Kansas adoption bill seeks to enshrine anti-gay bigotry

Here’s a prayer that the Catholic version of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” reveals itself to the Kansas Legislature.

State lawmakers are currently considering the Adoption Protection Act, which would ensure that faith-based child placement agencies may gain state contracts even if they deny otherwise qualified adoptive parents to a placement that would violate that agency’s “sincerely held religious beliefs.”

In other words, agencies that use taxpayer dollars could refuse to place kids with LGBT parents.

The measure is backed by the Kansas Catholic Conference, representing the state’s bishops.

Catholics who oppose this kind of overt discrimination need to rise up and show themselves. Their voices are needed to defeat a bill seeking to use the faith as an anti-gay stronghold.

Backers are correct to point out that Catholic doctrine discusses homosexuality as an “intrinsic moral evil” and that similar legislation elsewhere is supported by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The truth, however, is that Catholics, far more than many other faiths and certainly the general population, are generally more supportive of LGBT people’s right to marry, to raise children and to adopt. Multiple surveys bear this out.

There’s a reason so many Catholics rejoiced in 2013 when Pope Francis said, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

It’s entirely fair for a religious organization to conduct its affairs in accordance with its own moral values. It is not fair to ask taxpayers to subsidize behavior that run counter to the public interest and violate the rights of certain members of society on the basis of religious morals.

It’s important to point out that the adoption services of Catholic Charities in the southwest portion of Kansas reports that it uses fees and donations, not state funds, to manage its adoptions. Fair enough. But why do Kansas’ Catholic bishops believe we need this unnecessary and potentially discriminatory remedy to a non-issue?

The claim is that faithbased agencies need this protection to set up shop in Kansas.

But why do we need new agencies to set up shop? A curious legislator’s efforts to find out exactly which faith-based organizations are eager to set up adoption services in the state have gone unanswered.

Moreover, as adoption advocates stress, it’s not that there aren’t enough adoption agencies in Kansas. It’s that there aren’t enough families willing to adopt. Less than a quarter of children needing adoptive homes in America find their “forever families” each year. In Kansas, the rolls are bursting with numbers of children in state care, more than 7,500 at last count.

As society’s understanding and acceptance grows around issues of sexual orientation, religious-based groups will have to choose either to shift their policies or forgo state funding.

What if the issue was an interracial couple that was denied an adoption by a religious group because a leader found a biblical passage that seemed to imply this was God’s will?

God often works in mysterious ways. This gambit by Kansas’ bishops may end up challenging Catholic minds, hearts and spirits in ways they didn’t anticipate. We can only hope.