A Florida bill that would have allowed adoption agencies receiving public funds to discriminate against LGBTQ people looks dead for now—but similar bills are alive in several other states.
The bills would allow private adoption agencies—even ones receiving public funds—to refuse to place a child with an individual or couple if to do so violated the agency’s religious or moral beliefs.
The Florida bill that I wrote about Monday was “temporarily postponed” by a state Senate committee, “a procedural move that means it likely will not come up again this legislative session,” says Equality Florida.
Other states are not so lucky:
- Similar bills were recently introduced into the Alabama House and Senate.
- A Michigan Senate committee on Wednesday passed a set of three similar bills, sending them to the full chamber. The Michigan House passed them in March. If you live in Michigan and want to tell your senators to kill these bills, click here.
- A similar bill is pending in a Texas House committee—on top of efforts to strengthen the state’s existing, more general Religious Freedom Restoration Act through a state constitutional amendment. The Texas Observer reports that Brantley Starr, deputy attorney general for legal counsel, told the paper that “the [adoption] bill is needed because the Religious Freedom Restoration Act provides too much latitude to judges, who could determine that protecting the rights of same-sex couples constitutes a compelling state interest that outweighs the religious beliefs of state-funded child welfare providers.” That’s right. The same type of act that caused such a ruckus in Indiana isn’t harsh enough. Some people want one specifically to cover foster care and adoption.
Lambda Legal Senior Attorney and Youth in Out-of-Home Care Project National Director M. Currey Cook said in a press release, “Though the proposed bills do not specifically name LGBT individuals or same-sex couples, the intent of the language is clear, as is the message they convey.” They send a damaging message to LGBTQ youth by telling them they are unsuitable to be parents, Cook added. “Foster care and adoption agencies should only be guided by the best interest of the child, and they should be held to the non-discrimination standards recommended by the Child Welfare League of America and other child welfare experts.”
There was some good news on the adoption front yesterday, though. Arizona Governor Doug Ducey confirmed that married same-sex couples in the state could foster and adopt children together. The state Department of Child Safety in February had ordered its staff not to issue joint foster care licenses and adoptions to same-sex couples, apparently because it felt the U.S. Supreme Court’s announcement that it would take up marriage equality meant that marriages of same-sex couples in the state were somehow on hold.