A Jewish couple barred from adopting a child due to their religion are the face of a prominent new campaign to defend the separation of church and state.
Americans United for the Separation of Church and State have made Gabe and Liz Rutan-Ram’s case the centerpiece of their critique of Project 2025, a presidential transition blueprint drawn up by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation that has garnered intense criticism in recent weeks.
One of the policy proposals supported by Project 2025 is the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act, which would allow adoption and foster care agencies to make placement decisions based on the organizations’ “sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions.”
Critics of these types of bills, which have been attempted in previous Congressional sessions, say they result in more children remaining in the foster care system while also discriminating against non-Christian and LGBTQ+ parents.
Americans United maintains that the principle of religious freedom does not provide religious organizations that accept taxpayer funds the right to discriminate based on their beliefs.
“The Project 2025 architects want to expand the abuse of religious freedom as a license to discriminate to social service agencies, employers, schools, hospitals and many other entities and turn it against countless religious and racial minorities, LGBTQ+ people, women, the nonreligious and other often-marginalized groups. We are all at risk,” Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United, said in a statement. “America doesn’t need Project 2025. It needs a national recommitment to the separation of church and state — the antidote that can stop Christian Nationalists.”
The Rutan-Rams had sued the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services in 2022 after a Christian foster care agency, which receives taxpayer dollars, refused to help them adopt a child because they were Jewish. Their lawsuit was the first to challenge a 2020 state law that permits adoption agencies not to place children in settings that violate the agencies’ “religious or moral convictions or policies.”
Their case was dismissed by a judge six months after it was filed, and the Rutan-Rams are in the process of appealing the decision.
The couple describes their case in a video shot and distributed by Americans United. “I can’t imagine a better life for us than as parents,” Liz Rutan-Ram says in the video, which was filmed in their home.
(The Rutan-Rams fostered a local teenage girl for a time after they were denied services by the Christian agency.)
“It’s really disheartening to see that there’s entire political arms, at this point, hell-bent on trying to make us second-class citizens,” Gabe Rutan-Ram says in the video.
Though “Project 2025” was published in April 2023, Democrats have been sounding the alarm in recent weeks abut its goals and trying to tie it to former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Some critics say it is a blueprint for ideas associated with Christian Nationalism, including reversing LGBTQ+ rights, banning abortion, restricting contraception and shifting resources from public schools to private, including religious, schools. Trump recently wrote on his social media website that he knows “nothing” about the project and thinks it proposes “ridiculous” things.
Americans United has taken on the cause of multiple legal cases that involve Jewish families, including the Louisiana law that requires the Ten Commandments be displayed in public schools, the Missouri abortion ban, and working with the Rutan-Ram family when they were initially denied access to the foster-to-adopt program.
Laser, its first woman and Jewish leader, previously worked at the Reform movement’s political arm, the Religious Action Center, as well as Planned Parenthood and the National Women’s Law Center.
Americans United has created a star-studded video warning about Project 2025, featuring celebrities and actors like Sarah Paulson, Arian Moayed, Allison Janney, and Bradley Whitford.
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