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Once again, an increasingly unprincipled liberal media is guilty of a blatant misrepresentation of facts in an effort to smear conservatives and religious organizations.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced Tuesday that he’ll sign measure into law that will ensure continued taxpayer funding of faith-based foster care and adoption agencies – even if they exclude LGBT families and others based on religious beliefs.
From NBC News:
If the proposal becomes law as the governor has signaled, current adoption practices in Tennessee aren’t expected to change. Some faith-based agencies already do not allow gay couples to adopt. But this measure would provide legal protections to agencies that do.
For example, denied applicants couldn’t sue an agency for damages if the religious belief or moral conviction was cited as a reason.
The legislation sparked opposition from civil rights and foster advocates.
“The foster care system is at a critical juncture where it is required by new federal law to reduce the number of children placed in harmful group homes and to expand family home options for children who cannot safely return to their family of origin,” said Currey Cook, counsel and director of Lambda Legal. “Children who need more homes, not fewer, should not suffer as part of efforts to chip away at equality for LGBTQ families.”
The liberal spin on this legislation is egregious, and the ensuing outrage is unwarranted.
Faith-based adoption organizations play an essential role in ensuring that the hundreds of thousands of children caught up in the system are ultimately placed into loving, safe, stable, and supportive homes. The fact that those organizations have rules based on their religious beliefs is secondary to why the government supports them through taxpayer funding in the first place: a mutually-shared desire to place as many children into loving, permanent homes as possible.
Fewer organizations to handle paperwork, oversight, and review of adoption applicants mean fewer children getting placed into permanent homes.
Any semi-rational person with even the most remedial level of skills in reading comprehension understands the logic in that, and LGBT parents are not excluded from adopting children, nor should they be prevented from doing so. We need as many qualified parents adopting unwanted children as possible, but there is no shortage of secular adoption agencies.
Tennessee’s legislation is not anti-LGBT, it’s pro-children.
WIBC host Tony Katz discussed the unjustified outrage over Tennessee’s legislation on Thursday’s show. Click below to hear Tony’s full commentary.
