An expert in religious liberty is warning that faith-based adoption agencies are under attack following comments from several Democratic candidates for office.
Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who is trying to win the seat held by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, recently criticized a state law that allows faith-based agencies to decline to place children with gay parents.
O’Rourke told rally attendees that “in this state, with 30,000 kids in the foster care system… they say that under the guise of religious liberty that you can be too gay to adopt one of those children who needs a loving home.”
The law in question requires faith-based agencies who won’t work with same-sex couples to direct them to adoption agencies that will place children in gay homes.
David Closson, a research fellow for religious freedom and biblical worldview at the Family Research Council, said O’Rourke either does not understand the law or holds “a prejudiced view of the religious beliefs of millions of Americans who believe children deserve a mother and a father.”
Closson, writing at NationalReview.com, said O’Rourke’s comments are but the latest example of faith-based agencies coming under fire.
Dana Nessel, the Democratic candidate for Michigan attorney general, said if elected she would not defend a 2015 law that protects the religious liberty of adoption agencies. Specifically, Nessel said she “could not justify using the state’s money defending a law whose only purpose is discriminatory animus.”
In South Carolina, the Democratic candidate for governor, James Smith, criticized an order by the current Republican governor to protect the religious liberty of adoption agencies. Smith said it was “wrong on every level.”
Earlier this year the Philadelphia Department of Human Services halted its contract with Catholic Social Services and Bethany Christian Services when it was learned the two faith-based agencies would not place foster children in same-sex homes.
“These recent events,” Closson wrote, “emphasize the intolerant nature of those controlling the LGBT movement — which has in the past forced adoption providers out of Boston, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Illinois — and the scant regard it shows for the costs placed on families or society’s at-risk children.”
Michael Foust is a freelance writer. Visit his blog, MichaelFoust.com.
Photo courtesy: Priscilla du Preez/Unsplash
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