Tag: social issues

Religion News Service

When adoption agencies can turn away gay prospective parents, what happens to the kids?

Bobby Ross Jr. March 23, 2018

Those who study the issue say it’s hard to tell exactly how such rules governing adoption affect the numbers of children placed in “forever” homes.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For Religion News Service

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma lawmakers may soon sanction private adoption agencies turning away same-sex couples and other prospective parents who don’t meet their religious criteria, a possibility cheered by the Roman Catholic Church and many evangelical Christians and lambasted as discriminatory by gay rights groups.

It’s a conflict playing out across the nation, and both sides say that if the other wins, the number of children placed in loving homes will fall.

Seven states have passed laws — including Alabama, South Dakota and Texas last year — like the one proposed in Oklahoma. A bill with comparable language also has been introduced in Congress, according to The Associated Press. At least two other states — Georgia and Kansas — are debating similar legislation. At the same time, some local governments are withholding support from agencies that won’t serve gay prospective parents.

The LGBT community says the Oklahoma measure would result in fewer adoptions as prospective gay parents are turned away by agencies. Conservative Christians say failing to protect the right of adoption agencies to follow their faith would result in fewer adoptions, because those agencies would close before they act against their beliefs.

Those who study the issue say it’s hard to tell exactly how such rules governing adoption affect the numbers of children placed in “forever” homes. Still, the assertions from both sides on the matter have been definitive.

Passage of Oklahoma’s Senate Bill 1140 would “result in a disastrous reduction in adoption and foster placements and put 9,000 young people — currently in the system — in jeopardy,” said Troy Stevenson, executive director of Freedom Oklahoma, as the LGBT advocacy organization launched a statewide media campaign this month against the bill.

The numbers may not be there to back him up.

“I don’t know of any empirical evidence on the topic,” said Elizabeth Bartholet, faculty director of the Child Advocacy Program at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Mass.

“In general, any barriers to adoption are likely to decrease numbers of homes for kids in need,” Bartholet added in an email. “But, of course, it’s possible that religious agencies would shut down rather than put their religious principles aside.”

Read the full story.

Religion News Service is a national wire service whose media partners include The Associated Press, USA Today and the Washington Post.

Related: Under new Texas law, faith-based adoption agencies win protections (reporting from Abilene, Texas)

Christian Chronicle

No more ‘us and them’: At 50th anniversary of Detroit riot, churches model unity

Bobby Ross Jr. August 16, 2017

Second Place, Best Reporter portfolio, Oklahoma Society of Professional Journalists

Third Place, Diversity Reporting, Oklahoma Society of Professional Journalists

By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle

DETROIT — The boys — one black, one white — were 10 years old.

Ive Edwards lived close to where the chaos started. Smoke filled his nostrils as arsonists set his hometown ablaze. Looters ran by his window. Army tanks rolled down the street. The pop-pop-pop of gunfire pierced his ears. Afraid of stray bullets, he dove under his bed.

Greg Guymer witnessed the turmoil from Detroit’s outskirts. Helicopters whipped overhead, soldiers’ legs dangling out like a scene from Vietnam. Fear paralyzed him, but his grandfather admonished him to hide in the basement if the war zone approached.

Fifty years after the 1967 Detroit riot, Edwards and Guymer recounted their experiences as two congregations sought to model Christian unity in a nation that still struggles mightily with race — as illustrated by the fatal clashes between white supremacist groups and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Va.

Even before Charlottesville, the predominantly black Oakland Church of Christ and the predominantly white Rochester Church of Christ — both north of Detroit — saw a need to bridge the divide.

“Love conquers hate because God is love,” said Edward Cribbs, minister for the 300-member Oakland church. “The Oakland and Rochester congregations are endeavoring to bring to the forefront the issue of race and reconciliation. The events in Charlottesville remind us that our efforts are long overdue.”

Read the full story.

Related story: The riot, in retrospect

These stories appear in the September 2017 print edition of The Christian Chronicle.

Washington Post

In this Bible Belt state, Democrats call hot-button issues a ‘smokescreen’

Bobby Ross Jr. May 27, 2016

Even some Republicans in GOP-run Oklahoma say that abortion and transgender bills are a distraction.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For The Washington Post

OKLAHOMA CITY — Some public schools are starting summer vacation several days early. Others are contemplating a four-day week to cut costs. And more than 200 teachers in Oklahoma City were handed pink slips in March.

But instead of addressing a burgeoning budget crisis that threatens public education and other critical state services, Oklahoma lawmakers have been busy debating proposals to criminalize abortion, police students’ access to public bathrooms and impeach President Obama.

With more painful cuts to come, Democrats are accusing the GOP-controlled legislature of creating a “smokescreen” to distract the public from an estimated $1.3 billion shortfall caused by declining oil revenue and years of big tax cuts. Even some Republicans have criticized the focus on social issues as frivolous.

“They run this stuff out there because it excites the base,” Keith Gaddie, a political scientist at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, said of the social-issues bills. “But nobody ever banked on the public also looking up and saying: ‘You know, we like schools. We like hospitals. We like roads. We like to have stuff that works.’ ”

Oklahoma is among eight states facing serious budget shortfalls after a two-year drop in oil prices that radically curtailed revenue from the oil industry. Also contributing to Oklahoma’s budget crunch are years of income-tax cuts and corporate tax incentives, especially for oil companies. Last week, Reuters reported that oil industry lobbyists secured one of the lowest tax rates in the country, a tax break that deprived the state of $470 million last year alone.

Read the full story.

This story appears on Page A3 of The Washington Post.

Religion News Service

In a red state, the culture war shifts

Bobby Ross Jr. May 27, 2016

Voters still care about traditional values, but there is growing anger over underfunded schools and crumbling infrastructure.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For Religion News Service

EDMOND, Okla. (RNS) In one of the reddest of the red states, appeals to traditional values have long resonated with many voters.

But while lawmakers in this Bible Belt state of 3.9 million have been debating proposals to criminalize abortion, police students’ access to public bathrooms and impeach President Obama, Oklahomans are increasingly concerned about a burgeoning budget crisis that threatens public education and other critical state services.

The crisis has led some public schools to start summer vacation several days early. Others are contemplating a four-day week to cut costs. And more than 200 teachers in Oklahoma City were handed pink slips in March.

State Sen. David Holt, an Oklahoma City Republican, said he was “ashamed” of the hours spent debating transgender restroom use at the expense of his constituents’ real concerns.

“Oklahoma is a very socially conservative state, and I have always supported the types of bills that have come to the legislature, because my constituency largely wants me to,” Holt said. “But while students in my district were quite literally marching in the streets to the Capitol to plead with the legislature to do something about how the budget shortfall will affect their schools, we were addressing something that virtually no one had contacted me about and that was arguably not a pressing issue.”

About the same time lawmakers considered the bathroom bill that drew Holt’s concern, a group of pastors pushed for the adoption of legislation that would make it a felony to perform an abortion.

“God’s word tells us very clearly that he’s for life, that he knit us together in our mothers’ wombs,” said one of the clergymen, Blake Gideon of the 4,000-member First Baptist Church in this affluent suburb north of Oklahoma City.

Read the full story.

Religion News Service is a national wire service whose media partners include The Associated Press, USA Today and the Washington Post.

Christian Chronicle

God, guns and keeping Christians safe

Bobby Ross Jr. October 18, 2015

Pistols in the pews make some feel more secure, but others are leery.

Finalist (part of three-story portfolio), Magazine News Religion Reporting, Religion News Association

By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle

At many Churches of Christ across the nation, Christians bring more than their swords — as some refer to their Bibles — to Sunday worship.

An untold number also carry concealed handguns into the assembly, church leaders told The Christian Chronicle.

As mass shootings make all-too-frequent headlines in America, some see pistol-packing church members — and even preachers — as protection, the Chronicle found in interviews with dozens of ministers, elders and deacons in 15 states.

“I do not believe that Jesus — or even the old law — taught members to cower in the face of danger,” said Chris Gallagher, minister for the Gadsden Church of Christ in Alabama. “It was Jesus who told his apostles to take a sword in Luke 22.

“A gunman coming into our services to cause harm to men, women and children through his evil desires should be stopped,” added Gallagher, noting that he usually locks his own Ruger .380 pistol in his office when he preaches. “Shall we let the evil of one man injure and harm a collection of God’s people?”

Four months ago, a gunman opened fire at a Wednesday night Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., and killed nine people before fleeing unharmed. Dylann Storm Roof, 21, was arrested the next day in North Carolina.

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• Abduction makes Arizona church secretary more cautious

• ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Christian universities debate allowing firearms on campus

These stories appear online and/or in the November 2015 print edition of The Christian Chronicle.