FamilyFoundationBlog.com

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s very opinionated chief political reporter, Jeff Schapiro (who doubles as a columnist and online pundit), must have had a writer’s block problem recently. How else to explain his pulling out the tried-and-true “anti-gay” attack on a social conservative? But seemingly out of nowhere, Mr. Schapiro’s latest video commentary at timesdispatch.com goes after Governor Bob McDonnell for his alleged “gay problem,” reciting votes and actions thoroughly vetted by the voters themselves who have never rejected Mr. McDonnell at the polls. Mr. Schapiro even dredges up the “thesis” and a crude question once asked to the governor when he was a candidate.

The spark that ignited Mr. Schapiro was the recent vote by the Social Services Board that rejected proposed regulations to allow homosexual couples to adopt children, which would have forced private and religious affiliated charitable services to comply with a rule that compromises their consciences and beliefs, or close down. The problem with Mr. Schapiro’s problem with Governor McDonnell is that the governor has no problem. He may want him to have a problem so much that he manufactured one, but no one is paying attention. It’s a right and just policy, popularly supported and, by the way, the law.

In fact, although the board retains a majority appointed to it by liberal former Governor Tim Kaine, it approved standards that omitted the original same-sex couple requirement by a lopsided 7-2 vote. No matter how often certain media (ahem, WRVA* in Richmond) misreported the issue as taking away a right (they never had), it’s no problem for officeholders to defend the sanctity of the traditional family. It may be a problem for Mr. Schapiro to understand that, but a gratuitous attack over a contrived problem on Governor McDonnell is only a problem for Mr. Schapiro to resolve.

* Not only did the station misreport the issue over a 2-day period, a producer chimed in on a locally produced show to call pro-family supporters “bigots.”

Within the last few minutes the Virginia Social Services Board voted to reject proposed regulations that would allow same-sex couples to adopt children (see last week’s post for more background). These regulations would have undermined religious liberty by forcing faith-based adoption agencies to comply with a regulation (by unelected bureaucrats, much less a law) fundamentally counter to their beliefs, or close down. We will have more on this tonight or tomorrow. For now, even though if approved today the process still had many safeguard hurdles before becoming final, we have reason to celebrate.