The Family Research Council, the Alliance Defending Freedom the Heritage Foundation, and other anti-LGBTQ groups (and their supporters) have been heavily promoting the idea of "religious exemptions" laws with regards to adoption and foster care agencies. That would mean that these agencies would be able to discriminate against LGBTQs wanting to participate in foster care and adoption while still being able to receive tax dollars.
The idea is wrong and insulting to the LGBTQ community. Our hard earned tax dollars shouldn't be made available to entities which would discriminate against us. And now, according to a new report, there is another reason to oppose these laws. They actually make it more difficult for children in foster care and wanting to be adopted to find homes
From MSNBC:
Religious exemption laws allowing child placement agencies to deny LGBTQ prospective parents from fostering or adopting are exacerbating the current “child welfare crisis,” according to a new report from the liberal Center for American Progress (CAP), Voice for Adoption and the North American Council on Adoptable Children.. . . In 2017, there were about 443,000 children in foster care across the U.S., according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Each year, some 50,000 children are adopted through the U.S. child welfare system, but about 20,000 others “age out” before being placed with an adoptive family, according to HHS.In addition to helping place more children in permanent homes, the CAP report claims taxpayers could save hundreds of millions of dollars by removing barriers blocking LGBTQ people from becoming adoptive parents.. . . The report warns that turning qualified prospective parents away will add unnecessary stress to “an already stressed system,” and it notes LGBTQ people represent a an “important subgroup of potential parents.”“Same-sex couples raising children are seven times more likely to be raising a foster child and seven times more likely to be raising an adopted child than their different-sex counterparts,” the report states, citing data from the UCLA’s Williams Institute. “They are also more likely to adopt older children and children with special needs, who are statistically less likely to be adopted.”
The report also looked at two states which have these "religious exemptions" and found that the number of homes which could foster and adopt children were tremendously reduced:
The CAP report undertakes case studies of Michigan and Texas, two large states that have adopted relatively broad religious exemption laws. (Policy analyst at the Center for American Progress and one of the report’s author Frank J.) Bewkes described the situation in these states as “pretty bleak,” and the report describes an acute placement crisis in each of them.
“Nationwide, 28 percent of youth had been in foster care for two or more years in fiscal year 2016,” according to the CAP report, which cited HHS data. “In that same period, 38 percent of Texas youth and 52 percent of Michigan youth had been in care for two or more years.”In Texas, which has had a religious exemption law for child placement agencies since 2017, the number of foster and adoptive homes working with licensed child placement agencies has decreased nearly 40 percent from 2012 to 2017, according to data from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.And in Michigan, which has had a religious exemption law for child placement agencies since 2015, the number of licensed foster homes dropped by more than 20 percent from 2012 to 2017, according to data from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
The report and article are both good sources of information for the next time FRC and ADF claim that they are pushing for these exemptions because of the children. It's clear that they aren't thinking of the children at all..
God forbid anything distracts them from their mission of undermining LGBTQ equality and safety.
