Michigan House Passes Bills Allowing Tax Funded Religious Adoption Agencies To Discriminate

The Michigan House just passed three bill that would encode anti-LGBT discrimination into adoption law.

The Republican-controlled Michigan House of Representatives this afternoon just passed three bills that allow faith-based or religious adoption agencies, despite receiving about $10 million annually in state and federal taxpayer funds, to discriminate against same-sex couples and unmarried parents. 

HB 4188, HB 4189, and HB 4190 would permit agencies to refuse to allow same-sex or gay prospective parents to adopt, or provide them any services at all, should doing so violate their “sincerely held religious beliefs.”

The Michigan Catholic Conference supported the bills, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and Equality Michigan opposed them. 

“In the 2014-15 budget year, $19.9 million in state and federal funds went toward supporting adoption agencies for adoption and foster care services, according to the state DHS,” the Detroit Free Press reports. “Nearly $10 million of that total went to faith-based agencies that would be covered under the religious objection bills.”

Equality Michigan notes that on any given day, about 14,000 children are in foster care.

The bills now head to the Michigan Senate, which is also GOP-controlled. 

 

Image by Purple Sherbet Photography via Flickr and a CC license