Tenn. Couple: Agency Nixed Adoption Because We’re Jewish

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A Tennessee couple says a Christian adoption agency refused to help them foster a child because they are Jewish, and now they are suing the state in a case that challenges a new law allowing such discrimination.

The Tennessean reports that Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram’s lawsuit comes weeks after the agency, Holston United Methodist Home for Children, sued the federal government over regulations that prohibit religious discrimination in taxpayer-funded programs. Elizabeth Rutan-Ram said that after Holston said it would not assist in the adoption process, “I felt like I’d been punched in the gut.” She added, “And it was very hurtful that the agency seemed to think that a child would be better off in state custody than with a loving family like us.” Read more at the Tennessean.

{Matzav.com}


6 COMMENTS

  1. and it wouldnt bother you if jewish children went to non-jewish families. all you know about being jewish is what you cannot do (BH), thanks to the tennessee government for having more sense than you do. how about finding jewish children to foster and then learning how to be aproper jewish parent

  2. Tell me, please, according to this couple, if a Jewish adoption age is would refuse to help a Christian couple to adopt a Jewish child, should it be sued, as well?
    This wasn’t a state agency, but a PRIVATE religiously oriented business, which aims to place children in families that will raise them according to specific religious values and beliefs.
    What’s your problem?!

  3. An orthodox Jewish agency would most certainly not give a Jewish child up for adoption to a Christian couple to be raised a Christian and so the same would be true of a Cristian agency in regard to a Jewish couple that would raise the child in the Jewish faith. And in regard to the claim that as a city agency they cannot discriminate on the basis of religious beliefs, the supreme court ruled just last week in a case brought by a Cristian adoption agency that had a policy to only consider adoptions by a couple made up of a man and woman against the city of Philadelphia that would not include them in the list of agencies they would give children for adoption because the city held the policy was discrimination against other types of couples, that religious agencies were allowed to take their religious beliefs into consideration in regard to which couples they would consider for adoption. Jews and Christians do share in common the very strong belief that religious groups are not just allowed to maintain their religious beliefs, but that they have a first amendment right to do so.

  4. The headline is inaccurate.
    They were not seeking to adopt, but to foster an out-of-state child.
    In order to do that, they needed to complete a training course, and the training course is what they were requesting.
    As the agency accepted them for the course at first and only cancelled on the day that the class was to be offered, I would guess that the agency feared “slippery slope,” that if they accepted non-Xtians for the course, then they would also have to accept them as adoptees.

    Because this lawsuit is quite broad, their winning it might not bode well for Ohel and other Jewish adoption agencies.

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