Tennessee Governor to Sign Adoption Bill Targeting LGBTQ Couples

By Joe Jurado, The Root

16 January 20

o I guess the takeaway here is that Republicans don’t like kids. I mean, how else do you explain this? 

NBC News reports that Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has announced plans to sign a bill into law that would protect taxpayer funding of faith-based foster care and adoption agencies even if they discriminate against LGBT families and other groups. All they have to do is claim “religious beliefs” and they’re good. Under this law, a denied family couldn’t sue for damages if the reason for their denial was a religious belief. 

The bill was approved by 20 Republicans, while five others voted present and only one, Sen. Steve Dickerson, joined his Democratic colleagues in voting “no” on the measure. Dickerson was quoted as saying, “This will have a direct fiscal impact on the state, not to mention the humanitarian impact and emotional impact on those children who...will now be in a foster setting for a longer time.” 

It’s sad that the GOP’s war on the LGBTQ community has come to this. I’m really curious if the Republican Bible has a passage in which Jesus proclaims “Fuck these kids,” because this is just astoundingly cruel. It’s cruel to the people who want to start a family and it’s cruel to the children who probably want nothing more than to be a part of a family. This law effectively limits the number of families that are eligible to adopt children and removes any legal recourse for families unfairly discriminated against. 

Impeached President Donald Trump is currently working on repealing an Obama-era ruling that denied federal funding to adoption agencies that serve specific religions. Over the summer he issued a waiver to allow agencies in South Carolina to deny adoptions to Jewish and LGBTQ families. This isn’t about freedom of religion, it’s state-sanctioned discrimination.