A recently introduced federal bill would make it legal for foster care agencies across the country to discriminate against LGBTQ people by both refusing to place children with same-sex couples and refusing to help queer youth find placements.

Discrimination against same-sex couples in foster care and adoptions has been a long-standing battle, with the religious right insisting that being in a loving home with two parents who happen to be the same gender will irreparably damage a child’s psyche, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. In general, this country has been moving toward more equality for LGBTQ people, from marriage equality to several state-level victories on the adoption front.

“This is a backlash to the ongoing progress toward LGBTQ civil rights,” Currey Cook, project director for out-of-home youth care for LGBTQ civil rights organization Lambda Legal, told Glamour, referring to the proposed legislation. “It’s exactly the last thing we need to be doing right now.”

The Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act of 2017 (which was introduced this spring but is still waiting to be voted on in the Ways and Means Committee) would not only discriminate against same-sex couples who want to foster or adopt children but also deny placement to LGBTQ youth, who happen to make up a disproportionate amount of the entire foster care population. A recent report from Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ civil rights organization, estimates that nearly a quarter of the kids in foster care are LGBTQ. Many of them end up there after being disowned by their families because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. They’ve already been turned away and betrayed by their own families, and now legislators want the state to do the same to them again.

“I think this bill is incredibly damaging to LGBTQ young people and families as they interact with our nation’s child welfare systems and has a real potential to cause psychological harm and place kids at risk of harm in general,” Cook said. “It’s completely contrary to existing federal law and all child welfare standards and just good public policy.”

Cook pointed out that the argument in favor of this bill, that kids who are turned away from faith-based agencies could just go to different agencies, is deeply flawed. Doing so, Cook said, would often mean being placed miles away from home, being completely uprooted, changing schools, and not being able to visit with their parents—one of the main indicators of whether these kids will ever return home.

This would have obvious negative implications for kids in the foster system who are already out, and it would create a “chilling effect” for those still figuring out how they identify, making them less likely to come out in the first place—which we already know is extremely dangerous for young people.

The bill's sponsors, Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Representative Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, argue that requiring agencies who are contracted with the state to coordinate foster care to provide services to LGBTQ youth is infringing on the religious rights of those organizations—and that in doing so, requiring equal treatment would preclude religious organizations from contributing to the foster care system.

"There is no good reason why any of these care providers should be disqualified from working with their government to serve America's families simply because of their deeply-rooted religious beliefs," Senator Kelly wrote in a press release about the bill.

Cook doesn’t buy this argument. “A lot of those faith-based providers are actually really affirming to LGBTQ people,” he said. “Claiming that faith-based providers are being pushed out is just false.”

If an agency is truly unable or unwilling to uphold the civil rights of every person in their care, including LGBTQ youth, Cook says, they don’t have to take the government contracts that require them to do so.

“You don’t have a right to be a contract agency providing foster care services,” he said. “That’s not an entitlement.”