Policy | Family Talk

Will Foster Parents Be Required to Bow to LGBTQ Demands?

Written by Gary Bauer | October 06, 2023
If you are part of a Christian family hoping and praying to be able to provide foster care to a child, you may very well be blocked from doing so by the Biden administration.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), just told foster care agencies that it would not be "safe and appropriate" for them to place a foster child with a family "who attempted to undermine, suppress, or change the sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression of a child…"

In other words, if your seven-year-old foster son starts wearing dresses and women's make-up, you must "affirm" his new identity as a girl rather than get the boy some help.

ACF then spells out specifically what they expect from foster care agencies: "To be considered a safe and appropriate placement [of a child], a provider is expected to utilize the child's identified pronouns, chosen name, and allow the child to dress in an age-appropriate manner that the child believes reflects their self-identified gender identity and expression." Under those circumstances the Biden administration asserts foster home agencies would be "responsible for 'not plac[ing] LGBTQI+ [sic] children' with that family."

Everything in this proposal is being driven by ideology, not science. It even seems to suggest that a foster family would be required to get hormonal and surgical treatments for children who are gender confused. In spite of claims to the contrary, there is growing evidence that these treatments are themselves unsafe and increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes and suicide. LGBTQ+ trans ideology is sweeping through multiple government programs to the detriment of our children. We pray that sanity will return soon.