If House Appropriations Committee's amendment is approved, tax-funded religiously based adoption agencies and children-welfare groups would be able to deny services to LGBTQ families.

Last week, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee okayed an amendment that sparked anger in the LGBTQ community because, advocates said, it could block lesbian and gay couples from adopting.

As Heron Greenesmith reports at Rewire, however, the proposed legislation doesn’t ban adoptions by same-sex couples outright. In fact, it could be far worse than that.

The amendment is the work of Republican Rep. Robert Aderholt of Alabama. It passed on a party-line vote. It would allow faith-based, taxpayer-funded adoption and other child welfare agencies to refuse to work with LGBTQ children or families if this conflicts with “the provider’s sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions.” The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services would be allowed to withhold as much as 15 percent of a state’s federal child-care funding if officials there fail to accede to an organization’s religiously based discrimination in foster care or adoption services.

Yes. You read that correctly. A state that refuses to go along with an organization’s religiously based discrimination against LGBTQ families based would see its federal funding docked. The upsidedownism of our era is less and less surprising, and more and more infuriating.

Especially since the latest nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court apparently has issues with separation of church and state, there’s always the possibility that, if Aderholt’s amendment passes the full House and Senate and gets signed by the squatter in the White House, the highest court in the land will approve it.