Those dystopias imagined by Plato or Huxley wherein the beliefs of children were assigned and dictated at birth were never realized. But a similarly tyrannical proposal, having flown through the House of Delegates, will come up for a vote today in the Virginia Senate. Justified with the noble lie of adding a "conscience clause" to adoption law, House Bill 189 would endorse a state-sponsored sorting hat which would determine to what houses adopted children could belong.
The adoption of children in Virginia is often carried out through private agencies which serve as midwives between biological and new or foster parents. Given that Virginia has the second-lowest rate of public agency adoptions in the nation, these private agencies are very important players in the adoption market. These agencies are also state-funded.
The added "conscience clause" would ensure "[t]o the extent allowed by federal law" the state cannot deny licenses or funding to, nor claim damages against private agencies which refuse to place children with individuals who violate a particular agency's "religious or moral convictions or policies."
It is thought this new law will primarily affect same-sex couples. Since it is hard to determine the "religious or moral" beliefs people actually hold - either because of deception or a lack of self-reflection - what adoption agencies can more readily determine in a house visit would be a potentially adoptive couple's sexual preferences.
Moreover, the "Every Child Deserves a Family Act" was moved to a U.S. Congressional committee last November. It aims to withhold federal funding from these self-same discriminatory agencies, and so would undermine the objective of HB 189. Hence, if HB 189 passes then the funding of private adoption agencies in Virginia may become subject to another debate on federalism. So more politics, still leaving out the parents, and children.
Some have called the "conscience clause" discriminatory. But adoption agencies are already discriminatory in the ordinary, implicit sense of having to select good parents from among potentials. HB 189 simply compounds this by making it legal for "religious or moral" beliefs to be factored into the decision about who is allowed to adopt a child.
Agencies should be allowed to discriminate, so long as it is not state-funded - or at least this was the intended distinction sought by Democratic amendments which failed yesterday in the Virginia Senate. The cry against state-funded discrimination has its theoretical basis in an appeal to the First Amendment. The practical grievance is that decisions about who is qualified to adopt would be bumped not merely to the discretion of each adoption agency, but to the state. Certain agencies will plainly not hand control of children over to certain homes. Knowing this, politicians will devise new ways to plainly not hand control of children over to certain adoption agencies, potentially redistricting the boundaries of each agency in an actual gerrymandering of children.
Both of these grievances are pragmatic and secondary to the main complaint. Agencies will continue to tacitly discriminate, regardless of approval or funding. Just as a family can hide from an adoption agency what principles it will use to raise a family, so too could an agency keep undisclosed its moral principles of parental selection from whatever political body would provide them money.
Parental views are an important element in a child's upbringing, but they are nowhere near the closest of those considerations most salient in assessing what will make a family bond. That lawmakers place so much emphasis on the political positions held by adoptive families is only a reflection of their thin conceptions of family life as demanded by the campaign trail. And, as a citizenry, we should adopt only those lawmakers who do not displace hospitality with politics at the center of family, or just ordinary, life.
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