Contact: Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, 212-371-3191, pr@catholicleague.org

NEW YORK, Sept. 22, 2017 /Standard Newswire/ -- Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the ACLU's latest attack on religious freedom:

The ACLU is suing the state of Michigan over its law protecting the conscience rights of faith-based foster care and adoption agencies. The Catholic League stands with the Michigan Catholic Conference, which called for defending the state law "from yet another egregious attack on religious faith in public life."

At issue is a law signed by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder in 2015 that exempts faith-based child placement agencies from providing services that conflict with their religious beliefs. A lesbian couple says that when they sought to adopt a child, they were turned away by a Catholic agency and another Christian agency; for religious reasons, they do not place children with same-sex couples.

Of course, there are other child placement agencies in the state that the couple could have gone to. But that is not the point for the ACLU. As with its long war against Catholic hospitals, the goal of the ACLU is to either force faith-based institutions to violate their religious teachings or to drive them out of human services altogether.

That this would be to the detriment of all those people—in this case children—who are served by faith-based charitable agencies, is of little concern to the ACLU. Its agenda is driven not by concern for people in need, but by a determination to advance its pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage ideology at all costs.

The Michigan Catholic Conference calls this lawsuit "mean-spirited, divisive and intolerant." That is also an accurate description of the ACLU's long campaign of anti-Catholic bigotry.