Texas HB 3859 could be voted on today, Mamas, so call your state representative early this morning!
This devasting bill would, in the name of so-called religious freedom, allow adoption and foster agencies receiving state funding to discriminate against LBGTQ parents and parents who do not meet their religious profile.
This means that not only would these agencies be free to refuse to allow LBGTQ people and people who are not the-agency's-kind-of-Christian as foster and adoptive parents (which is bad enough when we are a state in crisis with children sleeping on camp cots in CPS offices every night because there are not enough foster parents out there), but also that the children in the care of these agencies could be forced to participate in the "religion" sanctioned by the agency - so Muslim and Jewish children forced to eat pork and attend so-called Christian church services that revile them, sexually active teens being denied access to birth control, LBGTQ youth being sent to suicide-inducing conversion"therapy"....the list of horrors the bill would allow is pretty extensive.
Why is the agency's religious liberty important but not the child's? Why should our tax dollars be used to support the child abuse that conversion "therapy" is said to be by every legitimate mental health association in America?
More and more of Texas' foster care and adoption system is being forced to contract with these private and often discriminatory agencies daily so this affects much more of the system than the bill's author would have us believe, plus it even allows provisions for child welfare workers themselves to discriminate (though the public child welfare workers have seen too much to do anything like that).
Call your state representative today and stop this bill! Tell them to vote NO on HB 3859!!!!
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