Reframing discrimination with the Family Research Council

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08/05/2014

by Jeremy Hooper

The so-called Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act is that disgusting new bill that seeks a special exception for faith-based adoption providers allowing them to both retain all of the tax-supported perks and benefits that come with such a setup while also flouting nondiscrimination laws that protect LGBT people. It is just another version of the license-to-discriminate bills that have popped up across the country.

But check out how the Family Research Council's Leanna Baumer frames the issue:

"And so it tells states that if you want to continue receiving federal funding, they need to not discriminate," Baumer says of the Senate bill.

"If they ignore that prohibition," she says, "they'll risk losing a percentage of their federal funding, and faith-based providers who are aggrieved will be able to sue that state in federal court."
FULL: FRC backs bill to protect faith-based adoption agencies [ONN]

"They need to not discriminate." Keep in mind that the sole impetus for this federal proposal is the fact that a few adoption providers in a few states have been told that if they want to keep enjoying state contracts then they are going to have to follow state nondiscrimination laws that apply to LGBT people. But that undeniable fact doesn't matter to Ms. Baumer or her reliably false-witness-bearing employer. In the continued quest to convince America that they, the discriminators, are actually the "victims" of this whole "culture war," FRC is skipping the step where they and their allies force exclusion upon the public and instead pretending they are the ones being excluded.

We are dealing with a movement that now insists, loudly and strategically, that it's worse to be called out for being discriminatory than it is to actually be discriminatory. Because apparently a decades-long bout of aggression against our civil rights and decent treatment wasn't enough for them to solidify a regressive legacy. They apparently think an extra layer of deceit is needed in order to really seal the deal.

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