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Democrats Unload On Catholic Charities

Delegate Mark Levine (D-Fairfax): "Kids don't need [Catholic Charities] restricting their access to loving homes."

Shaun Kenney

Feb 4

Every once in awhile, the Democrats say the quiet part out loud.

This time, it’s Delegate Mark Levine (D-Alexandria) — arguably one of the more vocal and vicious of the progressives — laying out his open hatred for the Catholic Church.

Mark Levine @DelegateMark

Kids don't need a prejudiced agency restricting their access to loving homes. They need loving homes. And I think we must prioritize THEIR needs over your or anyone else's wish to use taxpayer funds to promote bigotry. Needy foster kids need more love. Not more hate.

Garren Shipley @GarrenShipley

So you're actively reducing the number of people working to place children in homes by telling Catholic Charities you don't want their help. Duly noted, Delegate. https://t.co/rtyygvHX1V

What spurred Levine’s diatribe against little old ladies and Catholic nuns providing critical services to families in need? Opposition to HB1932, a bill that specifically targets Christian charities who abide by their sincerely held religious charters — or what Levine calls “taxpayer-funded religious bigotry” in private.

…and now it seems, in public as well.

Mark Levine @DelegateMark

We do. That's the beauty of HB1932. It repeals a law that keeps needy kids from loving foster families who want to care from them. We have to put children's urgent needs ahead of taxpayer-funded religious bigotry. Children must come first.

Garren Shipley @GarrenShipley

@DelegateMark @MelLeonor_ Don't we want as many people as possible attempting to place children in loving homes?

Of course, Levine doesn’t really mean any of that. After all, Levine is perfectly happy pushing his religiously-held secular bigotry on others. Levine is even willing to find secular priests and inquisitors and send them into your home if you disagree with the prevailing orthodoxy in Richmond.

Not a joke. They are actually considering this as model guidance for Virginia’s public schools.

Part of a 26-page set of guidelines issued by Governor Ralph Northam’s Department of Education to enforce transgenderism in the classroom — and in your family.

In 2020, the Democrat-controlled General Assembly enacted HB 145 and SB 161, requiring the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) to develop Model Policies for the Treatment of Transgender Students in Virginia’s Public Schools.

In this document, there are no religious exemptions. At all. In fact, should your son or daughter be convinced that they are the opposite sex, these “model policies” enable local school boards to send social service workers into your home, evaluate your family, and if you continue to refuse to recognize the validity of transgenderism?

These “model policies” enable the government to forcibly remove your children from your home.

Thus far, over 8,000 families have lodged their complaints about this new “model policy” before the February 3rd deadline. The Virginia Family Foundation has a list of at least 10 different objections to the new proposals, and the fight will continue in the weeks to come.

Don’t worry — it gets worse.

The Last Acceptable Prejudice

HB1932 (Levine) passed the Democratic-controlled House of Delegates by an alarming vote of 53-43.

This bill effectively dismantled conscience protections long held sacred in the United States. The target? Catholic Charities — along with every other religious institution operating in Virginia.

More directly for Commonwealth Catholic Charities, as the only full service adoption agency in Virginia serving both mothers and adoptive parents, HB1932 is designed and targeted at Catholic Charities for the specific purpose of coercing them — against their own faith — to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs regarding marriage and the family.

Of course, Catholic Charities isn’t the only organization providing adoption services. LGBTQ+ couples looking to adopt have many options. Catholic Charities merely seeks to provide that service in a Catholic way — and one might think this is a loving, positive, and needed service in today’s world. Or as HRCC’s Garren Shipley put it:

Garren Shipley @GarrenShipley

@DelegateMark @MelLeonor_ Don't we want as many people as possible attempting to place children in loving homes?

One might think that — if this were the standard — that Catholic Charities and every other faith-based institution (secular or sacred) would be welcome to the table.

But this isn’t about adoption.
It’s not about rights.
It’s not about bigotry or hate.

Levine’s bill doesn’t seek to make the world a better place in the slightest. It’s only aim? Coercion against sacred beliefs in service to secular ones.

That it passed the House of Delegates with barely a whimper should strike you as offensive. Have we found a red line yet? Is there nothing we are willing to defend? Was this too hot a topic for a single leader to be found?

The beatings continue. Is morale improving?

That Delegate Levine felt so confident as to this bill’s success that he not only took the hood off, but trumpeted to others that his target was indeed Catholic Charities — who else could it be? — was no mystery to the Virginia Catholic Conference. Nor was it any mystery to the Virginia Family Foundation, who wasted no time taking Levine and his ilk to task:

Delegate Mark Levine (D-Alexandria) also brought this bill last year. After two long and contentious committee hearings, it was defeated when no one would “second” the motion for it to be voted on. Despite the numerous agencies in Virginia that place foster children and orphans with same-sex couples, Del. Levine is committed to his personal desire to exclude some faith-based nonprofits and put them out of business (as has happened in other states) simply because they believe in placing children in homes with a mom and a dad.
With 5,400 children in Virginia's foster care system, more than 700 of whom are ready for adoption right now, we need as many agencies as possible serving foster children in Virginia, not less.

At the end of the day, if faith has anything to do with character, in America we do not ask people to check their faith at the door when they go to work, school, or even the General Assembly.

Levine disagrees.

Children will pay the price for his secular bigotry should it sail through the Virginia Senate without vociferous objections from those who still care about conscience and character in the public square.

That’s not right. Levine knows it’s not right. Whether Democrats of goodwill still care about such things remains to be seen; whether Republicans are willing to fight to remind them of these values should not be a question.

Shaun Kenney is the editor of The Republican Standard, former chairman of the Board of Supervisors for Fluvanna County, and a former executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia.