Remember back in 2014 when Hobby Lobby went to the Supreme Court because they didn’t want to give their employees contraceptives with their health care for religious reasons? They won their case, and RBG delivered a now-famous dissent against the ruling, in which she said, “No tradition, and no prior decision under [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act], allows a religion-based exemption when the accommodation would be harmful to others.”
Well, according to Slate, on Wednesday, “the Department of Health and Human Services declared that, under RFRA, a federally funded foster care agency in South Carolina has a right to discriminate against non-Christians, closing its doors to would-be parents of different faiths.”
For those unaware, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was an act introduced by then-U.S. Rep. Chuck Schumer on March 11, 1993, with a companion bill introduced in the Senate by Ted Kennedy on the same day. The act was unanimously passed in the House and nearly unanimously in the U.S. Senate and President Bill Clinton signed it into law. The intent of the RFRA was to protect religion, but it was specifically intended to help to protect all religions. Really, it was a way for Native American religions to protect their sacred land from the government, as well as their religious practices.
The act was supported by both liberal and conservative groups at the time, mostly allied to federal law, and by March 2018, it was established by the courts that the RFRA does not justify LGBTQ discrimination. Still, it is an imperfect bill, and in the hands of the Trump/Pence administration, it definitely has become a weapon used to discriminate.
Currently, this is taking place in the realm of adoption/foster care. The case that led to the above court decision has to deal with Miracle Hill Ministries, a Christian foster care agency, refusing to work with applicants who are not Christian. Miracle Hill reportedly turned away a Jewish woman, who wanted to be a mentor to children in foster care, because of her faith. It also rejected same-sex couples because their sexual orientation did not align with its religious values, which again, was established to not be a part of RFRA.
The South Carolina Department of Social Services sent a warning to Miracle Hill that it could lose its license if it “intends to refuse to provide its services … to families who are not specifically Christians from a Protestant denomination.” But, “religious liberty” champion Republican Gov. Henry McMaster meddled and issued an executive order granting adoption and foster care agencies the right to discriminate on the basis of religion.
Cool. Cool. Cool.
So now, due to the above court decision, the possibility is open for conservatives to use this precedent in order to enact their own bigoted and restrictive policies. Considering the issues with our overpopulated foster system, it is unbelievably cruel that an organization would limit the possibilities of loving parents seeking to adopt/foster.
All I have to say is: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 6:1-4) and “I tell you this: whenever you saw a brother or sister hungry or cold, whatever you did to the least of these, so you did to Me” (Matthew 25:40).
(via Slate, image: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
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