Connecticut has launched a campaign to recruit more LGBT parents to become foster or adoptive parents, even as Kansas becomes the ninth state to allow child welfare agencies to discriminate against LGBTQ prospective parents or youth, among others, on the basis of the agencies’ religious beliefs.
Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy (D) said Thursday that his state wants to be known one that welcomes and embraces the LGBT community, reported the Associated Press. Connecticut Department of Children and Families Commissioner Joette Katz told the AP that there are currently about 100 LGBT adoptive families in the state’s system, and she wants to increase them to at least 250 by January.
And Gov. Malloy tweeted, “On any given day in our state, over 4,000 children are living in foster care. We want to spread the message that ALL families are valued as potential foster and adoptive families.”
In contrast, Kansas on Friday became the ninth state to allow taxpayer-funded child welfare agencies to discriminate against LGBTQ prospective parents, LGBTQ youth, or any others, such as single or divorced people or those of different religions, if providing them services goes against the agency’s religious or moral beliefs. Only a week ago, Oklahoma had become the eighth such state, after Alabama, Michigan, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, and Virginia. (Oklahoma’s move is perhaps not surprising; in 2005, it tried to ban recognition of adoptions enacted in other states by same-sex couples—a law struck down in federal court less than a year later.)
Lambda Legal asks any youth or adults who have experienced discrimination in Oklahoma’s or Kansas’s child welfare systems to call their Help Desk at 212.809.8585 or complete this online form.
If you have not experienced this kind of discrimination directly, but want to take action against these laws and bills, follow the Every Child Deserves a Family campaign (ECDF), which 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. Here’s more about their work.
For an extremely thorough look at these laws, their impact, and why the arguments in favor of them are specious, read “Kids Pay the Price,” by Denise Brogan-Kator, chief policy officer at the Family Equality Council, over at Slate. Among other excellent points, she notes that although these laws were motivated by anti-LGBTQ sentiment, the same type of religion-based argument has already been used in South Carolina to deny a married, different-sex, Jewish couple the opportunity to become foster parents—by a publicly-funded agency. This isn’t just an LGBTQ issue. These are insidious laws that could lead to widespread discrimination and reduce children’s access to homes with loving, capable parents.
And the wording of the Oklahoma law seems particularly tricky. It starts with this:
To the extent allowed by federal law, no private childplacing agency shall be required to perform, assist, counsel, recommend, consent to, refer, or participate in any placement of a child for foster care or adoption when the proposed placement would violate the agency’s written religious or moral convictions or policies.
Reading that, it seems the law is limited to private agencies. One could argue that as private agencies, they have the legal right to deny services as they wish, even if we might not personally approve of their doing so. But—further on in the text of the law, it says:
A state or local government entity may not deny a private child-placing agency any grant, contract, or participation in a government program because of the agency’s objection to performing, assisting, counseling, recommending, consenting to, referring, or participating in a placement that violates the agency’s written religious or moral convictions or policies.
Currey Cook, director of the Youth in Out-of-Home Care Project and counsel at Lambda Legal, confirmed for me, “That is the hook to allow government-funded agencies to continue to do foster care work and discriminate. An amendment to limit the bill’s protections to only agencies that do not receive state or federal funds was passed in the house, but not in the senate and did NOT make it into the final version.”
So yes, your tax dollars in Oklahoma (and eight other states) are hard at work supporting agencies that may now discriminate.
Kudos to Connecticut (the state where I grew up, as happens), for doing the right thing for children, for fairness, and in keeping with our country’s fundamental separation of church and state. The state motto is “Qui Transtulit Sustinet,” or “Who is transplanted still sustains,” which feels particularly appropriate for children in foster or adoptive homes. Thanks to the state for helping to sustain them.