The Georgia Senate recently passed a bill that would allow Foster Care agencies to decline referrals of same-sex couples. The bill, which mentions "sincerely held religious beliefs" as the reasoning, does not belong in place anywhere in America.

Nan Orrock, a Georgia Democrat, spoke out against the policy recently. Rarely do I agree with what current Democrats say about anything, but I do stand by the rejection of this bill. Senator Orrock stated that the bill is "backward on its face." For me, it is incredibly hard to disagree with the senator's assessment.

Faith-based organizations have been discriminating against gay couples for years, but so far, it has all been strictly by private businesses. Whether religious liberty extends to discrimination against same-sex people in private business has been a hot discussion for years now. However, a public entity should not be in the same discussion as a private business. The church and the state are separate and should remain that way in all government operations.

Why should our adoption agencies be involved in a government-run program that has that option? No public program should have a religious bias.

Religion not included, what reason is there to not let a gay couple adopt someone? What could be so bad about a same-sex couple that a child would be better off in Foster Care?

Make no mistake, the Foster Care System is like every other government-run organization. Its workers are underpaid, the program is underfunded, and it creates problems faster than it solves them.

The Foster Care system is one of the worst government-run systems in America. To be clear, they are not very good at picking parents in general. There are countless different stories of abusive foster/adoptive parents.

When a couple abuses more than ten children in such a way, it does not make me think they should be discriminating against homosexuals.

Instead, foster care programs across the country should be improving background checks and decision making. They should be trying to get American children out of the system and into the hands of quality parents as quickly as possible.

On "any given day" there are around 428,000 children in our country's foster care systems nationwide.

Children are the future of the country and will affect how our country molds and whether the direction we head in is positive or negative. Children are one of the most important things the public can invest in.

While the government at all levels continue to throw money away, the country's most vulnerable are ignored. The Child Health Insurance Program was hanging by a thread for weeks due to budget discrepancies.

You cannot have a successful country without taking care of its future leaders from the get-go.

There is no good reason a public program should have a religious bias. Same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 states and there are no statistical trends for concern.

The same-sex marriage divorce rate is no more per year than that of heterosexual couples. On top of that, same-sex couples earn more and are more educated than their opposite-sex counterparts.

There is nothing to suggest that placing children in the arms of good same-sex households will have some sort of negative impact on that child. Foster care is overcrowded with the average time spent in the system at close to three years.

The bill that has passed does not apply nationwide; however, it sets a dangerous precedent. This does not seem like something anyone should be pushing for.

America does not need less loving parents available to children. Religous freedom has its place in our country. It is one of the founding principles of our country. Nevertheless, a government program should be blind to religious biases, especially the Foster Care System.