In the Courts and in the law, the focus should always be on the best interests of the child.  Here, the proposed change to 22VAC40-131-170B removes protections from discriminatory practices base on an applicant's religion, political persuasion, and sexual orientation.  None of these factors plays a role in how good an adoptive parent one may be and rather than permiting an agency to make a determination based on purely facially subjective traits, this law needs to retain the original language, allowing the focus to remain on the best interests of the child.  In the aftermath of 9/11, and in the purely political retoric of national campaigns, we have seen that without those protections in law, government officials are free to imprint their biases on what, once again, should be a totally objective view of what are the best interests of the adoptive child.

This change to the law does not accomplish that.