Yesterday the Virginia Senate voted 22-18 to allow foster care agencies and private adoption agencies to bar gay couples from adopting children.

The bill, SB 349, codifies discrimination for the explicit purpose of protecting adoption agencies’ “moral beliefs.” Not only that, agencies will be able to knowingly place gay children with anti-gay foster parents, even those who would send the kids to “reparative” therapy programs that are well-known for causing teen suicide.

The governor has promised to sign SB 349. Last week the House already passed a version, and the Washington Blade now reports that “the bill is certain to become law.” So there’s not much point in my opining against it at this late hour. I could lament SB 349 in some longwinded elegy for fairness, except that unmarried couples were already prohibited from adoption by Virginia’s troglodytic policies. (Single people, straight or gay, can adopt, or could until this week.) So maybe I’ll just profile the bill’s sponsor, Virginia Beach Senator Jeffrey McWaters.

Jeff.

McWaters, who has represented the eastern half of Virginia Beach since 2010, founded Amerigroup in 1994 and built it into a Fortune 500 company. If he hasn’t yet made himself a billionaire off Amerigroup, he’s surely close to it. The company’s website claims its “only business is managing publicly funded health programs for our Nation’s most vulnerable.” In other words, McWaters created a middleman that profits off Medicaid funding and drives up the cost of indigent care.

A few years ago Amerigroup settled for $225 million in a lawsuit over accusations that it categorically blocked eligible pregnant women from coverage. Since there’s relatively little media scrutiny of state-level candidates in Virginia, McWaters won a Senate seat despite the ethical stain of that lawsuit. Now he’s on the Education and Health committee, fighting against attempts to put Virginia in compliance with the Affordable Care Act and crafting legislation that will further enrich Amerigroup. This probably constitutes a conflict of interest somewhere, but not in Virginia, where it’s enough that he’s not Amerigroup’s CEO anymore.

McWaters attends the ultra-conservative Trinity Church in Virginia Beach. According to the church’s website, every last word in the Bible is “infallible” and divorce “is always contrary to God’s original intention.” Given that McWaters is a church elder, I’m guessing he had a hand in Trinity’s decision in 2007 to split from the Episcopal Church and “launch a new congregation outside the denomination they accuse of heresy.” The heretical act in question: the Episcopal Church’s ordination of Gene Robinson, a gay man, in 2003.

While I’m used to the brand of homophobia mandated by Leviticus, it’s not every day you hear folks in the infallible-Bible set speaking highly of the Plagues of Egypt. But Jeff McWaters isn’t your everyday Bible-thumper. The day before Hurricane Irene hit Virginia—at a time when many of us were scared for our safety—McWaters wrote cheerily on his Senate website that “The good news is that after this weekend, we will have endured five of the ten ancient biblical plagues.”

I’m uncertain which plagues McWaters believes have happened—frogs? lice? blood?—and which are to come. (I’m fairly sure death of the firstborn still lies in the future.) Whatever the case, it’s out of this worldview—one where hardship and destruction call for a Champagne toast—that SB 349 emerged.

I’ve always figured that if a legislator uses his public platform to scream loudly and daily that gays are attacking his family and country and morals and marriage, we might as well attack. So I’ve tried to shine lights on the Virginians who fill that bill, but I’ve overlooked McWaters. I regret any role my omission has played in the success of SB 349. From now on I’ll write about him in a manner that achieves parity with his own conduct toward gay people, especially since his ambition of late suggests a desire to maybe run for statewide office. It will be a pleasure, Senator.

One last thing, though: Between the anti-gay adoption ban and the anti-abortion ultrasound bill, Senator, you’re helping see to it that we’ll have a flood of unwanted babies. To prove your bills have been put forward in good faith, adopt several dozen or maybe a hundred of these children yourself, and I’ll call a truce on the coming war of words. Then again, the more kids you adopt, the more likely you’ll psychologically abuse a gay child into hating himself. I take it back about the truce.

Want to let Jeff McWaters know how you feel? Here are some ways to reach out to him:  Here’s his FB page. Legislative aides: Ross Grogg; ross@jeffmcwaters.com and Cheryl Simmons; cheryl@jeffmcwaters.com. Capital office: 804-698-7508. District office: 757-965-3700. General: info@jeffmcwaters.com. Amerigroup on FB.

For more of recent columns by John McManus:

Op-ed: The Year McDonnell’s Christian Right Took Over Virginia

Op-ed: Virginia Laws Treat Women Unfairly, and It’s Getting Worse

Op-ed: Train from NFK to Richmond Best Local News All Year

Yes We Can! (halt the gay equality movement in its tracks)

On Kerry Dougherty, Jesus, AIDS, and Art