BYU grad sued for barring gays from adoption website

[MikeWaters]

Originally Posted by BYU71

Restaurants are public facilities. Don't stretch things too far. You can smoke in your own house but not in a public restaurant.

On another note. The church has family services which handles adoptions, I think. Do they have to let gays use their services.

are apartment complexes public facilities?

I don't know how the LDS adoption thing would work in California.

The couple sued under California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, which prohibits businesses from discriminating against their customers on a variety of grounds. For at least 20 years, state courts have interpreted the law to require equal treatment of lesbians and gays. Bias based on marital status was the subject of conflicting rulings until the Legislature outlawed such discrimination, effective in 2006.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...GJJPVD1V42.DTL

Whether this civil rights act would apply to LDS social services, I don't know. it seems like they discriminate based on religion all the places I know they operate (i.e. they clearly give preference to LDS adopters), so I don't know if the law applies in California to them.

[MikeWaters]

It would be interesting to see if Gwilliam would choose to go out of business completely first rather than see gays be able to solicit adoptions.

[jay santos]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

According to this article, what the company decided (i.e. the BYU grad) is that they would not allow anyone from California to participate, in order to prevent gays from being on their site, and therefore complied with their settlement agreement.

In other words, they chose not to allow anyone from California participate, lest they have to include gays.

That's a smart way to do it. Mike, maybe you could cut off anyone from California for this site?

[MikeWaters]

Originally Posted by jay santos

That's a smart way to do it. Mike, maybe you could cut off anyone from California for this site?

Sorry. The bylaws for this site say very specifically that gay solicitation for adoption is permitted and even encouraged.

[BYU71]

I am not familiar with adoption procedures. Can the parents or parents who are giving up the child for adoption have any say in who adopts their child.

[MikeWaters]

Originally Posted by BYU71

I am not familiar with adoption procedures. Can the parents or parents who are giving up the child for adoption have any say in who adopts their child.

Yes.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by il Padrino Ute

I think this is beyond ridiculous.

If the adoption is a private company, how can a court force it to serve patrons it doesn't want? Are there no other adoption services anywhere in that part of California?

There are state and federal laws that prohibit discrinination by private citizens on private property. There is nothing new about that. I don't think the federal Civil Rights Act covers gays but many state and local laws do, and certainly in California.