“Noxious”; “heartless and dumb”; “discriminatory and repugnant to our values”—just a few of the words that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo used to describe the Trump Administration’s proposed rule that would allow taxpayer-funded foster care and adoption agencies to discriminate against LGBTQ people and others. Cuomo pledged to fight the rule and to continue supporting LGBTQ people in New York who want to become parents or care for children in need.
While Cuomo’s language is strong, he uses it to refer to the rule, not to the person behind it. You can form your own opinion about whether the language applies to the person as well—but I admire Cuomo’s restraint in not stooping to Trump’s own level of public, personal, petty name calling. Cuomo’s statement yesterday in response to the rule that the Trump administration issued Friday says in part:
Trump’s proposal isn’t just discriminatory and repugnant to our values—it’s also heartless and dumb as it would deny countless children a loving family and a safe place to call home. If he moves forward with this rule, we’ll take legal action to stop it.
No matter what happens in Washington, New York State is and will continue to be a beacon of equality in this country. Our Human Rights Law and adoption regulations expressly prohibit discrimination against the LGBTQ community, including when it comes to adoption. I encourage any LGBTQ New Yorker who feels they are a victim of this discrimination to contact the State Division of Human Rights for assistance.
Our message to the Trump administration is simple: there is no place for hate in New York or in our nation, and we will not allow this noxious proposal to stop LGBTQ New Yorkers from becoming parents or providing care to children in need.
California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia, like New York, also have laws explicitly banning discrimination in adoption based on sexual orientation and gender identity; Maryland, Massachusetts, and Nevada ban it based on sexual orientation alone, according to data from the Movement Advancement Project. (Michigan had banned sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination, but a recent court ruling seems to have allowed it once again.) No other governors have yet issued statements akin to Cuomo’s, however, as far as I am aware.
The remaining states do not have explicit anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people in child services. Ten states (Alabama, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Virginia) in fact now explicitly permit “religious exemptions” to those who wish to discriminate in adoption and foster care.
Supporters of religious exemptions in child services have argued that laws which cut public funds for agencies that discriminate have forced religiously-based child service agencies to close and are thus reducing the number of homes for children. Yes, some agencies have chosen to close rather than place children with LGBTQ parents. But as Emily Hecht-McGowan, former chief policy officer of Family Equality Council, explained to me in 2017, this has made “no discernable impact” on children finding homes. These agencies did not make that many public placements to begin with, and the ones that closed were able to transfer all their cases to other agencies. The problem is not that agencies are closing, but that otherwise qualified prospective parents are turned away simply because of their LGBTQ status or religion.
We should remember, too, that while the new Trump rule was in large part motivated by anti-LGBTQ sentiment, it also permits discrimination on the basis of religion and applies not only to child services, but to the entire range of HHS programs, including those dedicated to youth homelessness, HIV, STI, and substance abuse prevention, among others. Read more about it and learn what you can do to stop it here.