The Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services recently removed a Biden-era rule which required that children struggling with gender dysphoria be placed in pro-LGBTQ+ homes, according to original reporting from the Daily Wire. The Biden administration’s presumed goal was to “protect” LGBTQ+ children by placing them in families that affirmed their gender identity.
In reality, this rule would have left children homeless, orphaned and confused. And it was being wielded like a discriminatory cudgel against conservative Christian families seeking to adopt or foster. Americans have an obligation to fight this policy – and the ideology behind it – to prevent future administrations from similarly discriminating against conservatives and Christians at children’s expense.
Think about it: There are an estimated 70,000 foster children across America waiting to be placed in a loving home. And according to AdoptUSKids, the average wait these foster children experience is around three years. These children are already at a disadvantage by the mere fact that they do not have one of the greatest guarantees of future success: present, loving parents. Yet in typical fashion, the Biden administration decided in April 2024 that these children would be better off in pro-LGBTQ+ homes, or nowhere, than in a stable, traditional family.
The irony of this rule is that it hurts the very foster children it claims to champion. It would require that children – who are already struggling from not having two present, biological parents – be encouraged to believe potentially harmful ideas about their gender and bodies. Children who believe they are the opposite sex, for example, could be encouraged by LGBTQ+ parents to undergo permanent, life-altering surgeries that many gender-confused children later regret.
They could also be abused. In recent years, Americans have been shocked to learn of disproportionately numerous incidents in which gay couples or pro-LGBTQ+ families opened their doors to foster children, or adopted children via surrogacy, and used them for abusive purposes. According to leftist logic, and the Biden administration’s foster rule, these parents are a better fit for gender-confused children merely because they are “affirming”. In this view, Christian or Catholic parents are “abusive” if they hold traditional beliefs about gender and sexuality.
This discriminatory viewpoint – and the Biden administration’s proposed rule – would have prevented thousands of foster children from finding happy, loving homes. As HHS Assistant Secretary Alex Adams told the Daily Wire: “We have too few foster families nationally,” adding later that the US only has “57 homes for every 100 kids coming in… when there’s not enough homes, kids end up in short-term rentals, hotels, government office spaces, etc.”
Just look at Massachusetts, where similar ideology was weaponised against Christian families. A Catholic couple, Michael and Catherine Burke, completed the lengthy 30-hour process of interviews, training and assessments in pursuit of their goal of becoming foster parents in the state – only for their application to be denied because of the couple’s traditional beliefs about gender and sexuality.
In a lawsuit against Kate Walsh, Secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services, the Burkes claim they were told their rejection was because they “would not be affirming to a child who identified as LGBTQIA”. This was especially outrageous, they argue, because the Burkes had not even selected a child for adoption – meaning that the state disqualified them from adopting any child because of their beliefs on the slight chance that a child might later experience gender confusion.
More concerningly, the Department of Children and Families explicitly stipulates that foster parents must affirm children’s “sexual orientation or gender identity”. In practice, this excludes faithful Catholics and Christians from the possibility of adoption.
Foster children were predictably caught in the crossfire. There are around 1,500 children waiting for homes in the Massachusetts foster care system, including more than 300 children in the Burkes’ area. The situation has become so dire that the state is housing some of these children in hospitals – while denying faithful Catholics the opportunity to adopt.
That is leftist gender ideology in action. And that is what supporters of the Biden administration hope will become permanent should Democrats regain control of the White House.
Thankfully, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas vacated this rule before it took effect. The Trump administration’s recent move essentially ensures that the discriminatory rule has been permanently nullified. Yet Americans should still be extremely concerned that the rule was proposed in the first place – and that remnants of its ideology exist in states across America.
