I Pay My Taxes!

Can you imagine that you and your spouse want to adopt a child and you are told no you cannot because one of you is trans, and this in the state that bans discrimination against trans people. The reason that they give is that it is a religious adoption agency and LGBTQ+ are sinners. But you say that there are no other adoption agencies in the area and they are receiving funding from the state and federal governments. Your tax dollars are paying their agency to provide adoption services, why can’t you adopt?

Well that case was heard last November and the verdict will be read later this year.

Supreme Court's COVID-19 cases stir up battle between religion, same-sex couples over foster care
USA Today
By John Fritze
March 15, 2021


WASHINGTON – As religious freedom emerges as a major theme at the Supreme Court this year, some court watchers are predicting a series of recent opinions involving COVID-19 restrictions have put that issue on a collision course with gay rights.
[…]
The Supreme Court is set to rule later this year in a major case questioning whether Philadelphia can stop working with a Catholic charity that declined to screen same-sex couples as foster parents, Fulton v. Philadelphia. Some legal scholars say the recent COVID-19 disputes show the Catholic group may have momentum on its side.

“This voting lineup makes clear that Fulton is going to be reversed,” predicted Douglas Laycock, a University of Virginia law professor and leading expert on religious liberty. "At least five, and maybe all six, of the conservatives will protect the Catholic Church from having to place children with same-sex couples or else losing its foster-care mission entirely."

Now when the church signed the contract with the city it stipulated that you cannot discriminate against LGBTQ+ people. But the church had no intentions of obeying the contract conditions when they signed the contract, can you imagine if you or I signed a contract with no intention of following the terms and conditions of the contract? But because they are a church they are above to the law and they get special rights.

Even before Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett took her seat on the court in October, adding another conservative voice to the bench, the justices have looked kindly on religion in high-profile cases. The court allowed taxpayer money to be directed to religious entities in some situations, exempted employers with religious objections from requirements that they provide health insurance coverage for contraceptives, and let a massive Latin cross stay on government land within a few minutes' drive from the nation's capital.

This is ruling setting up a tangled web that has no way out.

Suppose that there are two Christian adoption agencies, one that is open an affirming and the other anti-LGBTQ+, and suppose the affirming agency supplies children to adoption agencies through out the state and they refuse to send any children to the agencies that discriminates saying to do so would violate their religious beliefs. The anti-LGBTQ+ sues saying it discriminates against their beliefs… whose religious beliefs trumps the other?

Or suppose a Christian adoption agency refuses to let children be adopted by non-Christians who that be legal?

The Supreme Court ruled in a 1990 decision that a government can impose restrictions that affect a religious entity as long as they are applied equally to religious and secular activities. A city can impose a 30 mph speed limit, for instance, and if someone claims their religion requires them to drive 60 mph, too bad. Their claim gets tossed.

There is a lot depending upon this case, it opens a huge can-of-worms if they rule in favor Catholic Church.