All children deserve access to safe and loving homes. Nationwide, there is a shortage of available homes for the nearly 450,000 children in foster care.
But despite this shortage, “religious freedom” policies at both the state and federal levels allow agencies to turn away qualified foster and adoptive parents—including LGBTQ, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim families and individuals, among others—simply because they do not pass an agency’s religious or moral litmus test.
Our executive director Sandy Santana and social justice activist Ruth Messinger recently came forward to condemn these harmful policies. Writing in The Forward, Sandy and Ruth explain why this discrimination is ultimately harmful to children:
Without enough homes and the support of loving parents, far too many young people end up in overburdened systems and state-run institutions that cannot meet their needs. Policymakers must not allow providers to decide who is a suitable foster parent based on anything other than their ability to care for a child.
Read the full piece here.