Fresh off their vote to approve a "papers please" racial profiling law, the Texas state legislature is advancing a bill that legalizes discrimination.
The Texas House has approved a bill that will allow Christian adoption agencies to discriminate against all non-Christian applicants, meaning virtually everyone from Jews and Muslims to LGBT individuals could be turned away.
The private organizations, which are paid by the state to place foster children with adoptive families, want to continue the practice and are seeking legal protections through Texas’ “Freedom to Serve Children Act,” which the GOP-controlled chamber approved 94-51 late Tuesday night.
A final vote will be needed Wednesday to send the measure to the state Senate, which is even more conservative.
Legislators in South Dakota passed a similar measure, but everything is bigger in Texas so their bill is more extreme.
Proponents of the measure say it's designed to shield Christian agencies from lawsuits, but that's a misnomer because it won't stop anyone from challenging the law itself if it's signed by Governor Abbott.
If you take their intentions at face value, you could say this is a bill designed to force state taxpayers to pay for the legal defense of Christian fundies. The state will cover the cost of defending the law in court when it's inevitably challenged.
If the law is passed and survives a legal challenge, and even before it's challenged in court, I'd like to see exclusively Muslim, Jewish, and gay adoption agencies apply for state funding and see what happens. Let's see how far "freedom" really extends.