Joni B. Hannigan/FILE PHOTO/Houston
A teen at Florida Baptist Children’s Homes in Jacksonville, Florida, where residents spend time fishing and horseback riding. The facility shelters many who appreciate the green environment where a great number of volunteers and churches throughout the state contribute resources and financial support. The facility is one of many Florida Baptist Children’s Homes supported by the Florida Baptist State Convention of nearly 3,000 churches and nearly one million Florida Southern Baptists.
Tens of thousands of children in Florida’s child welfare system could be in danger of losing their homes if faith-based foster-care and adoption providers in Florida are not granted “conscience protection” by the legislators meeting in Florida’s state capitol this month.
Meanwhile, with the clock winding down for children in Florida, politicians and activists focused on Indiana’s raging controversy over religious freedom, are using that situation to jab at conscience protections for those serving the state’s most vulnerable.
Private and faith-based foster-care and adoption agencies – those which by some estimates provide care for more than half the children in Florida’s foster care system – are facing mounting anti-Christian discrimination, according to Bill Bunkley, head of Florida’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
“The real fear here is that the number of children who are currently being taken care of by the faith-based community could find themselves without the homes they are living in if this anti-Christian discrimination were to prevail in our foster care adoption system,” Bunkley told Christian Examiner.
Bunkley testified April 2 in support of House Bill 7111, legislation designed to protect child placement agencies from being required to violate their “religious or moral convictions.”
Responding to a backlash of criticism labeling the care agencies as “anti-gay” and worse, Bunkley said to the contrary, “We have shown tolerance for what we may not think that is appropriate based on our world view, but now we see a rise of intolerance and anti-Christian discrimination.”
The bill (originally HHSC 15-03) was pushed through the House Health and Human Services Committee on its first reading March 19, and was debated and passed in the House Judiciary Committee April 2 on party lines after lengthy debate.
The debate focused on “discrimination” towards homosexuals – but is unfounded, Bunkley said. A “track record” shows Florida Baptist Children’s Home, for instance, assists those who are not eligible to adopt or shelter children in its care, Bunkley said, and those adults are routinely accommodated through state organizations which do not have the same “conscience” and convictional requirements.
Rep. Jason Brodeur, a Republican legislator who proposed the bill shortly after the House passed a bill which would remove the language from state law language banning same-sex couple from adopting – a practice that was ruled unconstitutional by an appeals court judge five years ago – has said the majority of 82 private adoption agencies allow placement with same-sex couples.
Catholic Charities of Boston and San Francisco, however, stopped providing adoption services in 2006 after those states enacted anti-discrimination laws that did not offer conscience protections.
The same could happen in Florida, Bunkley said, where the cost to children’s lives would be disastrous.
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SOURCE: The Christian Examiner – Joni B. Hannigan
