Mississippi on my Mind

Friends, we recently celebrated the end of state-wide bans on same-sex couples adopting children. Mississippi's ban was overturned, in a victory that will help many children find forever homes.

Those who are not as cynical as I rejoiced.

I hoped for the best. But I knew that the pipeline contained a lot of setbacks, given that there has been an agenda, ever since the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality, to restrict rights to gay couples as much as possible.

Less than a week after the end of state-wide adoption bans, Mississippi passed one of the most devastatingly homophobic, discriminatory, bigoted, harmful bills into law that the United States has ever seen. It allows medical providers to refuse certain services to LGBT members of the community. It allows state officials to refuse to license marriages, even when it is their job to do so (see my article from when Kim Davis made this a thing). It intensifies housing discrimination.

And it likely means that adoption agencies will discriminate against LGBT applicants, meaning that the state will return to a de facto same sex adoption ban, given this language in the version signed by the governor:

The state government shall not take any discriminatory action against a religious organization that advertises, provides or facilitates adoption or foster care, wholly or partially on the basis that such organization has provided or declined to provide any adoption or foster care service, or related service, based upon or in a manner consistent with a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction described in Section 2 of this act.

I can't speak for the LGBT community in Mississippi, so I don't know how they feel about being refused service at restaurants or florists.

Here is what I can tell you.

Children with special needs are overwhelmingly stuck in the foster care system and group homes in the United States. When they are adopted, they are much more likely to find a forever home with a same-sex couple. So are children above the age of six. So are ethnic and racial minority children. Straight couples generally* do not prefer to adopt children from these backgrounds. Preventing gay couples from adopting hurts those couples - but it hurts these vulnerable children waiting for families more.

Rebecca and I are not interested in visiting a place where we could be refused service at a lunch counter, or where the legislature and governor are more interested in protecting discrimination than finding homes for their children.

In fact, yesterday, Rebecca vowed never to set foot in Mississippi, even en route to someplace else. I wish I could say that Michigan is substantially better, but my home state seems to be in a race to the bottom right now.

*Yes, I know people who are anomalies here, and I'm sure you do too. Of course, one possible solution would be for all straight people to adopt special needs children so that there are none left for the gay couples to need to adopt. This isn't happening and is unlikely to start, though I would be thrilled to see many of my straight couple friends consider adopting out of the foster care system.