In an appalling move, Utah Juvenile Court Judge Scott Johansen ordered a foster child removed from the home of a married two-mom couple, saying the child would be better off with heterosexual parents.
The women, April Hoagland and Beckie Peirce of Carbon County, had been fostering the girl for three months, after being approved as foster parents earlier this year. They are already raising Beckie’s 12- and 14-year-old children. They told KUTV that the foster child’s biological mother and state-appointed attorney support them, but that the judge said research indicated children raised by same-sex parents do not do as well as those raised by heterosexual parents. (He should perhaps read the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision on marriage, which quoted scads of evidence to the contrary. Or visit the What We Know site from Columbia Law School, which found that 73 of 77 peer-reviewed academic studies concluded that children of gay or lesbian parents fare no worse than other children.)
The couple has seven days to comply with the ruling. I’m hoping SWAT teams of lawyers from LGBTQ legal organizations will descend upon their town to protect them and file whatever is necessary to bring stability to the child’s life and keep her where everyone but the judge agrees she belongs.
Watch the KUTV coverage below.
