Government CANNOT Tell Foster Agencies Where To Place Kids

The city of Philadelphia kicked Catholic Social Services out of its foster care program because it insisted on placing children in optimal nurturing environments. Both Scripture and sociological research indicate that the best possible environment for a child is in a home with a mom and a dad who are married to each other. Homosexual households by definition are missing either a mother or a father. Vulnerable young children who have already suffered emotional trauma through dysfunction in their family of origin should not be forced to suffer a second kind of trauma by being placed in sub-optimal environments.

But Philadelphia authorities insist they have the right to order Catholic Social Services (CSS) to place foster children in homosexual households, and if they won’t place them in such sub-optimal environments, they won’t be allowed to place them anywhere.

Philadelphia abruptly suspended foster care referrals to the agency in 2018, and

CSS will be forced to shut down altogether if the city gets its way. Catholic Social Services has been placing children in loving environments for over one hundred years, including 250 children in 2017 alone.

The last thing the vulnerable children of Philadelphia need is to have another effective, faith-based resource stripped way. This means that foster homes are now sitting empty in the middle of the city’s foster care crisis, and foster children are sitting in places somewhere other than in a loving home.

This, not to put too fine a point on it, is a form of child abuse on the part of city leaders, who have also been exposed as bigots of the worst sort. They are denying urgently needed help to children simply because of their own blatant and inexcusable bias against people of faith who believe in man-woman marriage.

Catholic Social Services sued the city, and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, ignoring all the most important parts of the Constitution, upheld the ban. CSS appealed, and the Supreme Court agreed this week to take the case up next fall. This is a hopeful sign, since the Court is not likely to accept a case on appeal if it thinks the lower court rightly decided the case. There is no reason for them to take this case unless they’re inclined to reverse.

The Founders’ Constitution – the one drafted by the Founders before activist judges mangled it – flatly forbids the federal government from “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion, period, full stop. “Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise” of religion.

Congress is the only branch of government that has constitutional authority even to make law, since, according to Article I, “all legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in Congress.” All means all, as in every little bit. There is no lawmaking authority leftover for anybody else.

The executive branch has no authority to make law – it’s authority is restricted to executing or implementing laws passed by Congress.

The judiciary likewise has no authority to make law – it’s authority is restricted to applying the laws passed by Congress to cases that come before it. Their rulings do not make law either. The Court sheepishly recognizes this by calling them opinions.

Since the federal government includes the federal judiciary, the third of the three branches established by the Constitution, the judiciary is forbidden from messing with religious expression in any way.

That means that if an issue comes before a federal court that involves religious expression, or religious exercise, or the expression of religious convictions in ministry or in business, the court must remand it back to Pennsylvania’s judicial system. This is because the Founders gave states permission it denied to the federal government, of regulating Christianity anyway they saw fit. That’s why 10 of the original 13 states had officially established churches. That was perfectly fine then, and is still constitutionally permissible today, although no one thinks it would be a good idea. I certainly don’t.

So the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court, has no constitutional business even taking this case up. But since it has, it is now compelled to rule against Philadelphia for violating CSS’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion.

If a miracle happened, the light dawned, and the Supreme Court remanded this case back to Pennsylvania as it should, things get worse for the bigots that did this thing in the first place. That’s because the Pennsylvania Constitution says:

“All men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences; no man can of right be compelled to attend, erect or support any place of worship or to maintain any ministry against his consent; no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience (looking at you, Philadelphia), and no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious establishments or modes of worship.”

This sad incident is further proof of the danger to religious liberty posed by the Gay Gestapo and the radical homosexual lobby. Let’s hope and pray that the Supreme Court uses the Constitution to ring the Liberty Bell once again and cause the sound of freedom to be heard throughout the land.

The author may be contacted at bfischer@afa.net

(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Northwest Connection, American Family Association or American Family Radio.)