People of Faith for Equality in Virginia

Days of Prayer

Ppl_of_faith_blog_button_ne_copy The year is winding down, but at POFEV we are gearing up for events and activities for equality in 2012—beginning with our annual legislative Prayer Breakfast on January 18 and the annual Marriage Equality Witness on February 14. That is in addition to weekly prayer sessions at the General Assembly in January and February.

The Prayer Breakfast has become an eagerly awaited annual event during the General Assembly session—this year, as last, it will be held at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Grace Street across from Capitol Square. This year’s theme is “Celebrating Our Relationships,” and will feature voices of LGBT couples who seek full marriage legal equality (knowing that their marriages are equal to others in all other respects). The breakfast begins at 7:00 am (so that legislators can attend) and the cost is $20.

interfaith_circle_symbols Why do we breakfast and pray? Praying is what marks people of faith, and sets us apart from others who simply lobby.

Of course, we can pray for equality by ourselves, and I hope you do. But our faith traditions encourage us to gather as well, and to do so joyfully. So we gather at the beginning of the day to break bread with one another. We also hope that some legislators have not made other commitments so they can join us. Some do each year. It is more difficult to get them at lunch time.

Our prayers have several foci. First, we gather to give God thanks for the service of our legislators and other leaders. Second, we gather to make witness for equality. Third, we gather to claim and give thanks for the power that God gives us to create change, and to encourage ourselves to use it. Keep reading...

No More

transgender_binary_symbols Transgender people are often misunderstood. And certainly ignored, and even feared. Anything that upsets powerful social norms is at least unsettling. And the organization of gender is one of the very most powerful social norms in our world. It begins with birth, when the doctor tells a mom, “Well, you have a healthy (boy or girl).”

That is also the moment when trouble begins for some. Not all babies are born with unambiguous sets of genitals. Some, admittedly a small number, are born with mixed genitals, or parts of both, or perhaps a missing part. For many years, doctors felt they had to determine which gender the baby was, even if it was unclear. Some still do. Many times, the medical decision was enforced by surgery. Parents mostly accepted the medical judgment and the baby suddenly became whatever the doctor decided. That sometimes the doctor was wrong did not seem to matter.

Call to Action: VA Adoption Rules

love_makes_a_family The struggle for justice is often uphill, and often progress comes in small steps. And sometimes, progress only comes after a setback. Certainly, the current administration in Virginia does not lean toward widening the legally sanctioned opportunities for LGBT people to participate in society. The latest example is the adoption of rules by the Board of Social Services governing the adoption of children.

Here’s a recap of what has happened:
As published in proposed form much earlier, Section 22 VAC 40-131-170 B. of the new standards for licensed child placing agencies said that such an agency licensed by the state shall
prohibit acts of discrimination based on race, color, gender, national origin, age, religion, political beliefs, sexual orientation, disability, or family status to:

Delay or deny a child's placement; or
Deny an individual the opportunity to apply to become a foster or adoptive parent.

The proposed rules were approved for publication as proposed rules by the McDonnell administration early in 2010.

In April, however, just days before the proposed rules were due to come before the Board for its final okay, Governor McDonnell expressed a preference for keeping the nondiscrimination rule unchanged (banning only discrimination based on race, national origin and ethnicity). In response, the Commissioner of the Department of Social Services placed that recommendation before the Board in a closed session.

After the Board discussed the matter in close session, a majority voted to adopt final rules that only prohibit discrimination based on race, national origin and ethnicity.

What happened? Mostly, it seems that a barrage of comments posted on the Board of Social Services website, motivated by misinformation from the Family Foundation, put the Governor and his administration in a position of supporting rules that seemed to endorse same-sex adoption. And Roman Catholic leaders and others objected, claiming their right to discriminate based on religious teaching was being abridged.

Thanks to the hard work of Claire Guthrie-Gustanaga, counsel for Equality Virginia, and others, the Board recognized that adopting the rules based on a closed session violated Virginia’s strong open meetings law. They also realized that by changing the rules, they needed to allow for a new public comment period.

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