Anti-Gay Adoption Bill Struck Down In Illinois Senate

By Yasmin Nair, courtesy of the Windy City Times

SB 1993 was recently struck down in the Illinois Senate Human Services Committee. The bill would have allowed religious organizations to deny a child's adoption or foster care with a prospective parent if the adult practiced a different faith or are atheists or agnostics.

Civil- and LGBT-rights activists were concerned that this would also allow the organizations to deny adoptions to gays and lesbians if a particular religion deemed that their relationships went against the faith.

In Chicago, Ed Yohnka, director of communications and public policy for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois said, "It's good news for foster care in Illinois, it's good news for children who need a loving home that these private agencies that are conducting a state function can't discriminate against them in finding a loving home and that the primary interest that those agencies will take into consideration when deciding where to place these children will be: will they be safe and will they be happy -- not the sexual orientation or the religious background of the [ possible ] parent. That's really a victory for kids. We've got too many kids who've already need good homes, we don't need to start carving up the pool of potential foster parents or parents on the basic of ideology or bias."

Read the whole story here.