#Texas muslim burn gay flag free#
"They’re free to do that and should be free to do that."Īllmon, who testified in favor of Frank’s measure, suggested to us that the law drove up adoptions. "My guess is if you have an LGBT agency they’re going to pick an LGBT family, and if you have a Baptist agency they may be more likely to pick a Baptist family," Frank told the AP. Frank said then that most adoptions happened through the state’s child protective services agency, which would not be subject to the religious freedom mandate, though outside agencies that receive state funding would be. James Frank, R-Wichita Falls, who authored HB 3859, told us that nothing in the law "would stop a same-sex couple from adopting or serving as foster parents in Texas." He added: "There are existing providers today who place children in same-sex households."įranks was quoted in a May 2017 Associated Press news story speculating that different parents would choose different adoption paths. Smith said he’s not aware of statistics or independent research on the extent to which the law "has been used by certain providers to refuse to work with LGBTQ people."Īdvocates of the law say it doesn’t deter adoptions by gay Texans. Allmon also noted the law's requirement that anyone refused a service be referred to other providers. "Catholics believe fathers are men and mothers are women," Allmon said. "For some licensed providers in Texas, including Catholic Charities, you can be too gay to adopt a foster child," Smith wrote.īy phone, Jennifer Allmon of the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops offered a kind of confirmation, saying the conference helps married mothers and fathers adopt. Still, he said, if "you were to ask a provider like Catholic Charities if being just a little bit gay is OK with them, you’d learn that they think that ‘any gay’ is ‘too gay’ when it comes to working with prospective adoptive parents." In that vein, O’Rourke’s statement was accurate, Smith said. Smith indicated by email that Texas doesn’t prohibit adoptions by same-sex couples. A subsequent blog post by the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights advocacy group, that said that under the law, state "contractors who provide child welfare services can discriminate against qualified same-sex couples seeking to care for a child in need-including LGBTQ couples, interfaith couples, single parents, married couples in which one prospective parent has previously been divorced, or other parents to whom the agency has a religious objection."Īfter O'Rourke made his 2018 claim, we reached out to Chuck Smith of Equality Texas.
#Texas muslim burn gay flag license#
In Texas House debate on the measure in May 2017, the Texas Tribune reported, Democratic legislators warned that the plan would give groups license to discriminate against gay - or Jewish or divorced - parents who want to foster or adopt.
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Opponents of the proposal-including Equality Texas, which says it seeks to secure "full equality" for LGBTQ Texans-maintain that the law hastens discrimination based on sexual orientation or other factors. The law says that if a group opts to decline service to someone, the group must direct the person to another service provider or to a state list of providers. We read the law and noticed that it doesn’t explicitly bar services to anyone based on sexual orientation, including adoption. Backers of the legislation and a state agency say the law does not keep any qualified adults, including gay residents, from adopting.
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Greg Abbott, says that groups can decline to provide social services to a person if that person’s beliefs conflict with the group’s "sincerely held religious beliefs." In this case, that would mean that a social service group that arranges adoptions could refuse to allow a gay couple to adopt a child through that group.Ĭritics of the measure say that gay Texans are being refused adoption opportunities.
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When we asked, Chris Evans of O’Rourke’s campaign told us that O’Rourke’s claim was based on the Texas Legislature’s action in 2017 known as House Bill 3859. We wondered: Can a Texan be "too gay" to adopt a child in foster care? 29, 2018: "In this state, with 30,000 kids in the foster care system -a foster care system so under-resourced that recently kids were sleeping on top of or underneath the desks in CPS (Child Protective Services) offices-in this state, they say that under the guise of religious liberty that you can be too gay to adopt one of those children who needs a loving home." O’Rourke, the El Paso congressman challenging first-term Republican Sen. Senate nominee Beto O’Rourke made a claim about gay residents being kept from adopting children in need. At a lakeside Austin rally mostly celebrating the potential of Texas to lead the nation, Democratic U.S.