This week the Movement Advancement Project launched an ad campaign with a video that shows a widow being denied a funeral service for her deceased wife. I wish this were a purely hypothetical example of the dangers of so-called religious exemption laws and policies, but it was all too real for Jack Zawadski.
Jack and his late husband, Bob, were partners for over half a century. As Bob’s health deteriorated, Jack’s nephew prearranged funeral services to minimize the stress on Jack. But when the hour of Jack’s heart-wrenching loss arrived, the funeral home refused to take Bob’s body. Upon learning that Bob and Jack were married, objecting funeral home staff told Bob’s nursing home that it went against her beliefs as a Christian.
In another example of devastating discrimination, a faith-based child welfare agency denied a lesbian couple in Texas the opportunity to foster a refugee child, potentially depriving a child of a loving home. Fatma Marouf and Bryn Esplin are an interfaith couple who both teach at Texas A&M University, where Fatma serves as director of the university’s immigration rights clinic. A federally funded refugee program affiliated with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops invited Fatma to visit and learn about the program’s work with unaccompanied refugee children. Seeing these children in urgent need led the couple to decide to foster one themselves. But early in the application process, to their shock and dismay, they were told they were ineligible because their family structure does not “mirror the Holy Family.”
Some might think Fatma and Bryn’s experience was a fluke. But the sad reality is that anti-LGBT discrimination happens all the time.
Read the full story at Advocate
