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Adoptive families using Miracle Hill also have to sign a doctrinal statement affirming that marriage is between a man and a woman, and refuting the existence of transgender people altogether.
The federal initiative would turn the waiver granted to Miracle Hill into national policy.
It would be bad enough if the individuals being discriminated against were only the parents who don’t fit the Trump administration’s definition of family. But what about the gay, bisexual and transgender children awaiting foster care? Two fates seem to await them. They might get places with foster families who have signed the statement, pledging to raise these queer children in an atmosphere of oppression and denial. Or they might languish in the limbo of institutions until they “age out” of the system and enter the world without ever having had a permanent family. According to the Family Equality Council, children who age out of the system are at increased risk of homelessness, incarceration and poverty.
More than one in five foster youth identify as L.G.B.T.Q. For many, it was being queer that led to separation from their families. What happens to them when they’re adopted by a family that has promised to erase their identity?
“What foster care did was take away my tribal customs, take away my culture,” says Daryle Conquering Bear, a Native American, in a video. “I was placed in a home where I told them I liked boys. The next day I was removed. I wondered why. Why, why do I have to masquerade against myself to be able to be free?”
Why, indeed.
This summer Senator Kirstin Gillibrand introduced the Every Child Deserves a Family Act, a bill that would prohibit federally funded adoption, foster care and child welfare agencies from discriminating against children or families on the basis of their sexual orientation, gender identity, religion or marital status.
It’s a bill that would improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of children who would find a family in which they — and their parents — would never have to masquerade against themselves.
A world that provides a way out of hell, a place where L.G.B.T.Q. parents and children can be proud of who they are, rather than ashamed? That’s not the world that Donald Trump is interested in. He seems to prefer the one in “Boy Erased,” a film about conversion therapy, a practice in which the guiding principle of parenting is cruelty. If you’ve seen it, you understand the human cost of forcing children to deny their truth.
But I’m guessing Donald Trump hasn’t seen that movie, either.
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