California bars faithful Catholic families from the foster care system

Demanding special rights has been a successful strategy of the transgender advocacy movement. From lobbying for federal mandates for the inclusion of biological males on high school and college women’s sports teams to requirements for gender-inclusive restrooms and sports locker rooms, trans-rights have dominated much of the conversation about LGBTQ rights these past few years.

Often missing in these conversations has been the erosion of the civil rights of those with traditional/biblical views on gender and sexuality. In fact, faithful Catholics and others who believe in the immutability of sex and gender, are increasingly losing their rights to employment, to participation in organized sports, and most recently, in California, the ability to be foster parents to California’s most vulnerable children.

SB 407, originally a bill authored by California’s Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco)—a longtime advocate for LGBTQ causes—mandates that foster parents must affirm a child’s chosen gender identity or sexual orientation even if such affirmations are counter to the foster parent’s strongly held religious or moral views. The law passed in 2023—even though concerned foster parents from throughout the state traveled to Sacramento to try and dissuade lawmakers from supporting a bill that would likely be used to purge the foster care system of faithful religious families.

In the early months following the passage of SB 407, foster parents were still allowed to verbally affirm that they would provide a loving home to any child, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity.

But a new directive from the Department of Social Services released on November 14, 2024 became a problem for faithful/traditional foster parents, because it required these parents to explicitly proclaim that they supported the idea of a child’s ability to change his or her gender identity. Claiming to be “family-friendly, and child-centered,” the November 14th directive demands that all foster families must “receive training on cultural sensitivity regarding sexual orientation and gender identity expression (SOGIE) and best practices for providing care to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) children.”

In addition to the mandated re-education of potential and current foster families, the November 14 letter, sent to county and state-licensed foster care agencies, stated, “Each resource family must have the capacity, ability, and willingness to safeguard a child’s or non-minor dependent’s personal rights and respect and honor the child’s identities regardless of their own values and beliefs.”

A close reading of this directive demonstrates that the State of California is now forcing speech and behavior in order to allow foster parents to continue to participate in California’s foster care system.

Beyond the affirmation process, there is an intensive Family Evaluation interview process by the State focusing on gender and sexual orientation and “intended to assess the family’s ability, willingness and capacity to provide a safe, accepting and affirming home to prevent additional trauma to any child or non-minor dependent who could be placed with them by asking direct and open-ended questions about their ability and capacity to care for LGBTQ+ children and NMDs [non-minor dependents].”

Because of these new requirements, foster parents have already had their foster family re-certification denied.

According to the California Family Council, a Fresno-based California conservative Christian non-profit organization, families who refuse to sign a document affirming the gender and sexual orientation of children have already lost their ability to continue to be foster families. According to Greg Burt of the California Family Council, one father who contacted his Council, said that he and his wife had provided foster care to lots of young children over the years. But a social worker recently refused to renew their foster care license because they could not promise to sign a document affirming a transgender identity.

While few people outside the foster care system in California even know of the threats to the civil rights of foster care parents by forcing them to affirm the transgender identity and deny the immutability of one’s God-given sex/gender in order to become foster parents, this case has resonance for all Christians and all of those with traditional views of sex/gender.

Kevin Snyder, chief counsel of the conservative Pacific Justice Institute, told a reporter:

California parents may think, ‘This doesn’t concern me—I’m not a foster parent.’ In fact, it does concern you. There is now a very small step for the state to deem any parent as unfit to raise their own children if the family holds a view that contradicts the state’s ideology on gender and sexual orientation. This could result in a visit by Child Protective Services with tragic consequences for the home.

It is likely that there will be legal challenges to the directive mandated by California’s SB 407. There is historical precedent safeguarding Catholics from this kind of abuse. In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Fulton v City of Philadelphia that the City of Philadelphia violated a Catholic foster care agency’s First Amendment rights when the City refused to renew the agency’s contract unless it certified same-sex couples as foster parents. Until the Supreme Court ruling, the City of Philadelphia denied contracts to Catholic foster agencies that would not place children in same-sex households.

The California Department of Social Services overreach will probably meet a fate similar to that of the City of Philadelphia. But it will take years for legal challenges to reach the Supreme Court.

In the meantime, foster children—some of the most vulnerable children in the country—will be deprived of being sheltered and supported by loving faithful families whose only “crime” is their religious beliefs.