possible. Likewise, fundamentalist bigot interpretations of what is in the “best interests” of children who are in the system may exist, but that does not mean that they are actually correct, and really, in a nation as large as this one, with hundreds of thousands of kids In The System, we need to be supporting adoption agencies , on a governmental level, that truly look out for the best interests of those kids, ALL of them. So run around with your “religious interpretation” of the best situation for kids all you want, but if you want to receive federal money, if this bill is passed, you’re going to have to go with the grown-up, fact-based version of what’s best for those kids.
So sorry. Go cry about your religious freedom now. It’s abundantly obvious to the rest of us that you religious wingnuts care far more about upholding your easy-to-shatter misconceptions about the world around you than you EVER will care about actual kids in need.
When these wingnuts write lines that include a phrase like “the bill would ban all Catholic and Christian adoption agencies,” they don’t even realize the implicit insult to the Catholics they are trying to recruit to help them in the discriminatory cause.
Any Catholic (conservative or liberal) reading that would recognize that the writer does not consider Catholics to be Christians. And, of course, the Catholic would be right.
Even when trying to join forces, they cannot resist taking a dig at their would be allies.
I totally agree with this. If they want federal money then the Christian adoption agencies need to include everyone in the adoption process or you do not get the money period. I do not want my tax money to go to organizations who want to exclude people just because their gay or single.
Radical anti-gay pressure groups want to harm children by letting them rot in orphanages and foster care instead of allowing loving families to adopt them. This is unchristian. I don’t want my tax dollars going to “religious” groups who redefine yanking children from loving homes as “faith” or “moral.”
Headline in the Rockford, IL Catholic Newspaper:
“State Forces Catholic Charities Out of Foster Care, Adoption
By The Observer”
From the article:
“The agency was forced to opt out of contracting with the State of Illinois for these services because of the Illinois legislature’s failure to enact an amendment to the new civil unions law that would allow Catholic Charities to refer unmarried, cohabitating couples, whether same-sex or opposite sex, to other agencies so as to not violate the teachings of the Catholic faith when the Civil Unions law goes into effect on June 1.
Catholic Charities in the Rockford Diocese handles approximately 350 foster family and adoption cases in 11 counties in northern Illinois with a state budget of $7.5 million. Forty-two full-time caseworkers are employed to monitor these placements. An additional 24 employees have, as part of their duties, work in this area.”
I emailed them that they were not forced out of the adoption and foster care business by the state, but that they had a contract with the state and they refused to follow the non discrimination rules of the state and if they take the tax money they have to follow the rules. I also said that it was good that they were out of the business because it would be harmful for LGBT children in their system to be placed with parents who might teach them that they were disordered.
[...] Truth Wins Out – Dear Religious Adoption Agencies: Stop Taking Federal Money If You Want To Be Bigots: http://bit.ly/myhJBl via @addthis http://www.truthwinsout.org/blog/2011/06/16794/ [...]