Oklahoma’s New Adoption Bill

By ELIZBETH VALENTIN Arts Editor

The OK government has made it feasible for foster agencies to deny the adoption of a child on religious grounds. This specifically targets samesex couples who are looking to adopt.

This is problematic as there are about 9,600 children in the custody of the state’s foster care system. According to the Oklahoma Fosters Initiative (OFI), “More than 1,000 children in state custody have a goal of adoption.”

To deny the adoption of a child or children to same-sex couples could be detrimental to a child who has been in the foster care system. This is especially true when most children who are adopted by the state “are adopted by their foster families” while only a small percentage are adopted by their extended biological family. By restricting the ability of a same-sex couple to adopt shrinks the pool of options that the children have for being adopted according to OFI.

Also according to OFI, 36 percent of children in the state live in single-parent families. This is to say that one third of children live without only one parent, which means that they either grow up without a mother or without a father. Rarely do people make the claim that this hinders a child’s development on the grounds of religion.

The fact of the matter is that this is an issue of religion. This country is not meant to have any set religion, but time and time again, we see that religion is instituted as law on a state and national level.

There is no reason that lawmakers should have the option to impose their religious beliefs on their constituents. This is because the people who came to America first and who developed the foundation of this county did so, in part, to escape religious persecution. That is a fundamental reason why there is no national religion and why people have freedom of religion.

That being said, it seems as though those who do not follow Christianity are forced to follow the religious doctrine regardless. This is because the people who are in power use their own beliefs to dictate what everyone should follow. This is despite the fact that Christianity is not a religion that the entire nation follows on an individual level.

According to a poll conducted by ABC News and Bellefnet poll, 83 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians. Most of the rest, 13 percent, have no religion.” This is to say that of all Americans, 45,851,000 have no religion, while 13,028,000 Americans fall into some other