Sharice Davids may be a US Congressperson, but over the weekend, the Trump administration reminded her and the 8 other LGBTQ members of US Congress exactly how little the Trump administration cares about their rights.
In a rule change proposed, the Trump administration decided that organizations receiving taxpayer dollars may discriminate against LGBTQ, while receiving government grants. From CBS News:
The proposed rule by the Department of Health and Human Services would allow foster care and adoption agencies to reject LGBTQ families on religious grounds. The move would also apply to other programs receiving federal grants, including those that help with HIV prevention or homelessness.
While the right to practice your faith is certainly protected, the ability to spend taxpayer funds in a discriminatory way certainly isn’t part of the faith-based process. For the Trump administration, this policy is an olive branch to their religious right base. For children seeking adoption, homeless members of society hoping for care this is a body blow to their rights to exist.
In a letter to her fellow federal elected from Kansas, Rep. Davis urged them to oppose this rule. As reported in The Kansas City Star:
Davids, the only Democrat in the Kansas delegation and one of nine LGBTQ members of Congress, sent a letter Tuesday asking Republican colleagues to use their relationships with President Donald Trump to help reverse the policy.
“As a member of the LGBTQ community myself, I cannot overstate the material harm this proposed rule would do. Preventing qualified, capable, and loving parents from fostering or adopting children in need of a home based on the parents’ sexual orientation or gender identity is cruel and baseless,” wrote Davids, the first LGBTQ person to represent Kansas at the federal level.
“Please speak out for LGBTQ Kansans and the thousands of Kansas children in foster care who will be harmed by this rule,” Davids told her colleagues.
Davids and her Kansas delegation knows about this directly. The discriminatory policy in regards to state contracts came to Kansas in 2018
Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer today signed into law a bill allowing faith-based adoption and foster care agencies, even those with state contracts, to turn away prospective parents who pose a conflict with their religious beliefs, something that’s expected to mean discrimination against LGBT people and many others.
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Colyer, a Republican, signed the bill at Youth Horizons Kinloch Price Boys Ranch, a Christian nonprofit agency “that offers residential care for boys with severe individual and family challenges,” The Wichita Eagle reports. Both houses of the legislature approved the measure, Senate Bill 284, this month.
“What I want Kansans to know is this is about fairness and that we are protecting everyone,” Colyer said, according to the Eagle. “It’s not about discrimination, it’s about fairness. We’re looking after those kids that need a forever home.”
Faced with a federal government willing to hand out federal resources to organizations that discriminate, the question is: if you really want to do this, can’t you discriminate without taking the benefits of tax dollars, tax dollars that LGBTQ Americans help provide?