
Just before the end of the year, the State of California notified all those concerned with the welfare of children of a newly revised policy necessitated by the passage of Senate Bill 407 in 2023. To implement the new law, an “all county letter” from the California Health and Human Services Agency went out on November 14, 2024.
Deciphering Bureaucratese
“A Resource Family (RF) applicant and approved RF must demonstrate an ability and willingness to meet the needs of a child or a non-minor dependent (NMD) inclusive of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression (SOGIE).” It went on to specify that ”all caregivers must receive training on cultural sensitivity regarding SOGIE and best practices for providing care to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) children and NMDs.
A bit of translation from the peculiar bureaucratic language is in order. Until recently, a “Resource Family” was known as a foster family – a family that took in a homeless child and raised them as its own until such children’s natural families could once again take care of them, the children matured or were adopted permanently into another family. A “non-minor dependent” is someone between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one who is eligible to continue to receive foster care assistance from the state, most often because of a medical condition that prevents further education or employment.
Despite the complex language, the main point is easy to grasp. Anyone who opposes the LGBT agenda cannot be a foster parent in California.
Foster Families vs. Institutions
Being a foster parent has always required a rare mix of love, mental discipline and responsiveness to the child’s particular emotional needs. There has always been a shortage of such homes, which has grown steadily worse. In 2023, Boston-area Public Radio station WBUR reported, “There’s a critical shortage of foster homes. More than half of all states saw a significant decline in licensed foster homes last year. Some states saw cuts as high as 61%.”
When foster homes are unavailable, the only choice is an institution. In an ideal world, these facilities would communicate solid values, have a devoted staff, an abundance of mental and physical health resources and programs that help the children find a path to moral, productive and happy lives. Today, few institutions are ideal.
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“I do not believe that kids who are institutionalized get enough love at all. I believe they’re treated as objects.”
This quotation comes from an organization called “Children’s Rights.” Next to it is a photo of a young woman. Under it is a link suggesting that viewers “Listen to Alyssa’s Story.” She speaks of having spent much of her teenage years in an “RTC” – Residential Treatment Center. While in this unnamed facility, she speaks of being treated, in her own words, as a “robot chore doer.”
The Duty to Care for Orphans and Abandoned Children
Such care was not God’s plan. Indeed, one of the Church’s oldest tenets, found in Exodus 22:22, is “You shall not hurt a widow or an orphan.” The penalty for mistreating such unfortunates is severe, as the following verses lay out in no uncertain terms. “If you hurt them, they will cry out to me, and I will hear their cry: And my rage shall be enkindled, and I will strike you with the sword, and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.”
Over the centuries, many good Christian people have opened their homes to such desperate children. When the number of needy little ones exceeded the community’s ability to shelter and feed them, Holy Mother Church established orphanages to care for them. Care for the defenseless child came to be a vital standard of Christian charity.
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Then, beginning in the sixteenth century and extending into the twentieth, governments gradually assumed control and a kind of state guardianship of helpless children. Without the Christian impulse, the orphanages deteriorated. Even Church-affiliated institutions became increasingly dependent on state regulation and financial support.
Christian Parents and the Atheist State
The relationship between Christian foster parents and the state has been difficult for at least the last half-century. On one hand, the children are legally wards of the state, and those supporting the fictitious “wall of separation between Church and State” always looked at Christian foster parents with a wary eye. At the same time, thousands of children needed homes, and Christians were often the only available foster parents.
A working relationship was established that allowed Christian foster parents to impart moral values while helping these wards of the state. These values usually bore fruit by giving these children excellent formation and a greater chance for success in later life.
Upsetting the Delicate Balance
However, California’s LGBT lobby found Christian foster parents to be a threat to those children who are influenced by the LGBT ideology. It drafted California’s Senate Bill 407 and guided it to passage.
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One of the bill’s supporters is Senator Scott Weiner, a man with no sympathy for Christian parents, describing them as “families that destroy the lives of their LGBTQ kids.” In his mind, the bill is not legislating against Christianity.
“[I]t’s not about what people think. It’s what about people do and how they’re going to raise these kids and going to do everything they can to be good parents to these kids and not torture them and not push them to suicide.”
Nor does the legislature think that placing heterosexual children in heterosexual homes is an answer. Senator Weiner’s is a fantasy world that prizes identity overall. Unfortunately, identities are elastic and subject to change in unforeseen directions.
“[W]e don’t know. Instead of being placed in a home when they’re one or three or seven or ten or twelve or whatever and we have no idea if they are LGBTQ and at some point they come out and that if that parent is hostile, that’s a huge problem.”
So, to Senator Weiner, institutions that provide no moral instruction are preferable to Christian foster parents. This is persecution against those who profess Christianity and must be opposed.
Photo Credit: © Julia Jones – stock.adobe.com