June 23, 2021

High Court Needs to Restore Rights for the Religious

There should be room for religious agencies to offer adoption services consistent with their creed and their centuries of service.

Americans need to live and let live. Let the LGBTQ activists practice their preferences, and let Christians live the Gospel.

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that a Catholic Social Services adoption agency in Philadelphia could continue to place children only with heterosexual couples, consistent with the Gospel’s definition of a family.

Though The New York Times depicted the ruling as a setback for gay rights and “evidence that religious groups almost always prevail in the current court,” it was far from either.

Unfortunately, the ruling settled nothing in the culture war between traditional religion and LGBTQ advocates.

Only a technicality managed to hold together the 9-0 majority. The ruling doesn’t guarantee that religious organizations such as Catholic Social Services will be able to practice their mission instead of being shut down. As Justice Samuel Alito wrote in protest, the ruling “might as well be written on the dissolving paper sold in magic shops.”

For over half a century, CSS placed children in foster and adoptive homes, according to its belief that “marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman.” No same-sex couple ever asked the agency for help, or CSS would have referred the couple to another agency.

In 2018, after a newspaper article quoted the Archdiocese of Philadelphia as saying that the agency did not serve same-sex couples, the city refused to renew its contract. Both the federal district court and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the agency’s claims that its constitutional right to practice its faith was infringed. But on a technicality, the Supreme Court reversed those lower court rulings.

The nine justices were able to agree on only one thing — that section 3.21 of the standard contract between Philadelphia and adoption agencies, a mere 56 words, meant that the city’s actions were not protected by a 1990 Supreme Court ruling in Employment Division v. Smith. All the city of Philadelphia has to do is remove that section and it will be free to bar Catholic Social Services from offering adoption services.

What Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch argued in concurring opinions is that it’s time for the Court to get to the heart of the matter. That 1990 precedent said that a law could impinge on a religion in practice as long as it didn’t expressly and intentionally target it. The 1990 ruling upheld the firing of a government employee for smoking peyote, even though the employee claimed peyote was part of his religious ritual.

Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch declared that the 1990 precedent “urgently calls out for review.” It “can’t be squared with … the Free Exercise Clause” of the First Amendment. The dangers posed by that precedent “are not hypothetical.” A liquor law could have the practical effect of banning the use of wine in sacraments. A prohibition on butchering live animals could have, in effect, a ban of kosher meat. Or to the point, banning discrimination based on sexual orientation can put religious adoption agencies out of business.

Is our society so divided that we can’t live and let live — respect the rights of people of all sexual orientations but still allow people of faith to practice their beliefs?

The Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in 2015, and court rulings across the nation since then have guaranteed gay couples the right to adopt. The data show 21% of same-sex couples raising children have adopted, about seven times the rate for traditional couples.

But religious adoption agencies are being taken prisoners in the culture wars. Bethany Christian Services, one of the largest adoption and foster care agencies in the nation, had been finding homes for children for 77 years and operates in 32 states. But On March 1, it concluded that it had to start placing children with LGBTQ couples, against its principles, in order to maintain its government contracts.

There should be room for religious agencies to offer adoption services consistent with their creed and their centuries of service. The high court’s 9-0 ruling offers them no protection.

As Alito concluded, “Those who count on this Court to stand up for the First Amendment have every right to be disappointed — as am I.”

COPYRIGHT 2021 CREATORS.COM

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.