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Virginia Passes Bill Banning Same-Sex Adoption
This week, Virginia passed a bill allowing adoption agencies to deny couples the right to adopt based on “moral beliefs.” Despite the dramatic increase in LGBTQ adoptions, or the reoccurring examples of their success, we still have to convince politicians we’re normal, or something.
Supporters of the “conscience clause” measure said it protects the religious rights of private agencies, many of them faith-based, that contract with the state to provide adoption and foster care services. The legislation is based on regulations adopted by the Virginia Board of Social Services in December. Converting those regulations into law would ensure that a future administration could not change them without legislative approval.
The legislature’s Democratic minority vehemently opposed the legislation, saying the intent is clearly to make it tougher for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Virginians to form families.
“It’s the first step toward actually outlawing adoption by LGBT people,” Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria and the General Assembly’s only openly gay member, said in a floor speech.
Unmarried couples in Virginia are already unable to adopt (guess who can’t get legally married), so this is just the icing on the cake. North Dakota is currently the only other state with a similar law on the books.
Do you think discrimination based on religious principals should ever be written into state law? Does that argument even hold water any longer? Haven’t we realized that sexual orientation has nothing to do with parenting skills?
(via The Washington Post)
