The Tennessee Legislature is considering a bill that would allow taxpayer-funded child-placing agencies to discriminate based on religion — and we need your help to stop it.

TN SB 848, currently in front of the Tennessee Senate Judiciary Committee, would prohibit the state from taking any action against a child-placing agency that declines to facilitate adoptions conflicting with the agency’s “sincerely held religious beliefs.” If passed, the law would allow these agencies to refuse services to, among many other groups, LGBTQ families and children.

This bill is part of Project Blitz, the organized Christian nationalist campaign to inject state legislatures nationwide with a whole host of religious bills. It is an unvarnished attack on American secularism and civil liberties — the things we cherish most about our democracy and now must tirelessly defend.

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, there were more than 440,000 children in foster care in the United States in 2017. Some 50,000 of these children will be adopted every year through the child welfare system, while another 20,000 will “age out” of the system before being adopted. Allowing agencies to turn away parents looking to adopt on the basis of their religion is both morally reprehensible and puts further financial burden on an already strained child-welfare system.

The health and well-being of a child should be the only factor that an agency and its employees consider when looking to place a child in a foster care or adoptive family — not advancing the bigoted agendas of those promoting discrimination at the expense of children in need.

Please use our automated system to ask members of the Tennessee Senate Judiciary Committee to reject this harmful bill for good. Click the “Take Action!” link below, follow the prompt provided, and feel free to use or adapt the talking points provided.

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