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Pence Brags About Trump Allowing Adoption Agencies ‘Right’ to Ban LGBTQ Parents

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“We will stand for the freedom of religion,” Vice President Mike Pence said, defending the Trump administration move to allow adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples.

Vice President Mike Pence this week attended a federal government event during which he bragged about the Trump administration’s latest attack on LGBTQ people. The vice president (video below) heralded a fast-tracked proposed policy from the Dept. of Health and Human Services that would reverse an Obama-era rule barring discrimination by adoption and foster care agencies against LGBTQ people and same-sex couples.

The proposed rollback of that rule is expected to go into effect in just a few weeks, granting government protection to religious, faith-based, or any other adoption organization that wishes to claim a moral opposition to LGBTQ people from facing a loss of federal funding.

“We will stand for the freedom of religion and we will stand with faith-based organizations to support adoption,” Vice President Pence told supporters at an HHS event Tuesday, as he pounded his fists on the podium, to cheers.

“I couldn’t be more proud that at President Trump’s direction and with the strong support of leaders across foster care, adoption, and our faith communities, we’ve taken decisive action,” Pence bragged.

That “decisive action” literally reduces the pool of prospective parents for large numbers of children who don’t have parents or homes.

“More than 100,000 foster children are awaiting adoption, according to government data, but a constellation of religious agencies refuse to consider same-sex parents when placing these children,” NBC News reports. “Shortly before the end of his second term, President Barack Obama changed nondiscrimination rules governing adoption agencies to expand the definition of groups protected against discrimination to include LGBTQ people. Trump’s proposed rule change will undo that.”

In fact, same-sex couples have far higher rates of adopting and fostering children than their different-sex couple peers.

“A 2018 report from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that 1 in 5 of the estimated 114,000 same-sex couples raising children in the United States are raising adopted or foster children — significantly higher than the 3 percent of heterosexual couples doing so,” reported NBC News.

The latest discriminatory HHS rule Vice President Pence bragged about comes from Roger Severino, HHS’s Director of the Office of Civil Rights. Severino is known as a “radical” anti-LGBTQ religious right activist who previously served as CEO and counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a religious right non-profit that opposes separation of church and state. He also once served as the Director of the DeVos family’s Center for Religion and Civil Society in the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Photo via NCRM. Video via Washington Blade/Facebook. Hat tip: Towleroad

New Regulation Would Strip Federal Protections for LGBTQ People from All HHS Programs in Favor of ‘Religious Freedom’

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The rule is specifically designed to focus on adoption and foster care, but will affect all federally-funded programs under Department of Health and Human Services control, including those dealing with HIV prevention and youth homelessness.

A proposed new regulation would strip all protections for LGBTQ people from all programs administered by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, and give special rights to entities or programs that are religious or “faith-based.” HHS, under the direction of Secretary Alex Azar, has a budget of $1.2 trillion affecting the health and well-being, directly or indirectly, of nearly every person in the country.

Lambda Legal says the proposed rule “would invite HHS grantees receiving taxpayer funds to discriminate based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or religion.”

While reportedly drafted to focus on adoption and foster care organizations, the Human Rights Campaign also says the proposed rule would extend far beyond those entities to all programs that receive funding from HHS.

“The Trump-Pence White House has proposed a horrific federal regulation that would permit discrimination across the entire spectrum of HHS programs receiving federal funding,” said HRC President Alphonso David. “This would permit discrimination against LGBTQ people, religious minorities, and women in programs related to foster care, adoption, HIV and STI prevention, youth homelessness, refugee resettlement, elder care programs and more. It is unconscionable that the Trump-Pence administration would prioritize advancing discrimination over the wellbeing of vulnerable people and expect taxpayers to foot the bill for their discriminatory policies. The Trump-Pence White House is relying on the same flawed legal reasoning they’ve used in the past to justify discrimination against LGBTQ people and other communities.”

The Washington Blade, noting the  proposed regulation “will have far-reaching implications,” reports the proposal would “undo an Obama-era policy prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation among federal grantees.”

According to  the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) the Blade says “the rule will allow anti-trans discrimination in HIV and STI prevention programs, opioid programs, youth homelessness services, health professional training, substance-use recovery programs and other life-saving services.”

“The proposal seeks to gut an Obama-era rule that barred entities receiving money under federal contracts, including adoption agencies, from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation.”

HHS is reportedly granting only 30 days for public comment and review.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM

New Trump Rule Would Allow Transgender People To Be Denied Health Care

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The attacks from this administration just do not stop.

On Friday, Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed a rule that seems calculated to have devastating effects on LGBTQ health care in the United States.

Roger Severino, who is the director of HHS’s Office of Civil Rights — and, probably not coincidentally, a known LGBTQ-rights opponent who has been called a “radical anti-LGBTQ activist” by the Human Rights Campaign — announced that under HHS’s proposed rule, the government would rescind Obama-era guidelines calling for Civil Rights Act protections “on the basis of sex” to be interpreted as applying to gender identity.

“When Congress prohibited sex discrimination, it did so according to the plain meaning of the term, and we are making our regulations conform,” Severino said, according to the Washington Post.

This change mirrors several other changes made by Trump’s cabinet since the 45th President took office, including in the Departments of Education and Justice. It comes only days after a proposed rule by the Department of Housing And Urban Development that would allow homeless shelters to refuse access to transgender people.

US Senator Patty Murray, the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Health, Labor, and Pensions Committee called this decision “blatantly harmful, discriminatory and wrong” in a statement.

“Patients don’t need the ideological judgment of President Trump, Vice President Pence, or anyone else for that matter—they need to know that when they seek the health care they need, they won’t be turned away because of who they are,” Murray stated.

Emilie Kao, director of the DeVos Center For Religion and Civil Society for right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation, claimed in a statement that this ruling was necessary in order to protect the rights of doctors whose religious beliefs prohibited them from performing gender-reassignment surgeries or abortions.

“The Trump administration is right to revise Obamacare’s unlawful regulation that was blocked from taking effect by a federal court,” Kao stated. “It would have forced physicians to offer sex-reassignment procedures and abortions despite strong ethical and medical concerns.”

However, neither Kao nor the Trump administration has addressed the fact that this change could open the door for doctors to refuse even life-saving health care to a transgender person with critical injuries — as happened in 1995 to Tyra Hunter, a trans woman who’d been injured in a car accident. After discovering Hunter’s transgender status, EMTs and ER staff refused or gave inadequate health care, and Hunter died of her injuries as a result.

“Predicated on little more than prejudice, this proposal will abandon 2 million Americans who already face significant barriers to accessing adequate and life-saving health care,” said Mara Keisling, Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, in a statement.

“This is not about free health care or special treatment. It’s about the right of every American to be treated with dignity when they walk into an emergency room, meet a new doctor, or find the right insurance plan,” Keisling continued. “If permitted, this rule will promote ignorance and hate that no American should have to face while seeking care, and we are ready to fight it with everything we’ve got.”

Trump Plan Grants Doctors Special Religious Rights to Deny Care to Transgender Patients, Women Seeking Abortions

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As if doctor visits didn’t give us enough reason to worry as it is.

The Trump administration is finalizing details on its plan to grant special religious “rights” to medical professionals who claim a moral objection to providing care to transgender patients, or women seeking an abortion, among others.

The new rules would roll back Obama-era protections, according to a report by Politico.

The Trump administration’s so-called “conscience regulations” would extend far beyond those two scenarios.

The proposal, which would directly impact the Dept. of Health and Human Services, “would give HHS ‘a lot more authority and power’ to effectively remake and enforce existing conscience protections, said Katie Keith, a Georgetown University law professor who’s studied the regulations,” Politico notes.

For instance, a medical school receiving federal funds could not deny admission to applicants who refuse to perform abortions; providers could not require staff to inform patients about services like sterilization procedures or advance directives rejecting end-of-life care; and doctors and nurses would gain further protections to refuse providing services like vaccinations.

The forthcoming HHS nondiscrimination rules are the latest example of President Donald Trump violating a campaign pledge to protect the LGBTQ community, advocates for transgender people say. The administration’s ban on transgender troops took effect just weeks ago, and the health department reportedly tried to effectively eliminate the federal definition of “transgender.”

It’s possible the “conscience regulations” might extend to those who practice harmful “reparative” or “conversion” therapy, a pseudoscientific practice falsely purports to turn LGBTQ straight.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image by torbakhopper via Flickr and a CC license