Joe.My.God. LGBT News
The Birmingham News reports:
The Alabama House passed a bill Thursday that would protect faith-based adoption and foster care agencies from placing children into homes that go against their religious beliefs. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Rich Wingo, [photo], was among a package of pro-life legislation considered Thursday in the House. It passed 60-14 with one abstention.
Wingo said he was inspired to author the bill because other states – Massachusetts, Illinois, California, and the District of Columbia – force foster and adoption agencies from placing children into homes that violate their faith.
“A number of those faith-based agencies have closed their doors,” he said. Wingo said Alabama doesn’t have such issues. “I’d like to think that we’re being proactive instead of being reactive,” he said.
Wingo is a first term state rep and played five seasons for the Green Bay Packers back in the 80s.
The Human Rights Campaign reacts:
The bill, deceptively titled the “Child Placing Agency Inclusion Act,” would enshrine taxpayer-funded discrimination into Alabama law by allowing state-funded and licensed adoption and foster care agencies to reject prospective LGBTQ adoptive or foster parents based on the agency’s religious beliefs.
“This bill unconscionably harms the nearly 5,000 children in Alabama’s child welfare system who are waiting to be placed with a loving and supportive family,” said Eva Kendrick, HRC Alabama state manager. “It’s disappointing that legislators in the House seem focused on creating new ways to discriminate against LGBTQ people instead of securing loving homes for these children. And it is deeply disturbing that on ‘pro-life day’ the House has embraced a measure limiting the number of qualified, prospective foster and adoptive families who could offer these children the homes they deserve.”
H.B. 24 would allow state-licensed and funded child-placing agencies to disregard the best interest of children, and turn away qualified Alabamians seeking to care for a child in need — including LGBTQ couples, interfaith couples, single parents, married couples in which one prospective parent has previously been divorced, or other parents to whom the agency has a religious objection. The measure would even allow agencies to refuse to place foster children with members of their own extended families — a practice often considered to be in the best interest of the child. A qualified, loving LGBTQ grandparent, for example, could be deemed unsuitable under the proposed law.