Liberals Want Christians Out of the Foster Care System
A logical person would conclude that when there is an influx of children in the foster care system, it is helpful to have as many compassionate, competent foster parents as possible. Not according to California “logic,” where despite increasing numbers of foster children, some LGBTQ+ activists want to exclude Christian foster parents.
That’s the message California Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) sent through his bill (SB 407) that would create additional qualifications to ensure potential foster parents are affirming of a foster child’s sexual orientation or gender identity – which Wiener claims is 30 percent of all foster children. In other words, to care for a foster child and give them a loving home in California, potential foster parents must swear allegiance to the LGBTQ+ ideology.
Mr. Wiener thinks foster parents—many of whom are Christians—who don’t submit to the LGBTQ+ ideology are incapable of offering a loving home to vulnerable kids. He clearly knows nothing about the mission of Christian families to care for orphans.
Our friends at the California Family Council commented in a recent article that “foster parents with biblical and traditional views about gender and sexuality provide loving and stable homes to thousands of California foster kids.” That doesn’t matter to Wiener, who insists these parents must cast aside their sincerely-held religious beliefs to care for these vulnerable kids.
According to the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), SB 407 is unconstitutional, and violates the Supreme Court’s recent holding in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (2021), which found the City of Philadelphia had violated a Catholic foster care agency’s free exercise of religion when the city refused to contract with the agency because the agency would not place children in homes with same-sex couples.
This reminds me of what happened here in Virginia recently, when a bill nearly passed the legislature that would have repealed statutory conscience protections for faith-based adoption and foster care agencies, a law The Family Foundation helped create in 2012. In 2011, some LGBTQ+ advocacy groups were pressuring Virginia’s Board of Social Services to end licensure for any faith-based adoption and foster care agencies if they maintained a biblical understanding of marriage. The Board eventually rejected this measure, which caused these groups to bring a bill in 2020 and 2021 to accomplish their goal – drive Christians out of the foster care system so they can implement their LGBTQ+ agenda.
Thankfully, due to the lobbying efforts of TFF and other groups, we were able to educate legislators on this issue and help them realize that pushing Christian adoption and foster care agencies out of the foster care system would result in thousands of kids without a loving home.
While we halted the legislative effort, the administrative state is still putting pressure on adoption and foster care agencies to deny Christian families. Last year, the Virginia Beach Social Services office denied Ben and Carly Hathaway’s application to become foster parents because it believed the Hathaways’ views were “incompatible” with the mission of DSS. In other words, you are too committed to your Christian values to serve as approved foster parents.
The Hathaways turned to Founding Freedoms Law Center, the law arm of The Family Foundation, to provide legal representation. FFLC was able to convince the Virginia Beach DSS office that its actions were discriminatory, which eventually led to the approval of the Hathaways’ application.
What is often forgotten is the Christian church has been the leader in protecting young children and caring for them when they are abandoned or lack parents. In a 2021 edition of The Christian Lawyer, I wrote the following:
“It was the early Christian church - not government – that unquestionably changed how orphans and vulnerable children are cared for in society. It was common practice by society in that day, and even encouraged by the Roman ruling government, to leave unwanted newborns or infants with certain physical deformities to be abandoned - left to die from exposure to the elements or by being eaten by wild animals. In fact, the teachings of Jesus to ‘care for the orphans’ (James 1:27) was a highly controversial and revolutionary statement of the day because vulnerable children had virtually no rights. Suffice it to say, the Christian church was the first to extend the sanctity of life to the care of orphans.”
As I concluded in that article, a similar dynamic is happening in California, where modern day liberalism is elevating the LGBTQ+ ideology above finding loving homes for abandoned and vulnerable kids, and people who hold to traditional biblical beliefs about sex, sexuality, and distinctions between males and females need not apply to become a foster care parent in California.
Liberals don’t care what happens to young kids in foster care if Christians are forced out of the foster care system, so long as they protect the LGBTQ+ ideology.
What drives them to pursue these radical changes is, at the very minimum, contempt for a Christian orthodoxy that holds marriage is between one man and one woman and that—from the mouth of Jesus—we are made either male or female. And they will not stop until American families are completely broken down and remade into the LGBTQ+ image.
