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Rep. Stark Introduces Again Troubling Adoption Bill
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Congressman Pete Stark (D-CA) has again introduced a bill that would use federal pressure to get all states to adopt a policy of banning discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status by private agencies that provide adoption or foster care services.  HR 1681, the "Every Child Deserves a Family Act," supposedly would expand the number of families eligible to adopt or to accept foster care placements.  Yet it has no exemption to protect faith-based agencies that specialize in placing children with mother-father families.  Rather than expand adoption and foster-care services, the bill is likely to reduce them.

This is the kind of "anti-discrimination" rule that pressured Catholic Charities Boston to stop providing adoption services and that may in just a few weeks compel the exit from adoption and foster care services of Catholic Charities and other faith-based agencies in Illinois. 

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A proposed revision of the regulations governing licensed adoption and foster care agencies in Virginia would have banned "discrimination" on the bases of religion and sexual orientation, among other characteristics.  No exemption was offered to enable faith-based agencies to continue to work with religious mother-father families.  Termed an essential reform to expand adoptions and foster care by gay persons, the proposed rule ran into extensive opposition, in part from supporters of faith-based agencies.  By a 7-2 vote on April 20th, the State Board of Social Services rejected the proposed anti-discrimination provision. 

And Then There Were None:  UK Catholic Adoption Agencies Vanish
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Until a few years ago, there were a dozen Catholic adoption agencies in England and Wales.  But in 2007 Equality Act regulations came into effect, banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.  Six of the agencies secularized themselves, cutting their ties with the Church and changing their standards for evaluating suitable placements.  Five of the agencies, unwilling to change their faith-based standards, instead stopped providing adoption services.  One agency, Catholic Care in the Diocese of Leeds, decided to fight the new requirement, seeking an exemption.

Alas, on April 26th, Catholic Care lost again in the final stage of its two-year battle to be able to keep providing adoption services in accordance with Catholic Church teachings.  So now there are none.  Difficult to see in that a great victory for tolerance, children, families, and gay persons.   

Marriage Redefinition Has Two Consequences, Not Just One
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Efforts are being made again in New York State to change the legal definition of marriage.  Opponents of marriage redefinition include Catholics, Protestants, and orthodox Jews.  They object to the government treating marriage as a creature of the state, subject to its revision.  But they object, as well, to the consequences of marriage redefinition for faith-based agencies, such as adoption and foster-care services. 

A New York Times article on the dispute reports that the opponents "point to Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., where Catholic Charities stopped participating in adoption services rather than face a mandate to place children in homes without regard to the sexual orientation of the couple."   

The article says that Nathan Diament, head of the Institute for Public Affairs of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, has gotten questions about the New York bill from many Orthodox rabbis.  "Aside from the moral issues," Diament said, "their major concern is religious liberty."  Just so. 

For all the details on the religious liberty consequences, see D. Laycock, et al., eds., Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty:  Emerging Conflicts (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008).

Say It Ain't So
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Although one of the key concerns of opponents of the proposed marriage redefinition bill in New York is religious freedom--that faith-based agencies will be forbidden in the future to prefer mother-father families for adoptions and foster-care placements--at least one proponent of same-sex marriage apparently has zero sympathy for this vital First Amendment freedom.  Democratic State Senator Liz Krueger, a co-sponsor of same-sex marriage bills, is characterized in the New York Times as dismissing the concern.  Agencies that "discriminate" ought to be subject to legal penalty, in her view.  But not to worry:  "As for adoption, which is already legal for same-sex couples in New York, she said, 'My guess is that most same-sex couples skip over the Catholic adoption services in the Yellow Pages.'" 

In plain English:  "Same-sex couples have plenty of private agencies to turn to already, so they don't need faith-based agencies to cater to them.  Nevertheless,  the law ought to expose those faith-based agencies to legal penalties merely because they want to keep doing something that is entirely legal:  connecting children who need parents with mother-father families willing to take those children." 

Shouldn't voters expect better than this from their elected representatives?

AG Holder Says No Plans to Withdraw RFRA Hiring Memo
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In 2007, the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department published a memo that concluded that, because of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a faith-based organization that hires according to religion may be able nevertheless to participate in the federal programs that ban religious job discrimination.  Opponents of religious hiring by groups that get government funds were already upset that the Bush administration did not accept their interpretation that such hiring is banned in the many programs that are silent about employment decisions.  The OLC opinion, which was occasioned by World Vision's participation in a juvenile justice program that prohibits job discrimination, made them furious. 

So the ACLU and other groups, and their congressional allies, have been badgering the Obama administration to withdraw or reverse the--to them--offensive OLC memo.

The latest attempt to provoke an administration promise to get rid of the OLC memo came in a May 3rd Department of Justice oversight hearing by the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives.  Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), who is an indefatigable opponent of the faith-based initiative and of religious hiring (which he insists is akin to racial discrimination), challenged Attorney General Eric Holder to promise to withdraw the memo.  Instead, the AG said that the administration is not even considering such a change. 

That's very good news for faith-based organizations that choose to collaborate with federally funded service programs.

For the Scott-Holder exchange, go to http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/JusticeDepartmentOve (exchange starts at about minute 58).

For the OLC memo, go to http://www.justice.gov/olc/memoranda-opinions.html and scroll down to 29 June 2007.

For Douglas Laycock's tart rejoinder to the critics of the memo, go to: http://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/01/laycock-on-preserving-religious-freedom-for-religious-organizations-receiving-funding.html

Working Group on Obama Executive Order
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On November 17, 2010, President Obama issued Executive Order 13559, "Fundamental Principles and Policymaking Criteria for Partnerships With Faith-Based and Other Neighborhood Partnerships".  This is the Obama administration's statement of the principles that should apply when a faith-based organization receives federal funds to provide services--and, significantly, the principles are not that different than those followed by the Bush administration and that were pioneered in the Charitable Choice laws that President Bill Clinton signed. 

But there are a few differences:  this administration is stressing closer monitoring to ensure that grantees abide by the "church-state" rules, it has decided that the kinds of activities that federal grants and contracts cannot fund are "explicitly religious activities" (the Bush term was "inherently religious activities"), and it is extending to all federal programs the Charitable Choice idea that a client who does not want services from a faith-based provider must be offered an alternative.

The Obama Executive Order created a federal Working Group to assess federal policies and practices according to the revised principles, mandating a report by mid-April.  That deadline has been missed, but in a late-April conference call, federal officials reported their progress to some of the outside experts who had worked with the President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to develop the revised principles that the President adopted.  Some of the issues--especially how to fairly administer the requirement of a guaranteed alternative--are complicated. So far, so good, though.

World Vision Hiring Victory Appealed to Supreme Court
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