A leading pro-life legal group is bashing Joe Biden for trying to push Christian groups out of the foster care system.
As LifeNews reported yesterday, Biden wants to effectively ban Christians from adopting children in the foster care system. Biden wants to essentially ban Christians from adopting foster care children based on their religious beliefs and opposition to radical LGBTQ ideology. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has proposed a new rule that would prohibit families who do not support LGBTQ ideology from caring for foster children.
But that’s not Biden’s only line of attack against Christian Americans.
Biden’s Office of Management and Budget wants to adopt language in a proposed guidance for grants that would harm faith-based recipients of federal programs. Essentially Biden wants to cut off Christian groups from getting federal grants for foster care.
Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Matt Bowman told LifeNews that his group submitted a public comment in opposition to Biden’s plan, asking the administration to restore language that specifically protects free speech and religious liberty.
“Ejecting faith-based groups from programs such as foster care and adoption will lead to fewer children served. Yet that is exactly what the Biden administration is threatening to do with its new proposed guidance for beneficiaries of federal programs,” he explained.
Bowman told LifeNews: “The proposed guidance violates the U.S. Constitution and contradicts the rulings of several federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court that held that government funding conditions cannot compel religious groups to act in violation of their sincerely held beliefs. Federal agencies can’t single out people of certain beliefs to punish, sideline, or discriminate against. We urge the administration to swiftly amend its proposed guidance to affirm every American’s First Amendment rights.”
With regard to Biden’s attempt to push individual Christians out of foster care, pro-life advocates are fighting that as well.
According to the Social Security Act, federally funded foster care agencies must provide “safe and proper care” for foster children. The United States Administration for Children and Families (ACF), a division within HHS, proposed that foster families meet three specific criteria to ensure that LGBTQ-identifying children are in a “safe” and “nurturing” home.
Those criteria essentially force Christian parents to affirm a child’s pretend gender as opposed to supporting children truthfully based on their biological sex and providing them appropriate support and resources to move away from the radical leftist ideology that pushes hormones, sex changes and mutilation of children to conform to its extreme sexual agenda.
“Responding to the radical proposal, 19 Republican attorneys general are pushing the Biden administration to back down on a new rule they say will effectively exclude Christian families from fostering kids and jeopardize the foster care system nationwide,” Fox News reports.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, along with 18 of his GOP colleagues, sent a letter Monday to the Department of Health and Human Services alerting them that a new proposed rule that alters requirements for foster care families violates the Constitution and discriminates against people who practice the Christian faith.
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In addition to discriminating against religion, the attorneys general argue that the proposed rule “will harm children by limiting the number of available foster homes, harm families by risking kinship placements, and harm states by increasing costs and decreasing care options.”
“These injuries will be suffered while HHS fails to solve a problem that the proposed rule does not even prove exists in foster care,” the AGs write.
According to the letter, the rule “seeks to accomplish indirectly what the Supreme Court found unconstitutional just two years ago: remove faith-based providers from the foster care system if they will not conform their religious beliefs on sexual orientation and gender identity.”
The Supreme Court in 2021, in a case called Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, ruled that Philadelphia’s refusal to contract with a Catholic social services group unless it agreed to certify same-sex couples as foster parents violated the First Amendment.
Alliance Defending Freedom Vice President of Litigation Strategy and Center for Conscience Initiatives Jonathan Scruggs told LifeNews that he’s already seeing discrimination against Christians,
He indicated there is a formal comment ADF attorneys submitted Monday with the U.S. Administration for Children and Families, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, urging it to withdraw a proposed rule that he says “will deter families from fostering children and will make it harder to place children with capable, loving parents.”
“Vulnerable children in America’s foster care system are urgently in need of loving families to care for them. Yet the Biden administration is threatening to put politics over parents, and gender ideology above children’s best interests. We are greatly concerned the administration’s proposed rule will deter capable, loving parents from fostering and adopting children,” Scruggs said.
He told LifeNews: “Already, we are seeing this at the state level. ADF attorneys represent a mother in Oregon after state officials categorically excluded her from the state’s adoption and foster system because of her common-sense belief that girls and boys are biologically different. We urge the administration to swiftly withdraw this harmful rule and instead take action to protect religious liberty, parental rights, and the safety and well-being of children in the welfare system.”
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