I’m as suspicious as you are, but as far as donors go, Bethany is like most religious child services agencies: i.e. much less reliant on private donors than government contracts.

It’s kind of parallel to Catholic hospitals, which receive only incidental funding from Catholic church goers or religious philanthropists. Like other hospitals in the United States, they rely on payments from private insurance companies and government funding like Medicare in order to operate.

Typically, not even their professional administrators (who are frequently not even practicing Catholics) are paid through religious orders or dioceses.

In the case of Catholic hospitals, this hasn’t tended to make a great deal of difference. Bishops and orders still tend to run them with an iron doctrinal fist.

But if Evangelical agencies like Bethany are less reliant on a religious donor base, that could explain some independence of conscience.

Whether or not this ends up being highly significant on the ground is an open question, given employees will have some latitude in their actual behavior. But as far as I can see, Bethany’s national leadership doesn’t have much rational motivation to announce such a major national policy shift outside of actual sincerity.

If anything, with a Supreme Court decision coming up this spring that might well go in favor of anti-LGBTQ discrimination, Bethany “ought” to be taking a wait and see approach. The fact that they’re getting ahead of the high court tips in favor of their sincerity.