The Tennessee Legislature is considering a bill that would allow taxpayer-funded child-placing agencies to discriminate based on religion — and we need your help to stop it.
TN HB 1152, currently in front of the Tennessee House Children & Families Subcommittee, would prohibit the state from taking any action against a child-placing agency that declines to facilitate adoptions conflicting with the agency’s “sincerely held religious beliefs.” If passed, the law would allow these agencies the right to refuse services to, among many other groups, LGBTQ families and children.
This bill is part of Project Blitz, a Christian fundamentalist nationwide push that seeks to inject state legislatures with a whole host of religious template bills, imposing the theocratic vision of a powerful few on We The People. It is an unvarnished attack on American secularism and civil liberties — those things we most cherish about our democracy, and now must tirelessly defend.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services, there were more than 440,000 children in foster care in the United States in 2017. Some 50,000 of these children will be adopted every year through the child welfare system, while another 20,000 will “age out” of the system before being adopted. Allowing agencies to turn away parents looking to adopt, on the basis of their religion, is both morally reprehensible and puts further financial burden on an already strained child-welfare system.
The health and care of a child should be the only factor that an agency and its employees consider when looking to place a child in a foster care or adoptive family — not advancing the bigoted agendas of those promoting discrimination at the expense of children in need.
Please use our simple, automated system to ask the Tennessee House Children & Families Subcommittee to reject this harmful bill. Click on the red “Take Action!” link below, follow the prompt provided, and feel free to use or adapt the talking points provided.
If you would like to attend the hearing and make your voice heard in opposition to this harmful bill, the details are below.
When: Tuesday, March 5, 9 a.m.
Where: House Hearing Room II, TN Capitol Building
**Please sign in as being in opposition to this bill**
