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NOM Goes Ballistic Over Virginia’s New Foster Care And Adoption Regulations
04/02/11-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
The time has come- indeed, it has come- for the National Organization for Marriage to stop pretending that it is anything other than an anti-LGBT group dedicated to hurting, harassing and punishing lesbians, gays, bisexuals and trans people. It is obvious that their message is not to defend “traditional marriage”- as in Christian marriage- but rather to hurt those who love those who are of the same sex as they are. This is absolutely clear in their latest malicious sneer at LGBT adoption rights- specifically in Virginia.
Dear Marriage Supporter,
Driving religious foster care and adoption agencies out of business appears to be the purpose of new regulations proposed by the Virginia Department of Social Services.
Proposed Virginia Administrative Code section 22 VAC 40-131-170 provides that:
“[Private adoption agencies] shall prohibit acts of discrimination based on . . . sexual orientation, disability or family status to:
1. Delay or deny a child’s placement; or
2. Deny an individual the opportunity to apply to become a foster or adoptive parent.”….
Here’s the message the DSS officials proposing this regulation need to hear:
Don’t hurt needy children by driving religious foster care and adoption agencies out of business. If an agency provides good parents for children, they should be embraced, not rejected by the state of Virginia.
The message of exclusion you will send to children with strong religious identities, as well as to potential foster and adoptive parents is unconscionable and destructive.
The state of Virginia Social Services has no right to impose this strange new morality on other people, to the detriment of the neediest children in our state.
Of course, the reality is that these children are in need of loving, supportive families which the NOM wants to deny them at all costs. Yes, religious based foster care and adoption agencies have willingly closed their doors because they refused- yes refused- to give up the money that they got from the state to run their businesses. This is what happened in Boston with the Catholic adoption agency, and this is something that Brian Brown and Maggie Gallagher would rather not talk about ever. Rather than telling the truth and the reality of the situation, they want you- yes you- to make sure that children go without loving families because they hate LGBT Americans. As for the “message of exclusion you will send to children with strong religious identities”, there are Jewish lesbians who raise their children with strong and tolerant religious identities. There are Catholic gays who raise their children with strong and tolerant religious identities. There are Pagan lesbians who raise their children with strong and tolerant religious identities.
Just because we’re lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender does not mean we’re not religious. Some of us are very religious. Of course, as far as Brown and Gallagher are concerned, anyone who does not follow goose step behind their faith’s banner is not truly religious, are they?
Gallagher also added her voice to this. Of course, her idea is that, somehow, the only ones who will get to adopt are lesbians and gays. She wrote:
Rep. Anthony Weiner may have joked about “mandatory gay marriage,” at the WH Correspondents dinner, but amazingly, Virginia’s Dept. of Social Services is proposing new regulations that would require all adoption and foster-care agencies to do gay adoptions.
Today is the last day to comment on these regs, if you are in Virginia or an expert on why driving competent foster care and adoption agencies out of business hurts children.
Huh. This is about Virginia’s proposed new “Minimum Standards for Licensed Private Child-Placing Agencies,” which seem to be mostly about clarifying and in many cases simplifying existing regulations. But there is that secret “mandatory gay adoption” trap, buried deep within. Here’s the relevant text from the proposed new regulations:
B. The licensee shall prohibit acts of discrimination based on race, color, gender, national origin, age, religion, political beliefs, sexual orientation, disability, or family status to:
1. Delay or deny a child’s placement; or
2. Deny an individual the opportunity to apply to become a foster or adoptive parent.
That all seems fair to me. But then, I am “anti-family,” which means I am in favor of allowing more children to join more loving families.
The rest of what they say is worth a good look.
The reality is that NOM is not about protecting marriage, as they see it, but preventing lesbians, gays, bisexuals and trans people from having equality, and they will do anything, including lie outright, to make sure that we never get equality. The thing is, why lie about it? If you are going to be a hate-filled, fear-mongering, homophobic, transphobic organization, why not just come right out and say it. Come on- it’s easy- just say “We hate those dirty fags over there and we’d rather die than let them be equal to the rest of us”. After all, Maggie, Brian, I know you’re reading this, that’s what your actions say already.
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michael
April 5, 2011 at 11:43 pm
this gives me hope for VA, you see i moved here five years ago and found that this state is the most backwords bluegun big money interests state i have ever lived in or seen. They don’t even call themselves a state they call themselves a commonwealth, like their interest is in the common wealth of all their people. right….but this, this is surprising and new. I hope it’s because one of those new republicans pushed for it. Those new republicans who were voted in nov 2010 seem to be surprisingly supportive of lgbt families.
In Shock
April 4, 2011 at 3:19 pm
I know what these anti-gay people are doing at this point. They have taken their cues from NOM and they are constantly, ceaselessly playing the victim at this point, and constantly accusing others of nastiness, rudeness and lies. I have never seen it resolve one discussion, but only make the discussions turn exponentially nastier. These are two groups of people who C-A-N-N-O-T and WILL NOT get along unless the “religious” recognize that orientation is inborn, period, the end. There is absolutely — I know human nature; I can promise you this — absolutely no way in hell these groups will ever be anything but at culture war while the so-called christians are claiming they know science better than the scientists. Not gonna happen, period. Watch and see.
Mykelb
April 4, 2011 at 12:53 pm
I really don’t give a rat’s @ss what straight people think about sexual orientation, gay marriage, adoption or anything else. What they need to be asking themselves is DOES MY RELIGION TRUMP THE US CONSTITUTION? If you answer yes, you are an Unamerican religious bigot that should pack up and move to a foreign country where theocracy rules. Here’s a few: The Vatican, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Oman, Iran, Egypt and possibly Israel.
Mykelb
April 4, 2011 at 12:47 pm
I would like to know how heterosexuals actually have the gall to try to speak for the LGBT community or our experiences AT ALL. If you have never been in a LGBT relationship or have been the victim of discrimination because of your sexual orientation, I DARE YOU to have ANY OPINION whatsoever on the subject. You have alot of nerve mister.
michael
April 5, 2011 at 11:50 pm
wow just wow, the reason we have over 50% supporting gay marriage in America is BECAUSE straight people are helping us now. The enemy isn’t the straight people in general, and anyone who empathizes with our plight in this country shouldn’t be attacked. We should embrace their support so that we can finally at long last get the rights we deserve. I would suggest you turning that anger towards the real enemies the mindless sheeple drones who believe anything and everything out of Fox news network because the reason why it’s not 75% support for gay marriage in this country is these sheeple who can’t think for themselves and believe everything that sounds snarky and smartass coming from people like Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Oreilly. These people are all revisionists of history and we need not attack our friends but show those who are lost in the misinformation just how wrong those people are on that channel. It’s the same for Christians, Christians aren’t our enemy, its the christian extremists.
Logic... what's that?
April 4, 2011 at 6:02 am
Firstly, my comment ”everyone is stupid” applies to everyone, I do not exclude myself. It is human to be flawed.
With respect to terminology, I refer to one (not all) of the groups those who do not accept the validity of the LGBT lifestyle as ‘traditionally religious’ rather than ‘right wing religious homophobics’ as it is more polite and more accurate. I used LGBT or LGBT lifestyle rather than something more hostile for the same reason, if you have a more appropriate and almost as concise term I will use that instead.
I believe that there are multiple entwined assumptions and issues here, and it’s easy to confuse them. Re-reading my article and my comment, my comment does not actually address the article, but a related issue instead. Forgive me, I had in mind a recent event in England where a ‘traditionally religious’ couple who had fostered several children and who had a good record were denied the chance to foster any more children because they were unwilling to say that homosexuality was a valid lifestyle. The legal opinion of the UK supreme court was that being unwilling to tell a child that LGBT was valid was inimical to the child. Taken further, if inimical harm to children is justification for removing a child from their parents, it is reasonable to conclude that children should be removed from their parents if they are raising them in that environment. In the context of that issue, I misinterpreted this issue.
Bridgette: I did not say ‘Strong religious convictions’, I said ‘Traditional religious convictions’. I spoke of a (large) subset of the religious community, not the whole community, as within every community there are variations. As I noted in the same comment this does not affect religious people with a more modern/cultural religious view. Given the length of my comment, it was an easy statement to miss.
FlexSF: you seem to be infected with a high degree of malice. You don’t want justice or fairness. You want revenge. I am as opposed to your malice as I am opposed to those who think it is acceptable to bash gays or to discriminate against them as employees. I am curious as to how the other respondents find your malice. Understandable perhaps, but hopefully not acceptable or desirable.
In Shock: You group together the opinion ‘that LGBT is not a valid lifestyle’ with ‘discrimination against LGBT is acceptable’ with ‘violence and hostility against LGBT is acceptable’. Keep in mind that there is a variety of types and levels of opposition. Grouping together someone who disapproves of the lifestyle with someone who thinks that acts of violence against them would be unfair and inappropriate. I’ve had gay friends and coworkers and neither I nor they had any problem with each other. As my former gay supervisor and I joked ‘the supervisor gets to be on top’.
Your opinion that my opinion should be utterly condemned is hostile, unreasonable and inappropriate. You view my opinion as invalid but offer no proof that it is so, relying only on assumptions shared with the majority of the members of this forum. I can provide valid arguments, based on principals that you would agree with, to convince you that LGBT was equivalent with things that I suspect you would detest.
As for inborn orientation – the jury is still out on that one. As any geneticist worth his salt will tell you, there can’t be anything such as a gay gene just as their can’t be any such thing as a religious gene – genetics doesn’t work in the simple on/off way that bits in a computer do. If it was genetic, then natural selection would have removed it from the gene pool.
I also don’t appreciate your flawed conclusion that old testament civil law should be confused with new testament personal beliefs. The items you are talking about were considered civil crimes by the Jewish nation. Islam and Judaism incorporate both a civil code and a personal code. Christianity and Buddhism only incorporate a personal code. I’ve also found it ironic that most people tend to criticise a religion or ideology with the actions of people who claimed to, but manifestly did not, follow those teachings or ideology.
To All:All else aside, I am here (partially) defending the choice of traditionally religious adoption agencies to discriminate against LGBT couples. That was not my original intent, I had indeed fallen down the slippery slope because of the context of another article, nevertheless I can iterate reasons both for and against some adoption agencies having the option to discriminate against LGBT families.
Should an adoption agency be permitted to discriminate against LGBT (or other groups).NO: the only factors that should be used in determining whether a couple can adopt are ones that are relevant to whether they can provide a financially and emotionally stable environment for a child.YES: being raised in an LGBT household will cause additional confusion and modified social norms.
CONCLUSION: I think it should be considered as a factor, but if it is weighed against other factors appropriately, then it shouldn’t be an eliminating factor.
A question in return: the law does not stop an LGBT adoption agency from discriminating against religious couples. Is that fair?
Bridgette P. LaVictoire
April 4, 2011 at 9:25 am
Logic,
And I countered with an example of a case where a lesbian who follows her Jewish traditions very closely is still openly lesbian. As she put it, there is nothing in any of the religious texts which ban lesbianism. Do you want religious tradition or cultural tradition? There is a difference, and it is a huge one. For centuries, lesbians were quite honestly tolerated anywhere other than those nations where they weren’t persecuting women for witchcraft.
AS for a ‘gay gene’, actually, there are plenty of studies showing a major genetic component and a major physical component to homosexuality. That said, it is not one gene and one structure that makes someone gay, but rather the totality of their being. Also, there are indications that humans, by and large, are not either/or, especially women. Most women fall rather strongly along the bisexual spectrum with only a few being absolutely straight or lesbian. IF you want to get technical, I would say that I am 98% lesbian. There are a few- VERY FEW- men I find myself attracted to, but I’m not sure I could have sexual relations with them since I abhor penetration of any nature that mimics men.
Finally, I think you also miss the real gist of this post. I honestly expect that they will write a religious exemption into the bill, as is normal. I do not see why the Mormons should not be allowed to grant adoptions only to Mormons, etc. This is not about the bill, but about the fact that the National Organization for Marriage is nothing but a hate-mongering, homophobic group which needs to be above board about that very thing.
Prana35
April 4, 2011 at 1:19 pm
With reference to the English couple who were allegedly “denied” the right to foster because they would not tell a child that being a homosexual was “valid”, can I suggest that you actually read the judgement of Mr Justice Beatson in that case and not merely accept the typical media view of what the judgement was.
It is far more illuminating to read the actual words of the judgement than accept the very biased media reporting. One main point that has been missed in virtually all the reporting is that both Eunice and Owen Johns (the couple in question) and Derby Council (the responsible authority) agreed to take the case to court JOINTLY for a legal determination on the issue of whether strongly held religious convictions could be taken into account when determining a persons suitability to foster a child. The case in point was not the suitability of the couple to actually foster, but then again that is not as much of a news story is it !!
In Shock
April 4, 2011 at 3:14 pm
Logic,
Your response handily illustrates why I have lost a lot of patience for this subject. You don’t speak like someone who knows much of anything about the issues themselves, as they affect the people who are affected not just in discussion but on a daily basis, day in and day out.
You have the nerve, unbelievably, to speak to FlexSF like someone who doesn’t know what s/he is talking about; no small leap to imagine the issues presented here don’t affect YOU except in certain specific ways which prompt you to do exactly and precisely, jaw-droppingly, what you condemn: attack others. Yeah, got it. Perhaps next time you request proof, you’ll remember that opinions don’t require it. We weren’t speaking in facts here. That’s why I wonder how you would additionally dare to purport that you would “convince” me of anything.
This isn’t about people who are simply “unsettled” or “ideologically discomfited” by these issues. What’s astounding is that the anti-gay are putting tens, of, millions, of, dollars, does this compute to you, tens of MILLIONS of dollars into doing EVERYTHING they can to ensure that gay people DO NOT have these rights. What part of this are you overlooking when you sit here on a message board telling people they seem “hostile”? What planet are you on? You think these people DON’T have the right to be openly hostile to someone like you? Yeah, go tell that to their families. I cannot even compute where people like you come from anymore. You tell me, what’s the point in studied, intelligent, amiable discussion? It goes nowhere.
Nowhere.
Nowhere at all.
You handily proved it; congrats.
Even more sickeningly, the anti-gay claim that the pro-gay “don’t have any arguments” to answer to their own anti-gay points. Oh, that’s interesting, know what I’ve seen? In 100% of the instances in which I see the pro-gay arguing, I see them doing one of two things:
a. arguing every last point, logical construct for logical construct,
b. refusing to bother because perhaps they’re sick to death of having been through it so many times.
I can assure you, though, that no one here, Ms. LaVictoire included, is going to mistake your nasty-spirited post for any call to “gentility,” because the onus is not on the pro-gay to prove any of this. It is the anti-gay flapping their mouths about a “gay gene” when one possibility remains that homosexuality is triggered by the ABSENCE of a gene, not anything concrete that anyone will find unless they look for what’s missing, not what’s there.
“I’ve also found it ironic that most people tend to criticise a religion or ideology with the actions of people who claimed to, but manifestly did not, follow those teachings or ideology.”
And the above, quoted from you, would be why anyone could argue that you have NO authority to be discussing these matters. It’s funny how those types of claims of hypocrisy are flung around so very freely, so very constantly, and yet so very many of the people arguing against gay rights …
… are heterosexual.
Right? Of course I’m right, but this cannot by hell or high water be logically introduced into the discussion because it cuts away and eliminates the right of just about anyone to discuss this matter who would bother applying logic so that it is UNIFORM, kind of like they enjoy applying laws so that they are not UNIFORM.
FlexSF
April 3, 2011 at 12:06 am
We must expose their financial donors, and hold their donors responsible for everything these galling, anti-gay, professional bigots say and do. We must destroy the careers of Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown. It will be interesting to interview these two assholes in their old age. When they’re about 90 years old, poor health, and lonely, they will deserve to be reminded of their absolute, reckless behavior, but people like them don’t live that long because they will be crushed by the weight of their own shame, and they will deserve it.
With a bit of Karma, maybe Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown’s health is deteriorating at a faster rate than the average person. They deserve it. Will the revenge of the gays be living equally under the law? I want more justice.
Logic... what's that?
April 2, 2011 at 11:25 pm
Actually I’m inclined to believe that both sides are making factually incorrect statements, mostly due to false dichotomies. For those who don’t know – a false dichotomy is when you claim there are two extremes, and you can only be one or the other, not in between or on a different spectrum.
There are two fundamental questions here, of which I’m going to focus on one: what does the statement “prohibit acts of discrimination such as … sexual orientation … to deny an individual the opportunity to apply to become a foster or adoptive parent” actually mean?
If it means that someone who engages in act of violence against LGBT (or other groups) should be banned from fostering kids, that is entirely different from banning someone if they don’t believe that LGBT is a valid lifestyle. Not to mention the variety of options in between or on either side of. Someone who is engaged of acts of violence should be excluded as being unsuitable regardless. Where exactly should the line be drawn between being allowed to respectfully disagree with LGBT and trying to exterminate them?
Parents with strong, traditional religious beliefs (not just Christian, I’m also including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and others) that are religious in the traditional sense could be banned from adopting or raising children. They are likely to be unwilling to promote LGBT as a valid lifestyle and could be banned for this. These groups make up a large percentage of those willing to be foster parents – mostly because of their strong traditional religious beliefs.
Religious people without more modern/cultural beliefs probably won’t be affected.
What about adoption agencies that prefer couples with traditional religious values over couples without them? This relates to my second fundamental question / issue: how should the state’s legislation and money be used to further the interests of special interest groups (this includes both churches and LGBT).
One one hand if religious adoption agencies are taking state money they should be doing the state’s job. On the other hand I’m not fond of taxpayer’s money being used to fund one ideology’s viewpoint over others. Separation of church and state? How about separation of interest groups and state?
As for mandating LGBT adoptions, that’s just a slippery slide fallacy “oh dear traditional people can’t adopt, next thing it’ll be mandatory to have gay marriage”. Ugh. I’d pay out Americans for being stupid, except that everyone else is just as stupid.
Perhaps we could write a more objective article if we were talking about another protected group?
Bridgette P. LaVictoire
April 3, 2011 at 9:10 am
You make an incorrect assumption here. Strong religious convictions do not preclude LGBT acceptance. There are some who are very devoutly Jewish who accept homosexuality just fine. In fact, you make the very false dichotomy that you accuse me of.
In Shock
April 3, 2011 at 10:51 am
As soon as I see the word “lifestyle,” your motives are suspect and everything you say falls under the bright light of suspicion. I see that you are trying to be fair and equitable, but you omit from your article one thing … and it’s an assumption that needs to stop.
You presume that the religious perspective against gays is acceptable. If any zealous religious persons in this country advocated murder, as the bible does for various “infractions,” their religious view would be deemed unacceptable, period, and there would be no discussion of the matter.
The anti-gay attitude that religion holds to be “legitimate” is based in numerous lies and fallacies and it is continually excused as being “religious” in nature. It shocks the conscience that far, far more people will not stand up against this, absolutely refusing to hear it. There are no two sides anymore to the racism debate; it is deemed unacceptable, period. That this has not happened where inborn orientation is concerned makes literally no sense whatsoever.
In Shock
April 3, 2011 at 10:54 am
All apologies for a second comment. I am driven to correct an error in my post, since “you omit from your article one thing” should say, “you omit from your COMMENT one thing.” My comment addresses the comment from the poster “Logic” above; it is not taking issue with the main article.