As to be expected, hate group the Family Research Council is nauseatingly pleased at the new law in Kansas which allows adoption agencies to discriminate against the LGBTQ community while still being able to receive tax dollars.
And the group has a message for those of us angry at such unfair action:
As we've seen in the wedding vendor debate, there are plenty of adoption agencies in Kansas who are willing to serve same-sex, unmarried, or single parents. There's absolutely no reason -- except spite and intolerance -- to force everyone else to chuck their beliefs as a condition of serving in the industry. For years, faith-based adoption and foster care ministries have helped take the burden off of the government's overextended, finally-strapped social service agencies. They recruit parents, provide ongoing support for families, and even focus on at-risk and special needs kids. This law guarantees that there's an option for every parent. No one -- not a ministry, employer, businessman, or nonprofit -- should be punished for exercising the faith our Constitution protects!
Nowhere in FRC's little message does it mention anything about the unfairness of LBGTQs being forced to hand over our tax dollars to agencies which will then use that money to discriminate against us. That's not by accident because organizations like FRC don't like to be reminded that we are taxpayers. They don't like to be reminded that we have families, are raising children, and some of us are in fact children. They don't like to be reminded that we have a personal stake other than their stereotypes of us being "the threatening other."
And that is the crux of our objections to these laws.
The disrespect of us as taxpayers is an important issue and the LGBTQ community shouldn't feel the least bit selfish for raising it. But the situation goes further than that. Not matter what FRC and other religious right groups may spin about freedom and faith, the sole purpose of laws like the one in Kansas is to dehumanize the LGBTQ community. They weaponize religion like cattle prods to herd us into a way of thinking and acting more conducive to what the anti-LGBTQ industry wants us to be.
Little by little, these laws are used to only erase our rights, but also our dignity and the ability to make good choices about our lives and control our own destinies.
When FRC calls us "spiteful and intolerant," it means that the organization is angry that we won't roll over and allow the group and others like it to box us in their prejudiced definitions of who we are. One that score, they are mostly right. But what we are doing is perfectly natural.
When you know that you are a human being with value, you generally don't allow yourself to be treated like dirt.
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