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| Religious right groups don't want families like this to exist. |
The news that the Trump Administration's Health and Human Services is providing a waiver for a "faith-based" adoption agency in South Carolina to discriminate against non-Christians - and especially the LGBTQ community - while still being allowed to receive tax dollars has gotten a lot of folks angry. And understandably so.
With that in mind, I am pulling a few posts out of the archives to show just how evil and ingrained this plan is with anti-LGBTQ groups and leaders undermining same-sex families under the guise of "religious freedom."
Hate group shields hate group - Family Research Council defends Alliance Defending Freedom's war on gay adoption - Two hate groups heavily involved in these efforts to steal gay tax dollars to give to these "faith-based" foster care and adoption agencies. Naturally they will protect each other from public scrutiny.
Anti-LGBTQ hate group employee defends anti-gay adoption law with skillful evasion - Speaking of the Alliance Defending Freedom, the organization has its hand in almost every anti-LGBTQ legislation or court action in the country. I had a very interesting twitter talk last year with a spokesperson, Kellie Fiedorek, about a piece of Oklahoma passed. The conversation demonstrates the depths that groups like ADF and people like Fiedorek will stoop to in order to avoid the specific issue. Instead, they attempt to portray the LGBTQ community as at fault for merely defending our rights as taxpayers. Their argument "if gays don't simply allow themselves to be discriminated against, they are preventing children from receiving good homes" is ugly and specious on so many levels.
Anti-LGBTQ groups step up effort to steal gay tax dollars via sleazily deceptive website - And then there is the sleazy website they set up to further that narrative
Family Research Council: LGBTQ rights shouldn't be protected under law because of children & 'health hazards' - While not about adoption, specifically, this is why the clarion call about protecting the "religious liberty" of so-called "faith-based" adoption agencies is a lie. The Family Research Council, one of the main groups making this argument doesn't think that LGBTQ rights should be protected under law in the first place because according to it, we are health hazards who are a danger to children.
It all basically comes down to what I said in The Advocate last year:
"For decades, conservative voices have been attacking LGBTQ people with carefully worded rhetoric. “Before they were trumpeting ‘religious liberty,’ they were all about ‘protecting marriage. Before that, it was attempting to stop gays from receiving ‘special rights.’ And let’s not forget when all of these other buzzwords don’t do the trick, there is ‘protecting children.’ That always works. I show that behind all of their buzzwords and claims is one goal: harming the LGBTQ [community] and undermining our rights and safety.”
It's more than likely that the anti-LGBT hate groups and individuals will never completely disappear...which is why strong legislation is so important: so that in spite of their hateful beliefs and rhetoric, all citizens will know that LGBTs have the same rights as non-LGBTs and that the LAW is to insure those rights. Unfortunately, even laws are regularly ignored when it comes to ethnic, racial and sexual minorities, but with strong laws there can be recourse. And maybe eventually, not in my lifetime, a culture of equality will become the norm.
ReplyDeleteSadly Frank, you're probably correct, at least its unlikely that it will cease to exist in the lifetime of anyone alive today, which is another good reason to keep fighting back. Only when these anti LGBT bigots have become such a tiny minority that to support them will political suicide will we have won.
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