This week the Heritage Foundation released an important background paper, “Adoption, Foster Care, and Conscience Protection,” by Sarah Torre and Ryan Anderson.

In the US and in other countries, many faith-based adoption and foster-care agencies have decided they have to close their doors when faced with the demand that they ignore their own convictions and follow new sexual-orientation and marital status non-discrimination requirements in placing children and recruiting families. Sometimes the requirements are attached to government funds but typically are requirements of licensure–either the agency agrees to place children without regard to the agency’s religious convictions or it cannot operate.

It is shocking that after two thousand years in which care for orphans was one of the key marks of the church’s ministry to the hurting world, in our own generation many faith-based agencies are being forced to abandon their services.

This makes no sense, as the paper points out:

“Policy should respect the freedom of foster care and adoption agencies that believe children do best when raised in a married mother-and-father home.

“Protecting the conscience rights and religious liberty of private adoption providers takes nothing away from others. Indeed, not every private provider needs to perform every service–and state-run agencies can provide a complete array of services. Protecting a diversity of private providers and their ability to operate according to their values-and with families who share those values-makes it more likely that the greatest possible number of children will be connected with permanent, loving families.

“Allowing private adoption providers to operate according to their own values–including declining to place children in unmarried or same-sex households–does not prevent public agencies or other private providers from choosing to do so.

“Regardless of how states decide to craft policy allowing unmarried individuals or same-sex couples to adopt children, private providers should not be forced to violate their beliefs. Public agencies and some private providers, when allowed by state law, can choose to license unmarried and same-sex couples for adoption. Nothing is taken away if other private providers decline to do so. The legal right of an unmarried or same-sex couple to adopt, where it exists, should not require every adoption provider to perform such adoptions: Requiring that they do so places the interests of adults over those of children, the exact opposite of what good policy on adoption should do.”

The paper rightly commends the Obama administration for publicly affirming the important role of faith-based organizations in adoption and foster-care services. And it rightly condemns the congressional bill, “The Every Child Deserves a Family Act.” Bills with this deceptive title have been around for several years. The bills would require states to outlaw faith-based agencies that “discriminate” because of their choice of married mother-father families for the children they place. The Heritage paper observes: “The Every Child Deserves a Family Act does not place the needs of children first; rather it places the desires of adults first.”