KARA Public Service Announcement (30 seconds)
Now that taxpayer-funded welfare agencies
can refuse to work with
LGBTQ & other families because of religion,
Will the church step up to fill the need for
foster and forever homes for abandoned children?
20% of same-sex couples with children have an adopted a child compared with 3% of straight couples (this will become important at the end of the article).
For decades, Evangelical Christians and the Catholic Church have led the charge to stop Gay couples from adopting or fostering America’s most vulnerable children. This month, the supreme court decided the Church could refuse gay couples the right to adopt.
In 2010, Catholic Charities had revenues of $4.7 billion, $2.9 billion of which came from the US government. It seems inappropriate that a government funded organization should be able to discriminate so blatantly with the support of our supreme court.
At times, the Catholic Church has ended all foster/adoption services in communities allowing same-sex couples parental rights (most recently, after the Supreme Court threw out the Church’s case to end Gay adoption).
Most of us in the field of Child Protection would agree that this is less of what Jesus would do and more like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
There never have been enough foster or adoptive parents for the thousands of traumatized children in need of care. It’s not uncommon for children to age out of foster care without being adopted.
Especially special needs children. 80% of youth aging out lead dysfunctional lives.
Unfortunately, many Christian American’s are more concerned with religious dogma than providing at risk children a safe and loving home.
My guess is few if any people on the wrong side of this debate have ever come to know a State Ward child.
What’s it like growing up in a toxic home or being placed in a stretched thin foster care system or County Group Home? What’s it like being ten or twelve years old with trauma and behavior problems knowing you may never have a forever home. Babies and toddlers are much more adoptable. It takes a real commitment to open your home to older children for adoption and not enough families are doing it.
To children taken from the only home they have ever known and placed in the cold hands of the County, a family offering a forever home looks pretty good.
Denying a traumatized child the possibility of a forever home with parents that know what rejection, suffering and punishment are and what the sensation of being all alone in the world is cruel.
To put a finer point on this misunderstanding or hypocracy, Gay couples have been much more willing to adopt hard to adopt children than straight couples.
As a CASA guardian ad Litem volunteer, I think it’s because the LGBTQ community identifies with the issues of self- hate and isolation that that a foster child is bringing into their home.
LGBTQ parents have lived with the same kinds of feelings and fears abandoned children live with. Self-doubt, self-hate and being ostracized in the classroom and the community are familiar to same-sex couples.
Think about it. Growing up gay is a trauma to start with. Especially for those old enough to be married and able to adopt who came into this community when it was absolutely uncomfortable to come out and declare a gay lifestyle.
The traumas of growing up gay and growing up abused and neglected are similar in many ways.
In my experience in child protection as a volunteer CASA guardian ad Litem, gay couples are exceedingly well suited for raising State Ward children. They have both the empathy and understanding of what it’s like to suffer multiple adverse childhood experiences and be different and all alone in a cold world.
Add to that this articles opening statistic that 20% of same-sex couples with children have an adopted a child compared with 3% of straight couples makes a pretty strong argument that there is a great deal more concern for other people’s children in the LGBTQ community that there has been in the larger community as a whole.
Shame on the Church for refusing to place children with gay families. It is already way too hard to find forever families for our abused children – please stop making it harder.
And of course, what would Jesus do?
KARA reports on the issues of child abuse.
This article submitted by CASA volunteer Mike Tikkanen
All Adults Are The Protectors of All Children
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