Life is difficult enough for any child who ends up in foster care, and perhaps especially so for teenagers who are questioning their sexual identity. It should go without saying that foster parents in such a situation should be knowledgeable about LGBTQ issues and supportive of the child’s emotional and medical needs and preferences.
Yet 19 state attorneys general, including Missouri’s Andrew Bailey, are challenging a proposed federal rule that would require states to ensure that foster parents who take in kids with sexual identity issues are trained in those issues, will facilitate appropriate services and agree to things like respecting the child’s preferred pronouns.
The attorneys general claim such a rule would amount to unconstitutional infringements on foster families’ freedom of religion and speech. It’s a bizarre argument that attempts to turn abused kids into ideological fodder for the culture wars.
The proposed rule under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is premised on the assertion that LGBTQ youths are more likely statistically to end up in foster care due to conflicts within their biological families. Though that assertion jibes with common sense, the attorneys general, in a Nov. 27 letter to the agency, challenge it, saying the agency’s data is incomplete.
In any case, there’s no question that suicide rates among LGBTQ youth are substantially higher than in other populations. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report this year found that 22% of high school students overall say they have considered suicide, but among LGBTQ teens, it was 45%. That alone would seem to support the creation of added protections when those youths are placed in foster care.
Under the proposed rule, state agencies making placement decisions for kids who identify as LGBTQ would be required to “ensure that a safe and appropriate placement is available” if the child requests it.
“Safe and appropriate” is defined as “an environment free of hostility, mistreatment, or abuse based on the child’s LGBTQI+ status,” with foster parents who are “trained … to provide for the needs of the child related to the child’s self-identified sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.” The rule would require that kids be made aware of their right to request such a placement.
How could Bailey and 18 other attorneys general oppose that rule? The problem, according to their letter, is that it infringes on the religious freedom of the prospective foster parents in that it would “remove faith-based providers from the foster care system if they will not conform their religious beliefs on sexual orientation and gender identity.”
That’s misleading and inflammatory. The proposed rule doesn’t require all foster parents to be accepting of LGBTQ kids, just those foster parents who want to be approved to care for such kids. The proposal specifies that it “would not (emphasis added) require that every provider become designated as a safe and appropriate placement for LGBTQI+ children” — only that each foster system “includes sufficient placements for LGBTQI+ children that meet these standards.”
The attorneys general are essentially arguing that foster parents who emphatically aren’t accepting of LGBTQ kids’ self-declared identities (based on religious objections or any other reason) should nonetheless be put in charge of such kids. Thus would they elevate the foster parents’ right to act on an exclusionary belief system above the rights of abused or neglected kids to live in an environment free of such judgment.
Again: Nothing in the proposed federal rules say that foster parents who refuse to accept self-identified LGBTQ kids on their own terms can’t be foster parents, only that they can’t be foster parents to LGBTQ kids who have specifically requested an environment accepting of their self identity.
Why wouldn’t foster parents who have a problem with LGBTQ issues simply agree to take on other kids instead? Heaven knows there are plenty of troubled kids with plenty of issues to go around. HHS should reject this bid by Bailey and his cohorts to elevate religious intolerance above the welfare of abused children, and stand by the proposed rules.
