Editorial: The best for the child in Oregon adoption

Published 5:00 am Tuesday, August 22, 2023

Whose rights matter more?

When a web designer doesn’t want to design a website for a same-sex wedding.

When a city doesn’t want to work with a Catholic agency because it won’t approve same-sex couples for adoption.

Those cases were decided in favor of the web designer and the Catholic agency by the U.S. Supreme Court.

And now in Oregon a woman from Malheur County has asked — based on religious freedom — for a federal judge to block the state from enforcing an adoption regulation. The regulation requires an adopter to agree to “respect, accept and support” whatever gender identity, gender expression or sexual orientation the child may have. Attorneys for Jessica Bates say it clashes with her Christian beliefs, as The Oregonian reported.

On one level it’s religious freedom versus a state policy that aims to block discrimination.

U.S. District Judge Adrienne Nelson asked in court: “Whose rights take priority?”

Is it the rights of the child?

The freedom of the foster parent?

The power of the state?

We would argue the rule doesn’t require Bates to change her religious views. It challenges them. Bates felt differently. She wrote in an email to a coordinator on family training: “I have no problem loving them and accepting them as they are, but I would not encourage them in this behavior.’’

She was later told she could not adopt.

Attorneys for Bates have asked the state for a preliminary injunction and allow her application to move forward as her lawsuit moves forward.

There may be clues in what will happen in those two recent U.S. Supreme Court cases we mentioned. The court ruled in favor of people arguing for religious freedom when the city of Philadelphia refused to work with Catholic Social Services in adoption. It ruled in favor of a web designer to refuse to design a website for a wedding for a same-sex couple.

We wonder if the best question to ask in the Oregon case is in fact: Whose rights take priority? It should be: What is best for a child? We know some of you will disagree, but we believe respect, accept and support is a reasonable expectation for the state when considering a foster parent.