Godless Wednesday: IL Catholic Orgs End Lawsuit On Foster Care

Ha, ha! Over the summer MadProfessah.com and other LGBT blogs reported about the obnoxious lawsuit by a number of Catholic dioceses in Illinois who were suing the state for the right to obtain payment from the government to offer foster and adoption services which would illegally discriminate against same-sex couples in civil unions.

The lawsuit was laughable on its face and last week even the religious extremists and heterosexual supremacists at the Catholic Dioceses of Joliet, Springfield and Belleville recognized that fact and dropped their lawsuit and ended their foster care services in the state.

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Since March, state officials have been investigating whether religious agencies that receive public funds to license foster care parents are breaking anti-discrimination laws if they turn away openly gay parents.  

After the civil union bill went into effect in June, Catholic Charities told the state that accommodating prospective foster parents in civil unions would violate Catholic Church teaching that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.  

Catholic Charities said it would instead refer gay couples elsewhere and only license married couples and single parents living alone.  

The agency has pointed to a clause in the Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Act that they believe protects religious institutions that don't recognize civil unions. 

But lawyers for the Illinois attorney general said that exemption only shields religious clergy who don't want to officiate at civil unions. The policy of Catholic Charities violates state anti-discrimination laws that demand couples in civil unions be treated the same as married couples, they said.

Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. Thankfully, there are plenty of secular foster care agencies who care more about helping children then promoting religious-based homophobic ideology.