With a signature from Tennessee’s Governor Bill Lee, private foster care or adoption agencies cannot be penalized for refusing to work with same-sex couples if it violates their “religious or moral convictions.”

It’s a fancy way of saying Christian discrimination is perfectly fine in Tennessee even when it comes at the expense of kids’ lives. Because nothing says “pro-life” like forcing children to stay longer in foster care because you won’t allow them to go home with a loving gay couple.

Critics of the legislation included the Tennessee chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which labeled the bill discriminatory against LGBT individuals. “Families who want to foster or adopt should be judged by their ability to provide loving and stable homes, not because they tick all the boxes of a taxpayer-funded agency’s religious or moral conviction checklist,” stated ACLU of Tennessee Executive Director Hedy Weinberg last year. “Turning away good families because they don’t satisfy one agency’s religious preferences would deny thousands of children in Tennessee’s foster care system access to the families they desperately need.”

Not to give bigots any more ideas, but why stop there? Why not have prospective families fill out forms declaring whether they’ve had premarital sex? Why not ask them how many partners they’ve had? Or what church they attend? Why not have them rank the Commandments? If the Christians who run these agencies think a loving gay couple ought to be off limits, it’s fair to wonder where the line is drawn.

It’s bad enough these Christians hate gay people to the point they won’t even consider them as foster parents; they now have the help of state officials to make sure they can get away with their bigotry.

It’s a common criticism of the “pro-life” position that they always want to ban abortions while never doing enough to promote adoption. This story shows that even when they promote adoption, it comes with all kinds of strings attached. They never do everything in their power to make sure kids have a family that wants them.

(Screenshot via YouTube)

