On March 10th, South Dakota enacted one of the first anti-LGBT laws of 2017. On a closer look it appears the law may be more anti-child and anti-adoption than anything else.
The law is set up to protect private adoption agencies from being sued for discrimination for not allowing children to be placed with gay couples based on sincerely held religious belief.
According to the Associated Press, Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard said he feared “private child-placement agencies acting in the best interest of a child could be subject to a lawsuit when denying placement to someone in a ‘protected class,’ such as members of the LGBT community.”
So here is my first problem with this new law: We have the governor, admitting that the LGBT community is a protected class, which means that this group is legally protected from certain types of discrimination based on their LGBT status.
We then have the same man saying that they do not want this protected class to have these protections when it comes to adoptions. This is an example of cognitive dissonance at its finest.
It would be so much easier if these politicians would just come out and say that they hate gay people. That would be easier to combat. But instead they hide themselves behind the wall of “religious freedom” and belief. Which is funny, because these are the same people who say sharia law, or the religious law of the Muslims, has no place in this country. And yet, it is apparently okay to discriminate and pass laws based on their faith.
My second problem with the law: what about the children who are affected by this?
Hate is not innate. It is learned. The children in the care of these placement agencies need good loving homes which people of all sexual orientations can provide.
Columbia University performed a literature review concerning outcomes of children raised in LGBT households. Of the 79 articles they found, 75 said that children raised in LGBT households did not experience any significant differences from children raised in heterosexual households.
For me, it a simple problem with a simple solution. There are children needing loving homes. There are loving homes that want children. Why let discrimination get in the way?
