Faith-Based Adoption Agencies Could Refuse Gay Couples Under Michigan Bills

A committee in the Michigan Senate passed a three-bill package that would give religious protections to faith-based adoption agencies. (Photo by Ben McCleod via Flickr/Creative Commons)

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Faith-based adoption agencies would be allowed to refuse to help some prospective parents adopt children under a three-bill package passed in a Michigan Senate committee Wednesday.

The bills, which passed 4-1 along party lines, would allow agencies contracting with the state to deny service to unmarried or same-sex couples based on sincerely held objections.

Faith-based adoption agencies say that without state protections, they might be morally obligated to shutter adoption businesses. Critics of the proposed bills say they write discrimination into the law and taxpayers are being asked to pay for it.

The agencies that would be protected by the bills have a huge financial stake. They are in for more than half – $10 million – of the $19.9 million in state and federal funds supporting adoption and foster care services in Michigan this fiscal year.

The bills are moving forward as the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to potentially decide the issue of same-sex marriage for all 50 states and settle one of the most contentious civil rights issues of modern times. In advance of the ruling, religious liberty advocates in Michigan and a handful of other states are in a hurry to codify faith-based protections.

“Sloppy” Interpretation of Intent of Bills?

State Rep. Eric Leutheuser, R-Hillsdale, defended the bills he sponsored, and said it’s a “sloppy” interpretation of their intent to say adoption agencies could “refuse” to serve couples based on their deeply held religious beliefs.

“It’s more appropriate to say recuse and refer,” Leutheuser said, according to The Detroit News. “Faith-based agencies need to be able to recuse themselves from adoptions that would go against their faith based beliefs.”

Vicki Schultz, CEO of a Flint adoption agency operated through Catholic Charities, said faith-based adoption agencies need state protections. In a partnership with the Michigan Department of Human Services, the agency has facilitated 166 adoptions of foster kids in the last five years.

“Without these bills, agencies such as ours may be asked to perform services which go against our belief system, ultimately forcing us out of foster care and adoption services,” she said.

Taxes Support “Agency That Feels I’m Not Worthy”

Both same-sex and heterosexual couples were among those speaking during the two-hour hearing before Wednesday’s committee vote.

The Rev. Matthew Bode, who is in the process of adopting two children with his husband, said he’s offended that “my taxpayer dollars are going to an agency that feels I’m not worthy of being a parent.”

Social worker Susan Grettenberger, who described herself as a gay and an active Christian, said some special-needs and other children who are more difficult to place may not be able to find homes if adoption agencies limit who they’ll serve.

Grettenberger, who has adopted four difficult-to-place children, said she “cringes” when she thinks where her children might be if the religious exemptions had been in place when she adopted her children.

“They can’t imagine where they would be, either,” she testified, according to a report on MLive.com. “We’ve talked about this. Separated from each other, would they have been moved from foster home to foster home? Would they have run away, as their older sister did?”

Related:

• Question to Michigan Lawmakers Backing Religious Freedom: Did You See What Happened in Indiana?
• Religious Freedom Bills Back Before Michigan Legislature
• Snyder Vows to Veto Religious Freedom Legislation
• Critics: Religious Freedom Restoration Act Legalizes LGBT Discrimination
• U.S. Supreme Court Will Decide Gay Marriage for All 50 States

Gilda Jacobs, president and CEO of the Michigan League for Public Policy, said the bills are bad law with misplaced priorities on the interest of the adoption agency, rather than the children.

“Children who are placed in foster care or adoption have already suffered,” she said. “Why would we compound their trauma and keep them from a stable, loving home by rejecting potential foster or adoptive parents based on religious preferences?”

Melissa Buck, who adopted four children with her husband, Chad, through St. Vincent Catholic Charities of Lansing, said it would be “devastating” to her family if Catholic Charities were to get out of the adoption business.

“If I had to transfer to another agency, would they make themselves as available and would we feel welcome?” she said, according to a report in The Detroit News. “These kids have already lost enough.”

Bills Won’t Advance Unless Snyder is on Board

The bill package, approved last month by the House, advances to the full Senate without amendments proposed by Sen. Bert Johnson, D-Detroit, the lone Democrat on the committee.

Among the changes he advocates is requiring adoption agencies to explain on their websites the circumstances under which they would refuse service.

“Why beat around the bush?” he said. “It’s a waste of time to discuss a placement that will never take place.”

A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof said that while he supports the bills, he won’t put them on the debate calendar until he’s confident of Gov. Rick Snyder’s support.

Snyder has said in the past that he would veto a Religious Freedom Restoration Act if it wasn’t tied to expansion of the state’s civil rights law.

He has also said the adoption bills need further review, and that he’s in favor of children being adopted by “loving families” and “loving parents,” according to The Detroit News. He didn’t specify whether that might include same-sex couples.