ADOPTION
Christian Adoption Agency Welcomes LGBTQ Couples
Major organization’s sudden change comes ahead of anticipated SCOTUS ruling
BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD
Bethany Christian Services,
a large Evangelical
national social services
agency that is a
major provider of foster care and
adoption services, announced a
change of its nationwide policy
in an email to staff members on
March 1. Bethany will no longer
automatically refer same-sex
couples seeking their services to
other agencies. Instead, Bethany
will provide the services directly to
married same-sex couples.
The about-face comes at a time
when the Supreme Court is considering
the question of whether
Catholic Social Services (CSS)
can get a religious exemption from
a Philadelphia policy stipulating
that foster care agencies with city
contracts must adhere to LGBTQ
nondiscrimination requirements.
“We will now offer services with
the love and compassion of Jesus
to the many types of families who
exist in our world today,” Bethany’s
president, Chris Palusky, said
in the email to the agency’s approximately
1,500 staff members,
according to the New York Times.
“We’re taking an ‘all hands on deck’
approach where all are welcome.”
Bethany’s formal position had
been to provide such services only
to traditionally married heterosexual
couples, although some of its
local operations had quietly begun
to provide the services to married
same-sex couples.
It would not be the fi rst time
Bethany Christian Services reversed
course on its own policy. Two
years ago, they started placing kids
in the homes of same-sex parents
in response to legal action — but
that policy shift was confi ned to the
state of Michigan. The latest one
applies to all Bethany Christian
Services locations in the nation.
In 2007, Bethany’s board adopted
the following policy statement:
“God’s design for the family is a
covenant and lifelong marriage of
one man and one woman.” But on
January 21 of this year, the Board
decided to drop its prior policy and
Legal battles surrounding LGBTQ adoptions continue to persist years after couples like Joseph Vitale
and Robert Talmas of Manhattan fought to get on their adopted child’s birth certifi cate in Ohio.
start openly providing the services
agency-wide.
The agency’s policy turnabout
stemmed from its experience in
Philadelphia. In March 2018, a
reporter from the Philadelphia
Inquirer who had been researching
the subject called the City’s
Department of Human Services
(DHS) to tell them that two agencies,
Bethany and Catholic Social
Services, had a policy of denying
foster care services to same-sex
couples. About 30 agencies provided
such services in Philadelphia,
but these two agencies were the
only ones who refused to do so on
religious grounds.
When the Inquirer published its
story, the City Council, which had
banned sexual orientation discrimination
years before, erupted
in anger, passing a resolution urging
DHS to take action.
DHS contacted both agencies
and informed them that if they refused
to provide such services, their
contracts with the city would not be
renewed and the city would stop
referring children in need of foster
placements to the agencies. The city
paid the agencies to carry out these
services, and it was a signifi cant
source of revenue to both agencies.
Bethany decided to comply with
the city’s request and remain in
the program, and informally made
similar decisions elsewhere when
called on the question by government
agencies. Catholic Social Services
REUTERS/MIKE SEGAR
(CSS), by contrast, decided to
hang tough. In response to the demands
from DHS, CSS fi led a federal
lawsuit claiming that the City’s
action violated their First Amendment
religious freedom rights.
CSS lost in the district court and the
Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Their
appeal to the US Supreme Court was
argued in November and an opinion
will be issued later this year.
As part of their appeal, CSS argued
that the court should overrule
its longstanding precedent, Employment
Division of the State of Oregon
v. Smith, which held that religious
objectors are not privileged under
the First Amendment to refuse to
comply with religiously-neutral
state laws of general application.
Since at least four of the court’s conservative
members (Justices Clarence
Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil
Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh)
have called for “revisiting” that decision
in recent years, it is likely
that CSS’s petition for review was
granted with that result in mind if
the four can win over at least one
more member of the court to their
point of view. Justice Amy Coney
Barrett and Chief Justice Roberts
are their most likely recruits.
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote
the court’s opinion in the Smith
case, which reversed decades of
Supreme Court precedents. Prior
to that decision, the court interpreted
the Free Exercise Clause of
the First Amendment as granting
religious objectors the right to refuse
to comply with state laws unless
the state could prove it had a
compelling interest that could only
be achieved by enforcing the law
against the religious objector.
After the Smith decision, bipartisan
majorities in both houses
of Congress passed the Religious
Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA),
purporting to overrule the Supreme
Court and restore the prior
interpretation of the Free Exercise
Clause, but the court then ruled
that Congress did not have the
power to overrule the court’s interpretation
of the Constitution.
Congress then passed a narrower
version of RFRA, under which
compliance with federal statutes
and regulations that impose a
burden on free exercise of religion
will be excused unless the federal
government shows that the challenged
law was passed to achieve
a compelling government interest
and provides the least restrictive
alternative for achieving that interest.
Many states passed similar
laws, including Pennsylvania.
Interestingly, however, the lower
federal courts in the CSS case rejected
an argument by CSS that
Pennsylvania’s Religious Freedom
Protection Act would excuse CSS
from complying with the city’s nondiscrimination
requirements. The
Third Circuit specifi cally found,
after reviewing Pennsylvania state
court interpretations of that statute,
that “the city’s actions are the
least restrictive means of furthering
a compelling government interest,”
because “it is black-letter law
that ‘eradicating discrimination’ is
a compelling interest.”
Unlike CSS, Bethany took the
less combative and doctrinaire
approach, preserving its contract
with the city to continue vetting
prospective foster parents, making
matches for children referred
by the city, and providing supportive
services for the foster families.
CSS continues to operate other
programs, some with city funding,
but it is out of the city’s foster care
program, pending a fi nal decision
by the Supreme Court in its case.
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