It may appear strange that an Orthodox Jewish rabbi would side with a Christian adoption agency that refused to accommodate a Jewish couple. But I do.
Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram, of Knox County, Tennessee, desired to adopt a toddler. In order to proceed, they’d to finish a foster-parent training program and receive a home-study certification.
In 2021, the Rutan-Rams turned to Holston United Methodist Home for Children to acquire those resources. But they were told that the agency, as a faith-based entity, serves only Christian applicants.
A 2020 Tennessee law authorizes child-placing agencies to disclaim services based on the agencies’ religious policies, even when the services are funded by the state, as Holston United Methodist Home is.
The Rutan-Rams sued the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services in early 2022, arguing that the law protecting the adoption agency violated the religious freedom and equal protection guarantees of the Tennessee Constitution. After a flurry of dismissals and appeals, in May, the Tennessee Supreme Court favoured the parents, allowing the lawsuit to proceed to trial.
The Rutan-Rams have develop into the face of a campaign led by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which is representing the couple of their case. The secularist group sees the Tennessee law and others prefer it as attempts to foster the goals of Christian nationalism. But really, these laws are an try and preserve religious freedom.
There has all the time been an inherent tension between the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment’s establishment clause and its free exercise clause — the previous forbidding government from endorsing any religion, and the latter ensuring residents’ right to practice their religions. (Tennessee’s Constitution reflects those self same elements.)
Fine-tuning the balancing of those two ideals with regard to things just like the operations of spiritual organizations, charities and schools, in addition to regarding employers’ and staff’ rights, has occupied the nation’s courts, including its highest one, for many years.
I’m not a constitutional scholar; I do not even play one on a podcast. I’m an observant Jew who cherishes the protections our nation’s fundamental legal document provides its religious residents.
I need religious adoption agencies to have the ability to decide on to limit their services to those whose lives are in consonance with the agencies’ missions. There are already established religious “ministerial” and “conscience” exceptions to many anti-discrimination statutes. It seems reasonable to me that religious adoption agencies, too, should have the ability to keep up their religious values.
I feel that about any such agency, whether or not it’s Catholic, Protestant, Muslim or Hindu. It’s an easy matter of spiritual rights.
This freedom is particularly compelling for Jewish adoption agencies, because, while Judaism could also be a faith, being a Jew is an identity.
In Jewish religious law, in terms of being a part of what we consider the Jewish family, what one believes is secondary to the circumstance of 1’s birth. If your mother is Jewish, so are you, mechanically. And if she will not be (and you have not undergone the demanding ritual of conversion, the one other way of becoming a Jew), then you definitely will not be.
People often ask if being Jewish is a non secular or genealogical identity. It is each. Judaism is a system of belief and law, but belonging to the Jewish family is something else.
And so, believing Jews consider it incumbent upon them to do all they will to be certain that all of their relatives, irrespective of how distant, are aware of their identity as a part of the Jewish people. And thus, for us, it’s vitally vital for a non secular Jewish adoption agency to have the ability to position Jewish children with Jewish families, who will provide an environment conducive to the adoptees’ understanding of their identity.
That government funds assist religious adoption agencies presents no legal problem, for the reason that service being offered will not be, to make use of the Supreme Court’s phrase, “inherently religious”; it’s adoption, plain and straightforward. Religious social service organizations, furthermore, undertake their work with special passion, and spiritual Americans usually tend to feel comfortable coping with faith-informed agencies.
The Rutan-Rams’ case was unusual because they’d identified a selected child in Florida whom they desired to adopt, but that state required them to first receive certification of their home state. According to the news release announcing their lawsuit, the one agency offering to offer those services for out-of-state placements was Holston United Methodist.
In the tip, the Rutan-Rams became foster parents to a teenage girl and plan to foster and adopt no less than another child. I wish them only well; they’re admirable people.
For most cases, there are a lot of nonsectarian adoption agencies available in every state.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, nevertheless, is using the couple’s experience to tip the fragile church-state balance in a single direction. Doing so would accomplish little if anything positive, and on the expense of undermining the religious freedom guaranteed to all Americans.
© Religion News Service
