The Obama administration is preparing to force every charitable organization receiving federal grants to end their prohibitions on hiring people based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
In its latest “Friday Fax”, the Center for Family and Human Rights, or C-Fam, cites an unnamed but well-placed administration source, who says the administration is definitely headed in that direction.
“Our source told us that the administration is moving very quietly to insert sexual orientation and gender identity language into the application process for grantees. They cannot discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity and there is no exemption for religious believers,” said C-Fam President Austin Ruse.
“Quietly” appears to be the key word in this process. Ruse says this revelation comes as news to just about everyone.
“This caught a lot of faith-based groups off guard. When we started calling around to get comments yesterday, two very big groups had heard nothing about this,” said Ruse, who would not divulge which groups he contacted.
“Grantees get grants for carrying out certain tasks that they were doing already. A lot of them are faith-based groups. A lot of them are faith-based groups doing work overseas,” said Ruse.
Last summer, Obama issued an executive order requiring anyone contracting with the federal government to amend hiring policies to welcome homosexuals and transgenders.
“It was really kind of inevitable that the administration would then move on grantees, which are distinct from contractors,” said Ruse, who says the reach of this new policy would be extensive.
“A law professor told me when we were preparing the story yesterday that there is something like 50 grantees to every one contractor. So this effects a large number of organizations,” said Ruse.
Not only will a large number of groups be impacted but some of the largest and most effective charities could face this mandate as well.
“It includes massive organizations like World Vision. It includes organizations run by the Catholic Church, evangelical churches. Look at Samaritan’s Purse run by Franklin Graham. I don’t know if they’re a federal grantee. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were. How can they adhere to this policy?” said Ruse.
For Ruse, this move by Obama is just the latest in a systematic effort to destroy the moral underpinnings of American society.
“I am convinced that certain leftist people would love to eliminate all the mediating institutions between the government and the individual. Those are primarily the family and religious organizations. They’re working very hard to eliminate those organizations,” said Ruse.
Legal action is an option for any group seeking to maintain its own hiring prerogatives. However, Ruse says it will be a tough road.
“In a lot of religious freedom cases, what happens is that some governmental body would move on an organization for doing something and then an affirmative defense of the organization in court would be religious liberty and religious freedom,” said Ruse.
Not in this case.
“In this particular case, the organization would discover that they could not get this grant because they could not go along with this new provision. They would have to take the government to court based on religious freedom,” said Ruse. “That’s a long and costly and it’s not a guarantee that after a very long period of time and spending a lot of money that they would win.”
If the Obama administration presses forward with this policy and the legal efforts are unsuccessful, faith-based organizations will have two primary options. The first is to just say no to government money.
“A large faith-based organization (that he spoke with recently) has not applied for any new government contracts since the executive order on sexual orientation and gender identity for contractors was instituted last summer. Already, a lot of them are walking away,” said Ruse.
But others will not have that flexibility.
“Look what happened to Catholic Charities in Boston, also in Chicago, when they instituted same-sex marriage. In their adoption business, they were ordered to place children with same-sex couples and they could not in good conscience do it. So they had no choice but to close their doors,” said Ruse.
“So these mediating institutions, that protect individuals from the the government in some cases are now being run out of business by the government,” said Ruse.
