It's not like Michigan has no problems, after all. In Detroit, people are still having their water shut off for being poor, but the legislature has no time for that issue, because they're too busy making sure gay people can't adopt children.
Not only was the legislature hell-bent on solving a problem that didn't exist, they brought the bill forward with no notice -- a dead-of-night kind of lawmaking procedure.
Gov. Rick Snyder signed a controversial package of bills Thursday allowing faith-based agencies to turn away gay and lesbian couples seeking state-supported adoptions.
Snyder signed the bills without ceremony, just one day after the Legislature sent him the legislation. The law goes into effect immediately. The ACLU of Michigan vows to challenge it.
The new law allows faith-based adoption agencies to invoke their sincerely held religious beliefs in denying adoption placement services to gay and lesbian couples who want to be parents. The agencies would be required to refer gay and lesbian couples to another adoption agency.
In a statement, the Republican governor emphasized the bills puts adoption practices, already in use, into law.
Snyder’s quick signature of the bills came after Senate Republicans held an unexpected vote on the legislation Wednesday that was not on the chamber’s published agenda. The bills cleared a Senate committee in late April.
The swift passage and gubernatorial signature took opponents by surprise and left little time for members of the business-dominated Michigan Competitive Workplace Coalition to get direction from corporate leadership on whether they could oppose the bills, said Shelli Weisberg, legislative director for the ACLU of Michigan, a member of the coalition.
“By the time they all tried to get it through the hierarchy of where they would be on these bills, they were being signed by the governor this morning,” Weisberg said Thursday. “They moved so fast. I had no inkling they were moving until Wednesday morning.”
If they're going to discriminate, they should have ZERO state funding, and I do mean ZERO. If they get one penny of taxpayer funds, they should have to conduct adoption proceedings fairly and on a nondiscriminatory basis. Can we please get a lawyer to step up and challenge this?
