For
the past decade, left-wing activists have targeted faith-based adoption
agencies if they do not assist same-sex couples who wish to adopt. Through
lawsuits and legislation, these activists gave faith-based agencies an
ultimatum: Comply with politically correct views on sexuality and marriage and
place children with same-sex couples, or shut down.
Faced
with this dilemma, Steve Roach, executive director of Catholic Charities for
the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, closed the foster care and adoption
programs he ran in the state. The cost? In an interview with The Daily Signal,
Roach estimates that 3,000 children were affected and thousands of foster
parents no longer will be part of the system.
Now,
he advocates passage of the Child Welfare
Provider Inclusion Act, federal legislation to prohibit
discriminating or taking other adverse action against a child welfare service
provider that declines to provide, facilitate, or refer for a service that
conflicts with the provider’s sincerely held religious beliefs. Learn more in
the transcript of the interview, which was lightly edited for clarity.
Kelsey Harkness: Tell us what happened to your
adoption and foster care program run through Catholic Charities, and how you
found yourself in this situation.
The liberal Left continue to push their
radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more >>
Roach: In 2011, the state of Illinois passed a law which
effectively ended up shutting down foster care and adoption programs for
Catholic Charities and a couple of other faith-based organizations in Illinois.
We were definitely forced out of foster
care and adoption. The law was called the Religious Freedom Protection and
Civil Unions Act. The language in that law required that all agencies providing
this service must place children in the homes of same-sex couples.
My faith and our religion believes in
the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, and we could not abide
by that new state requirement. So after 50 years of providing quality foster
care for children, for tens of thousands of children all across Illinois, the
state said, “Well, if you do not surrender that religious belief, you will be
eradicated.” And that’s what happened.
Harkness: But you do allow single mothers to
adopt—can you explain why? I think some people look at that and don’t
understand why you’re OK facilitating adoptions for single mothers versus
facilitating adoptions for same-sex couples.
Roach: We believed that a child is raised best with a mother
and a father. Married mother and father. We did provide homes with single
parents as long as those parents were not cohabitating. Research shows that a
lot of abuse happens in homes via the live-in paramour. So our policy was if
you’re a single adult, and you qualify, we will work with you.
Harkness: What do you say to someone from
the ACLU or from the other side that calls you “anti-gay?”
Roach: We just say that’s not the case. What we were was an
organization that tried to provide quality foster homes for abused and
neglected kids, and we did it very well. We were one of the best at it. I want
to say, what’s the solution for these kids who are suffering? That’s what we
need to be doing.
Harkness: Can same-sex parents still adopt
children, whether faith-based agencies are a part of the system or not?
Roach: Absolutely. The [proposed] Child Welfare Provider
Inclusion Act does not prevent anyone from becoming a foster or adoptive
parent. In Illinois, we know all same-sex couples can be served because without
Catholic Charities, they all are being served. So with Catholic Charities in
the picture, it wouldn’t change that. This [proposed] law does not prevent
anyone from the opportunity to become a foster and adoptive parent.
Harkness: What were the consequences of
being shut down?
Roach: Thousands of children and foster parents were forced
to leave Catholic Charities and go to other agencies. I think altogether there
were about 3,000 children that were disrupted, and thousands more foster
parents that were no longer allowed to work with Catholic Charities.
The consequences were something that we
had predicted. We were one of the most effective organizations in the state of
Illinois in recruiting quality foster parents. And now, one only has to look at
the headlines and see that there is a shortage of quality foster homes, not
only in Illinois but across the country.
That’s only been exacerbated now in the
last few years by the opioid epidemic. And so at a time where foster parents
were in desperate need, you have quality organizations with a long-standing
history of being able to find them being forced to the sidelines.
Harkness: Why is Catholic Charities so good
at recruiting foster parents compared to your average organization?
Roach: It has a lot to do with our long history. Not only
had we been providing foster care and a partnership with the state of Illinois
since the early ’70s, late ’60s, but for over 100 years Catholic Charities had
been finding adoptive homes, working with various Catholic orphanages.
So we have this huge, long history. It
is a mission, it’s something that we hold very near and dear to our hearts.
Children need homes and that’s what the church has been involved with for a
long, long time. And I think that’s why we’re really, really good at what we
do.
Harkness: What happens if other faith-based
adoption agencies get pushed out of the system?
Roach: I think the travesty is perpetuated. The crisis will
be made worse. The children are the one who’ve suffered in all this. This was
clearly an argument on rights. Our side believe this was a religious liberty
argument, and we will always believe that. The other side believes that this
was a civil rights argument, and so we had a conflict within the public-private
partnership that had worked well since the Great Depression.
And instead of resolving the conflict by
putting the kids first and coming up with a solution that would help those
kids, all we did was shout at each other, and that’s all they’re doing right
now. You discriminate, or you’re anti-gay, or you’re anti-God, and all we do is
we argue and fight.
In the meantime, you have thousands of
kids who are suffering. So if this continues to happen, the number of kids
suffering will only grow. We have to be adults in the room; we can’t be
shouting, we’ve got to help these kids. There is a solution. The Child Welfare
Provider Inclusion Act provides that solution.
The solution should do two things. One,
it should ensure that anyone who wants to do this difficult work, and it is
very difficult work—it’s not a right, no one has a right to become a foster
parent or adoptive [parent]—anyone who wants to do this work should allow
religious organizations to abide by their religious faith in providing these
services. The second thing should be that the solution should be done in the
best interest of kids.
This act does all of that. It takes away
the argument and says we’re gonna focus on kids. So if everyone can be served
who wants to be a foster parent or adoptive parent, and religious organizations
can practice this service according to their faith, then everyone wins because
the kids then will have the maximum opportunity to find a quality forever home.
And that’s what we need to be focused on. That’s not what happened in Illinois.
Harkness: You’re now advocating to address
this from the federal level. Why?
Roach: The fight that I described earlier, religious
liberties versus civil rights, is happening in several other states around the
country. The ACLU is continually perpetuating lawsuits to try and attempt to
drive out religious organizations that have the radical belief that marriage is
between a man and a woman.
Harkness: In general, how bad is the foster
care and adoption crisis?
Roach: Do a simple Google search. You’ll see headline after
headline after headline in states across the country where there’s a foster
home shortage. Not only in Illinois but in many, many other states. I’ve read
articles where they can’t find homes and so kids are staying in offices because
there’s no home for them to be placed in. It has reached a crisis proportion,
and it’s been exacerbated by the opioid crisis.
There have been studies that have shown
that the need for foster homes has increased because there are a lot more kids
now coming into care because [of] neglect, because the parents are so addicted
that their addiction is their only focus. Children are being left home alone,
children are being not fed, children are not going to school. And so the state
is coming in and removing those children because they’re in dangerous
situations. And so it has definitely grown the need.
We are in a very difficult situation
right now, and these kids are suffering. We need to think about how can we, as
a society, reach out to all segments of our population to find people who would
provide care and homes for these children. We don’t need to be shunning people
and organizations. We need to be maximizing our opportunities to find these
parents.
Harkness: Where do you go from here?
Roach: One of our strengths is that we are able to provide a
wide array of services. And so after this happened to us, our bishop and our
board began planning to see what else we could do out there to fulfill the
mission of providing mercy and love to people who are hurting.
We’ve developed other programs—legal
service programs, rural outreach programs, immigration programs—since we lost
foster care and adoption.
Comments
The US always had church sponsored
charities that were cost-effective. All of this is ending. The question is why
is this ending. In the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson advanced the government takeover
of church related charitable activities.
Healthcare, Education and Welfare
were once affordable because they were handled by church owned organizations.
Many drunks had to put up with bible verses in order to get a bowl of soup and
a place to crash at the Salvation Army…no problem. The Civil Rights Act was
expanded and morphed into the “tyranny of the minority” and the judicial system
has been weaponized. There is no reason for taxpayers to pick up this tab. It’s
just another version of “I’m Crazy, give me Candy”.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party
Leader
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