It's not easy being progressive in Virginia. It seems like every time I turn around our Republican governor or his like-minded legislators are attempting to pass legislation that denies another group of people some of their civil rights. A woman's right to choose abortion has been narrowing over the past few years and don't get me started on immigrants. And the historic target of venom is back in the crosshairs of our House of Representatives -- prospective gay parents.
A Virginia House of Delegates committee is attempting to pass legislation that would allow private, faith-based child welfare agencies to reject prospective parents based on their sexual orientation. Yes, yet another of those "conscience clauses" that some religious extremists find so comforting: we can disregard your rights if you are engaged in behavior we find distasteful or, okay I'll say it, "sinful." This card has been played by pharmacists unwilling to dispense contraceptives and by Catholic hospitals which refuse to perform abortions even to save the life of a woman.
Delegate Todd Gilbert, who proposed the bill, claims his legislation protects religious freedom. Now I believe in religious freedom as much as the next guy but I also believe you shouldn't be involved in child welfare if you intend to invoke religious freedom as a means of discrimination. As a long-time foster parent in the state of Virginia, I've seen children so abused by their heterosexual parents that they could barely function. I've seen a seven-year-old with the angry welt in the shape of his mother's hand on his cheek. That certainly didn't make me decide that all heterosexual couples shouldn't be parents because that would be... wrong. Would those children care if they were placed in a loving home that had two moms or two dads? I can tell you from my experience that they most just long for someone to hug them, to care for them, to cradle them in the night when they wake from nightmares.
It's not like there is a huge line of perfect, Christian middle-class families in Virginia yelling, "Give us those abused, abandoned, neglected preteens." Most of the time a family is found for those children who enter the child welfare system at midnight. Most of the time someone is willing to adopt a child whose spirit - or bone -- is broken or who has fetal alcohol syndrome or who still wets the bed in first grade. There are loving people across the state, and some of them are gay. Why give private agencies a free pass to discriminate? How can we condone that when children's lives are at stake? And if the agencies' consciences allow them to deny people on the basis of sexual orientation, what is next? Maybe they will reject potential parents who are left-handed or Asian or wear glasses or read Huffington Post.
Why does my state even spend two minutes on legislation that is discriminatory? Have we learned nothing through the long, checkered history of Virginia? I urge the voters of Virginia and the governor to consider the needs of children before the "consciences" of people who take cover behind religion. If an organization is in the business of finding loving homes for the most vulnerable of our state's children, then let them do it without regard to race, sexual orientation or party affiliation. It's not about you.