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What’s The Civil Rights Agenda‘s Secret Weapon Against an Anti-Gay Adoption Bill in Illinois?

Don’t worry, residents of the Land of Lincoln. Anti-gay Republican Dwight Kay might’ve introduced a bill to encourage adoption agencies to discriminate against gay families, but The Civil Rights Agenda is ready for him.

“We have been expecting this legislation to be filed in the House and we have a strategy in place,” Lowell Jaffe, Political Director of The Civil Rights Agenda, wrote in a press release this morning. Ooh, a strategy! That sounds promising! So we wrote back to ask exactly what that strategy is.

But the response was very cloak-and-dagger. “I cannot reveal much due to the voracity with which our opposition is fighting,” replied TCRA Executive Director Anthony Martinez. So mysterious! Could you at least write it in disappearing ink, and then slip it to us by swapping an identical valise at Grand Central Station?

“What I can say is that we have put together a strong coalition of organizations and activists that are working to ensure that the General Assembly is educated on this bill and the effects of writing discrimination into law,” Martinez went on. Well, okay, coalitions are nice, and educating is good. And when you have both together — edulition? — it’s even better.

So far, TCRA’s strategy seems to be working: the anti-gay adoption bill failed in the senate. And meanwhile, Representative Pete Stark introduced the “Every Child Deserves a Family Act,” which would redirect federal adoption funding to agencies with LGBT-inclusive policies. So hopefully we’re on our way to finding some homes for the 100,000 kids awaiting adoptive care every year, instead of manipulating them into a slimy game of withhold-everything-from-the-gays.

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