Faith-Based Adoption Agencies Overcome Discrimination Attack!

We are excited to tell you that HB 1932 (D-Levine), a bill that would've repealed critical religious conscience protections for faith-based child placement agencies, has been defeated!  This means faith-based adoption and foster care agencies can continue to help children without having to abandon their core principles that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that children do best when they have both a mom and a dad.

Last week, the Senate sent back a substitute version of HB 1932 to the Rehabilitation and Social Services committee, which it had just approved six days prior on a party line vote of 8-7.  But with February 22 being the last possible day for the committee to take action on the bill, which it did not, it was procedurally left in committee where it died for the year!

This was an amazing turn of events as all indications were that the Senate was content with passing a “compromise” version that left certain protections in place but specifically repealed the provision that protects faith-based agencies’ ability to contract with the state to provide services.

The very thing these agencies have been doing for many decades to help children in need was being condemned through this bill as “discriminatory.”  If you recall, during the contentious committee debate, Delegate Mark Levine (D-Alexandria) actually admitted this bill seeks to stop JUST ONE organization - which we all know to be Catholic Charities – and he even compared exercising their religious values to the Ku Klux Klan.

Whether it was Del. Levine’s shocking statements, his and the “LGBTQ” coalition’s unwillingness to compromise, the advocacy of TFF, our supporters, and other groups, or the power of prayer (or some combination thereof) that ultimately led to the bill's defeat this year we might never know. But it does appear there are some in the Senate who recognized that repealing any portion of the religious conscience protections could dramatically reduce the number of families available to foster or adopt.  With 5,400 children in foster care and in need of a home, that wasn’t a risk certain Senators were willing to take!

Thank you to everyone who wrote or called your legislator about this bill, and prayed with us that this bill would be defeated so that these wonderful organizations and families could continue to care for many children in need.