I Was Barred From Adopting for Opposing Gender Transitioning—Until a Court Overturned the Decision

Commentary

Every year in Oregon, thousands of children spend time in the state’s foster care system. In fiscal year 2023, children who eventually left the system spent a median time of 23.4 months in the state’s custody. For those eventually adopted, the latest available data show that the median time was even longer: 34.6 months. And every month, the state houses some children in “temporary lodgings.” This could mean an overnight stay in a hotel or a night on the floor of a social worker’s office.

I want to help these children. I want to open my home to adopt a pair of siblings younger than 10 and to love and care for them as best I can. But Oregon wouldn’t let me because of my faith—that is, until July 24, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit blocked the state’s actions against me, determining that “Oregon’s policy violates the First Amendment.”

This is by no means a problem confined to Oregon. The states of Massachusetts, Washington, and Vermont face similar shortages of loving families, and yet they too enforce policies that blatantly discriminate against people of faith.

Unbelievably, it took a federal lawsuit and the help of attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom for me to be able to pursue adoption. While my lawsuit against state officials continues, the Ninth Circuit’s new ruling allows me to begin the process of reapplying to adopt siblings from foster care without violating my religious beliefs about human sexuality.

Oregon had categorically excluded me from adopting because I share a belief held by millions of Americans: that girls and boys are biologically different. Because I want to speak and live consistently with my faith and my reasonable views, the state considers me unfit to parent any child from foster care.

I first applied to be an adoptive parent in 2022. During that process, the training materials emphasized that applicants must promote a child’s preferred gender identity by using pronouns contrary to a child’s sex, taking a child to Pride parades, or displaying Pride flags in the applicant’s home. Oregon’s Department of Human Services asked me if I would take a hypothetical child to receive cross-sex hormone shots, an intervention that blocks a child’s natural biological development to make him or her appear more like the other sex. I told the officials that I would gladly love and accept any child into my home but that I could not agree to say or do anything that goes against my beliefs. They then refused to certify me for any adoption program.

That meant that I would not be allowed to adopt any child, even a child who shares my faith or a toddler who has no understanding of what gender identity even is. Under the policy, I cannot help any child in need because I won’t implement Oregon’s views on gender and sexuality.

Oregon’s message to countless Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other Americans is plain: If you hold traditional views on biology and human sexuality, you are unfit to parent any child.

That is shocking, extreme, and unjust. And it violates the First Amendment.

Ultimately, Oregon’s position primarily hurts children. What about the children who are themselves Christian or Jewish or Muslim and would love to grow up in a religious home? What about newborns, infants, and toddlers, who can’t yet speak or understand what gender identity is but who desperately want to hear someone say “I love you”? Oregon’s policy means that a large part of the population is ineligible to serve in its child welfare programs. Yet every year, children age out of the system, never having found a forever home.

I’m grateful for my legal victory while my case proceeds, but every day this unjust policy remains on the books is a day the state may needlessly take away loving homes from vulnerable children.

No parent should be excluded from adoption or foster care programs because of their commonsense beliefs. And no child should be deprived of a forever home because state officials value a political ideology over children’s welfare.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.