Fighting for Children Against Religious Exemption Laws

(Originally published as my Mombian newspaper column.) As a growing number of states allow child welfare agencies to discriminate against LGBTQ prospective foster and adoptive parents and LGBTQ youth in care, a new campaign is fighting back—but it needs our help and our stories.

The Every Child Deserves a Family campaign (ECDF), launched last December, brings together dozens of LGBTQ, child welfare, faith-based, and civil rights organizations into a coalition chaired by Family Equality Council and PFLAG. It aims to promote the best interests of all children in the child welfare system by increasing their access to qualified caregivers, and to ensure LGBTQ youth in the system get safe, supportive care. In the current era, that means resisting those using religion to discriminate.

A Growing Threat

Michigan, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Virginia have for several years allowed child welfare agencies to cite their religious beliefs or moral convictions as reasons to reject otherwise qualified parents, including LGBTQ ones, single ones, and ones of different religions. In 2017, similar bills passed in Alabama, South Dakota, and Texas, and ones are pending in Oklahoma and Georgia. Most also allow discrimination against LGBTQ children in care, which could mean placing them with a family that does not support their LGBTQ identity, or even wishes to subject them to widely discredited and damaging “conversion therapy.”

Only three states plus D.C. explicitly protect prospective foster and adoptive parents against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity; five more protect based on sexual orientation alone.

The danger is at the federal level, too. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on January 18 announced a new rule that will allow health care workers to refuse medical services if providing them violates their religious or moral beliefs. A new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division within its Office for Civil Rights will enforce it. While the rule targets medical procedures, including abortion, sterilization, and assisted suicide, Julie Kruse, federal policy advocate at Family Equality, said in an interview that HHS’ language and actions seem to indicate they intend the division’s scope to encompass all of HHS’ activities, including human services such as adoption and foster care.

The Need for Homes

Federal data indicates more than 440,000 children are currently in foster care, 117,000 of whom are waiting for adoption. More than 20,000 children age out of the system each year without finding a permanent family, putting them more at risk for joblessness, homelessness, incarceration, and other problems.

LGBTQ parents “can be part of the solution,” said Kruse, citing a study from UCLA’s Williams Institute that indicated approximately two million LGB adults were interested in adopting.

And LGBTQ youth are over-represented in foster care, with studies also showing they are likely to have had more foster placements (less permanency), and more likely to have run away or been homeless, kicked out, or trafficked.

A Broad Campaign

The new ECDF campaign grew out of earlier work by Family Equality and other organizations to support the bipartisan “Every Child Deserves a Family Act,” first introduced in both houses of Congress in 2009 and reintroduced in every Congress since. The bill would withhold federal child welfare funds from states that discriminate against LGBTQ prospective parents or LGBTQ youth in care, and allow redress in federal courts. With the growing number of state laws intended to withhold funds from those who don’t allow discrimination, however, and an anti-LGBTQ federal administration, “We needed to have a combined federal and state campaign,” explained Kruse.

Frank J. Bewkes, policy analyst at the Center for American Progress (CAP), one of the coalition’s founding members, explained in an interview, “While CAP believes that the free exercise of religion is a fundamental American value, we’re increasingly seeing that right being used as a weapon instead of a shield, which we think is a corruption of its purpose.” Now, he said, “That weapon is harming some of our most vulnerable youths. With the ECDF campaign, we’re mobilizing to combat these religious exemption bills for child placement agencies as they arise, trying to be more offensive in our strategy, or at the very least, more unified and organized in our defense.”

Kruse hopes the new campaign will build on past successes. Family Equality partnered with other advocates to defeat discriminatory child welfare bills in Florida, Georgia, and Oklahoma, and defeated ones Alabama, Michigan, and Texas three times before they passed. They are now on the ground again in Oklahoma and Georgia, working with local groups and national organizations such as Lambda Legal, to combat new bills there.

The Need for Stories

To support the campaign, Family Equality and CAP have launched “Welcoming All Families,” an initiative to collect stories of anti-LGBTQ discrimination (and the benefits of inclusion) in adoption and foster care. They want stories from LGBTQ adoptive and foster parents, current or former adoptees, and foster youth, child welfare providers, faith leaders, and allies that they can share with state and federal elected officials and use in media placements, videos, and reports.

Anti-LGBTQ discrimination in the child welfare system “is a topic that all too often lacks coverage,” Bewkes explained. “We need to show how harmful these laws are. We also want to hear positive stories that we can hold up and say, ‘That’s a family; that’s love,’ because those are messages that any audience can understand.”

Kruse said her goal is to get stories from all 435 Congressional districts across the country, “to show every representative and senator this is an issue that impacts their constituents.” Visit welcomingallfamilies.org to submit yours.

A Plan for Action

People should also visit Everychilddeservesa.family to learn more and sign up for action alerts, Kruse advised.

Additionally, they can give feedback on the new HHS rule, which is open for public comments until March 27. These comments can “have a huge impact,” she said. Visit regulations.gov and search for “Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights in Health Care.”

Kruse also encouraged people to ask their employers to oppose religious exemption legislation that would harm children in care. She noted the many companies that took action against broader anti-LGBTQ bills in North Carolina and Indiana because they wanted the states in which they’re based to be welcoming to LGBTQ employees. Similarly, “Once they realize that their LGBTQ employees may want to form families, they’ll realize this is an important business decision for them, too,” she added. “I think it’s simply a question of getting the education out there and building that support.”

People should also ask their members of Congress to co-sponsor the Every Child Deserves a Family Act, she said. Even though the current Congress is unlikely to pass it, Kruse feels that if the Democrats regain a majority in the fall elections, the bill could make it into law.

Another way to help is through letters to the editor, “saying that these discriminatory bills are out there, that they are increasing in number, and that they harm kids,” she suggested.

Kruse referenced a Public Religion Research Institute survey from last September that found 68 percent of Americans oppose discrimination against same-sex couples in federally funded adoption, including a majority of Republicans and evangelicals. “I think as soon as the general public realizes what’s going on, we will win,” she said. “Anybody who cares about kids should care about this issue.”