President Trump last week told attendees at the National Prayer Breakfast that adoption agencies can discriminate against LGBTQ people or others and still be able to get federal funding. A plan to make that happen is already in motion—but there’s action you can take against it.
He didn’t put it quite that way, of course; rather, he said, “my administration is working to ensure that faith-based adoption agencies are able to help vulnerable children find their forever families while following their deeply held beliefs.” But when those beliefs mean turning away people because they are LGBTQ, or of a different faith, or divorced, or single, or any other category that a faith-based child service agency might object to, that’s discrimination—paid for by our tax dollars. And it limits the number of otherwise-qualified people who would be able to provide loving homes for children.
The Washington Post says that a plan to make Trump’s vision a reality is already in motion, reporting, “In a 2020 draft budget request that has not been made public, the Department of Health and Human Services is seeking broad authority to include faith-based foster-care and adoption groups, which reject LGBTQ parents, non-Christians and others, in the nation’s $7 billion federally funded child-welfare programs.” Just a few weeks ago, HHS also granted South Carolina a waiver so that federally funded adoption and foster care agencies in the state may discriminate. The waiver came after Miracle Hill Ministries, a Protestant foster care agency, turned away a Jewish woman from serving as a mentor to foster youth because she did not share Miracle Hill’s beliefs.
The Post also notes that “HHS’s Office of Civil Rights argues in the draft proposal that some of the country’s oldest religious agencies in places such as Boston, Philadelphia and Washington have gone out of business because of nondiscrimination requirements that are themselves discriminatory.” But as Emily Hecht-McGowan, the former chief policy officer of Family Equality Council, explained to me in 2017, the closing of these agencies because they refused to place children with LGBTQ parents has made “no discernable impact” on children finding homes. First, these agencies did not make that many public placements to begin with. In Boston, Catholic Charities’ own annual surveys showed that nationally, they finalized 2,000 to 2,500 adoptions per year between 2008 and 2011 (when they stopped reporting this data), only about four percent of all adoptions. And the providers that closed transferred all their cases to other agencies. In fact, when Illinois cancelled its contract with Catholic Charities in 2012, the percentage of adoptions performed by public child welfare agencies in the state went up four percent. The reasons why are unclear, but the data argues against the idea that shuttering discriminatory agencies reduces the number of placements.
Trump’s actions come after 10 states have already implemented legislation that allows similar discrimination in child services. Tennessee could become number 11—and the discrimination in these states can be towards children and youth in care as well as adults wishing to offer homes.
There is some hope, however. The American Bar Association, the “national representative of the legal profession,” just weeks ago adopted a resolution that “Opposes laws, regulations, and rules or practices that discriminate against LGBT individuals in the exercise of the fundamental right to parent.” And as I wrote after HHS granted the waiver to South Carolina, a federal court last July ruled in a Philadelphia case that government-contracted child welfare agencies do not have a right to exclude same-sex couples or others from fostering children if they (the prospective parents) don’t fit an agency’s religious beliefs. The U.S. House in September rejected an amendment that would have allowed discrimination by taxpayer-funded child service agencies to be enshrined in federal law. And the Every Child Deserves a Family Campaign continues to work for children and youth in foster care and against such discrimination at the state and federal level.
The need for families remains urgent. There were nearly 443,000 children in foster care in the United States in FY 2017, with 123,000 of them awaiting adoption, according to HHS data, up from just over 436,000 and 116,000 in FY 2016. Let’s not forget, too, that children who lack permanent homes have added risk of major difficulties in transitioning to a healthy adulthood, the Movement Advancement Project (MAP) reminds us in its Issue Brief, “License to Discriminate.” On an economic level, the longer children are in care, the greater the costs to the child welfare system.
Not only that, but a new study in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, confirms other evidence that LGBTQ youth are overrepresented in unstable housing and foster care, which “points to a need for protections for LGBTQ youth in care and care that is affirming of their sexual orientation and gender identity.”
Couple all that with the fact that 3.8 million LGBTQ millennials are considering expanding their families in the coming years, with 2.9 million actively planning to do so, many through adoption. How on earth is it a good idea to allow otherwise qualified people to be stopped from adopting a child? How is it a good idea to allow agencies to discriminate against LGBTQ youth, which could include placing them with families not supportive of their LGBTQ identities?
Family Equality is encouraging people to call their Members of Congress and urge them to sign on to a letter by Reps. Katie Hill (D-CA)), Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY), and Angie Craig D-MN), opposing government-sanctioned discrimination in foster care. You can easily do so here simply by entering your home address—they’ll look up your members’ phone numbers, connect you, and provide talking points whether you have Democratic or Republican members.