Hateful foster parents will have more access to LGBTQ+ children under bill that TN just passed

A bill that would ensure that people with anti-LGBTQ+ prejudices can foster and adopt children passed in the Tennessee House of Representatives on Monday after having passed the state senate last month. The bill now goes to Gov. Bill Lee (R).

Introduced in both the Tennessee House and Senate in January, the “Tennessee Foster and Adoptive Parent Protection Act” would prohibit the state’s Department of Children’s Services (DCS) from denying prospective adoptive or foster parents’ “eligibility to foster or adopt based, in whole or in part, upon the parent’s sincerely held religious or moral beliefs regarding sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Related:

Tennessee Republicans introduce religious exemption bill protecting anti-LGBTQ+ foster parents

Opponents say the proposed law will lead to further traumatization of LGBTQ+ foster children.

The bill’s Republican supporters have argued that it is needed to expand the pool of potential foster and adoptive families in the state. But opponents warn that it could lead to LGBTQ+ youth, who are overrepresented in the U.S. foster care system, being placed in homes that do not accept their sexual or gender identities and with foster parents who may even subject them to conversion therapy.

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Studies have shown that many LGBTQ+ young people end up in the foster care system specifically because they have already faced rejection or mistreatment from their family of origin due to their sexual orientation or gender expression. Placing them with foster families with religious or moral objections to their identity would lead to further trauma, according to the bill’s opponents.

The bill “does not preclude the department from considering the religious or moral beliefs” of the child or their family of origin when determining placement. But as Tennessee Lookout noted, the bill’s language does not actually require the DCS to do so.

“This legislation isn’t concerned, in a very meaningful way, about the children,” state Rep. Justin Pearson (D) said during debate on Monday. “In fact, with each answer, you told me about the parents not being discriminated against, but we have to be worried about the children and prioritizing the children in our care who are LGBTQI.”

State Rep. Justin Jones (D) described the bill as immoral. “Discrimination cloaked under the guise of religion is still discrimination. Hate cloaked under the veil of religion is still hate,” Jones said Monday. “You stated that you want these kids to be sent into a home where they can be loved, where they can flourish. Can you explain the logic of a child being placed into a home where they are told they are wrong, that their identity is wrong, that they don’t belong, that they made a mistake with who they are? How can they flourish in such an environment?”

“This legislature has done everything that it can to bully LGBTQ+ children, and it is wrong,” Jones added. “This legislature should be ashamed.”

“Placing these children in homes where the fundamental truth of who they are will not be honored is in no one’s best interest,” Cathryn Oakley, senior director of legal policy at the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), said according to The Tennessean. “Not their best interest, not the state’s interest, not the interest of the parents either.”

HRC’s Associate Director Molly Whitehorn called on Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) to veto the bill, journalist Erin Reed reports. The bill, Whitehorn said, “turns the central principle of child welfare – that every decision should be made in service of the best interests of the child – on its head.”

Both Whitehorn and Oakley noted that the bill would allow LGBTQ+ kids to be subjected to the “abusive and discredited practice of so-called ‘conversion therapy’” by foster families.

The Tennessee Equality Project also noted that if Lee signs the bill into law, it could put the state’s entire child welfare system at risk. The bill, the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization said in a press release, would conflict with a new rule proposed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in September requiring all state and tribal foster care agencies to place LGBTQ+ children in homes where they will be supported, will not be subjected to so-called “conversion therapy,” and will have access to gender-affirming care.  

During a Tennessee Senate hearing last month, Oakley warned lawmakers that they risked losing federal funding if the bill becomes law.