(RNS) — It might seem strange that an Orthodox Jewish rabbi would side with a Christian adoption agency that refused to accommodate a Jewish couple. But I do.
Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram, of Knox County, Tennessee, wanted to adopt a child. In order to proceed, they had to complete a foster-parent training program and receive a home-study certification.
In 2021, the Rutan-Rams turned to Holston United Methodist Home for Children to obtain those resources. But they were told that the agency, as a faith-based entity, serves only Christian applicants.
A 2020 Tennessee law authorizes child-placing agencies to deny services based on the agencies’ religious policies, even if the services are funded by the state, as Holston United Methodist Home is.
The Rutan-Rams sued the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services in early 2022, arguing that the law protecting the adoption agency violated the religious freedom and equal protection guarantees of the Tennessee Constitution. After a flurry of dismissals and appeals, in May, the Tennessee Supreme Court favored the parents, allowing the lawsuit to proceed to trial.
The Rutan-Rams have become the face of a campaign led by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which is representing the couple in their case. The secularist group sees the Tennessee law and others like it as attempts to foster the goals of Christian nationalism. But really, these laws are an attempt to preserve religious freedom.
Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram. (Photo courtesy of Americans United for Separation of Church and State)
There has always been an inherent tension between the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment’s establishment clause and its free exercise clause — the former forbidding government from endorsing any religion, and the latter ensuring citizens’ right to practice their religions. (Tennessee’s Constitution reflects those same elements.)
Fine-tuning the balancing of those two ideals with regard to things like the operations of religious organizations, charities and schools, as well as regarding employers’ and workers’ rights, has occupied the nation’s courts, including its highest one, for decades.
I’m not a constitutional scholar; I don’t even play one on a podcast. I’m an observant Jew who cherishes the protections our nation’s fundamental legal document provides its religious citizens.
I want religious adoption agencies to be able to choose to limit their services to those whose lives are in consonance with the agencies’ missions. There are already established religious “ministerial” and “conscience” exceptions to many anti-discrimination statutes. It seems reasonable to me that religious adoption agencies, too, should be able to maintain their religious values.
I believe that about any such agency, whether it be Catholic, Protestant, Muslim or Hindu. It’s a simple matter of religious rights.
This freedom is especially compelling for Jewish adoption agencies, because, while Judaism may be a faith, being a Jew is an identity.
In Jewish religious law, when it comes to being part of what we consider the Jewish family, what one believes is secondary to the circumstance of one’s birth. If your mother is Jewish, so are you, automatically. And if she is not (and you haven’t undergone the demanding ritual of conversion, the only other way of becoming a Jew), then you are not.
People often ask if being Jewish is a religious or genealogical identity. It is both. Judaism is a system of belief and law, but belonging to the Jewish family is something else.
And so, believing Jews consider it incumbent upon them to do all they can to ensure that all of their relatives, no matter how distant, are aware of their identity as part of the Jewish people. And thus, for us, it is vitally important for a religious Jewish adoption agency to be able to place Jewish children with Jewish families, who will provide an environment conducive to the adoptees’ understanding of their identity.
That government funds assist religious adoption agencies presents no legal problem, since the service being offered is not, to use the Supreme Court’s phrase, “inherently religious”; it is adoption, plain and simple. Religious social service organizations, moreover, undertake their work with special passion, and religious Americans are more likely to feel comfortable dealing with faith-informed agencies.
The Rutan-Rams’ case was unusual because they had identified a particular child in Florida whom they wanted to adopt, but that state required them to first receive certification in their home state. According to the news release announcing their lawsuit, the only agency offering to provide those services for out-of-state placements was Holston United Methodist.
In the end, the Rutan-Rams became foster parents to a teenage girl and plan to foster and adopt at least one more child. I wish them only well; they are admirable people.
For most cases, there are many nonsectarian adoption agencies available in every state.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, however, is using the couple’s experience to tip the delicate church-state balance in one direction. Doing so would accomplish little if anything positive, and at the expense of undermining the religious freedom guaranteed to all Americans.
(Rabbi Avi Shafran writes widely in Jewish and general media and blogs at rabbishafran.com. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
