By MIKE MANNO
The state of New York, while doubling down on abortion rights, is also trying to drive adoption agencies that adhere to traditional values from its boundaries.
Of course, the big headlines today are being made by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is demanding an expansion of abortion rights from his legislature before he will sign a budget bill, and is pledging to enshrine those rights into the state constitution.
But what is being overlooked in the governor’s headline-grabbing are the actions of his Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) to ensure that all state adoption agencies must provide for adoptions by unmarried and same-sex couples.
The actions by OCFS have triggered a federal lawsuit against it by a Christian family services agency, New Hope Family Services. The state is threatening to close New Hope over its “discriminatory and impermissible” policies that follow the agency’s faith-based beliefs of placing children for adoption only in homes with married couples where the adopted children will be provided with a married father and mother.
OCFS has told New Hope, a Christian nonprofit, that unless it abandons its faith-based policies, and provides adoption services to non-married or same-sex couples, it will be forced to shut the agency down, even though allowing New Hope to continue its mission will not interfere with other adoption providers who do place children in “non-traditional” homes.
New Hope has been providing pregnancy, parenting, adoption, and post-adoption services in the Syracuse area since 1965. It was founded as a Christian rescue mission in 1958 as Evangelical Family Services and later changed its name to New Hope when it expanded its mission to include adoption services. New Hope’s pregnancy resource center provides services to women regardless of marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or religious belief.
It, however, will not place a child with an unmarried or same-sex couple. Since 1965 it has placed over 1,000 children and averages about eight to ten adoptions per year, with an average of 14 to 20 perspective and qualified adoptive families on a waiting list. Most of its adoptions are open adoptions which allow birth parents and adoptive families to interact even after the adoption is finalized, although the birth parents may choose a closed adoption. Proposed adoptive parents who do not fit New Hope’s qualifications are referred to other agencies that do handle such placements.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which is representing New Hope, claims that the state law does not mandate that adoption agencies provide placement for same-sex and unmarried couples. ADF argues in its complaint that recent changes to the law only allow — but do not require — adoptions to those whom New Hope deems unqualified.
OCFS, the complaint alleges, has simply adopted rules that “materially changed the adoption regulations” contained in the law by declaring that adoption agencies shall “prohibit discrimination and harassment against applicants for adoption services on the basis of race, creed, color, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, religion, or disability. . . .” The rule was necessary, the OCFS stated, to “eliminate archaic regulatory language.”
OCFS’s rules apparently abrogate conflicting statutory and common law that allows birth parents to place stipulations on the adoptive parents as to religion, culture, and other reasonable considerations. New Hope points out that “state statutes and regulations allow adoption providers to consider protected characteristics when making placements consistent with the best interest of the child, and allows parents to consider such characteristics for any reason.”
Last October New Hope was told by OCFS that its “policy not to place children with those who are living together without the benefit of marriage or with same-sex couples” violated that law and that New Hope would have to comply “by placing children with unmarried couples and same-sex couples.” And “if New Hope did not comply, New Hope would be ‘choosing to close’.”
The federal lawsuit followed in December. New Hope, in its written pleading, told the court that OCFS’s threat “is not only entirely unjustified, it is lawless…[the law] permits OCFS to issue an order barring an authorized agency from providing adoption services only in enumerated circumstances. . . . OCFS has made no finding — and could not make a finding — that New Hope has engaged in any one of these prohibited practices.”
The lawsuit accuses OCFS of violation of New Hope’s free exercise of religion and religious hostility.
“Forcing New Hope to revise its policies and place children with unmarried couples and/or same-sex couples substantially burdens New Hope’s exercise of its religious beliefs as it is forced to choose between violating its beliefs and losing its perpetual authorization to perform adoption services.”
It continues: The law “is not neutral or generally applicable as applied because it targets New Hope’s disfavored religious beliefs for punishment, it imposes disabilities on the basis of stating or exercising disfavored religious views, and the statutory and regulatory scheme provides exemptions for secular, nonreligious purposes.”
It also claims OCFS is violating its free speech and association rights, and its Fourteenth Amendment rights of equal protection of the law.
“The First Amendment prohibits the government from punishing the profession of a religious belief or imposing special disabilities on the basis of stating disfavored religious views….Defendant’s ultimatum was targeted to exclude New Hope from participating as an adoption provider in the State of New York so long as New Hope maintained its disfavored religious views and expression.”
The suit asks for a preliminary and permanent injunction against OCFS from enforcing its mandate, a declaration of the unconstitutionality of the rules, and for cost and expenses of the suit.
Of course, we’ve seen similar cases, some in which Christian adoption agencies have been forced to leave the jurisdiction rather than to comply with a law that goes against the organization’s core moral beliefs, so this is not a case where you can automatically assume that the court will do the right thing.
But this, like so many other cases, makes you wonder why Christian values cannot be upheld in the public square, and are deemed less important than LGBT rights — even when, as here, the LBGT rights are not diminished since other agencies may freely serve them.
As ADF Legal Counsel Jeana Hallock said:
“For over 50 years, New Hope has served New York by offering a comprehensive, ‘arm-around-the-shoulder’ ministry and walking with adoptive couples and birth parents to place children with adoptive families. Protecting these nonprofits does nothing to interfere with other adoption providers who hold different convictions.”
Well said. Too bad the state isn’t listening.
You can contact Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com.
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