Bethany Christian Services, the largest Christian adoption agency in the United States, announced this week it will change its policy and allow same-sex couples to adopt children through one of its 32 agencies. Its surprising decision prompted a discussion: Who decides the fate of children without homes?
President Chris Pulasky told employees that “Bethany remains steadfast in its Christian faith” and that the evangelical organization changed its protocols so it can continue “to provide safe, loving, and stable homes to as many vulnerable children as possible.”
“We will now offer services with the love and compassion of Jesus to the many types of families who exist in our world today,” Palusky said. “We’re taking an ‘all hands on deck’ approach where all are welcome.”
The news stunned many evangelical leaders, who typically believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman. Renowned author and evangelical leader Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said, “The need is great for distinctively Christian adoption and foster care services, including that children need both mothers and fathers. Moreover, this move will harm already existing efforts to enable faith-based orphan care ministries to serve the vulnerable without capitulating on core Christian convictions.”
The timing of Bethany’s decision is interesting: The Supreme Court heard a case in November, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, that involved the Philadelphia Department of Human Services and its 2018 decision to cut ties with Catholic Social Services, a local faith-based foster agency that only placed children with heterosexual couples. The city based its decision on a nondiscrimination ordinance, and the city subsequently stopped the agency’s ability to take in any new children. Catholic Social Services argued that it had the right to place children with parents based on its religious beliefs. The Supreme Court has yet to make a decision on the heart-wrenching case.
Between the hundreds of children who are no longer being placed in foster homes through Catholic Social Services due to the city’s decision and Bethany’s decision to open up its reach to same-sex couples, the legal and cultural implications are profound. Whether or not Bethany has made the right decision in terms of theology is not for me to say, but legally, looking at its decision from the vantage point of the Fulton case, I differ with Moore’s observation. I’d much rather a private, faith-based organization voluntarily change its adoption requirements than be forced to violate its faith-based convictions and change its policies at the behest of the state or a Supreme Court ruling.
The need for families to adopt and foster in the U.S. is overwhelming. In fact, the large quantities of children in need of homes are precisely why the state got involved in working with both secular and faith-based agencies. If it didn’t, the children would be left to flounder. However, it shouldn’t use its access to homeless children as a weapon with which to bludgeon faith-based foster and adoption agencies, which is exactly what the city of Philadelphia did.
Closing down agencies while citing “discrimination” cuts off families who otherwise would have only worked through a faith-based organization, thereby leaving more children homeless. If an agency doesn’t want to allow same-sex couples to adopt, citing its religious beliefs, that should be its right. Likewise, if an agency decides to open up its “pool” to same-sex couples, citing its religious beliefs, that should be its right. Theological implications aside, the free exercise clause should support both of these positions. The government should not be able to mandate what a faith-based foster or adoption agency can and cannot do.
Reason profiled a case of an elderly couple who were barred from fostering their 1-year-old great-granddaughter because they opposed homosexuality and gender transitioning. “The Washington Department of Child, Youth, and Families reached this decision based on the purely hypothetical possibility that maybe the 1-year-old might eventually be attracted to girls, or might want to transition to being a boy; but a federal judge just held in the great-grandparents’ favor,” the article stated.
If the Supreme Court fails to decide in favor of foster parents and agencies such as Fulton in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia and Catholic Social Services, they will have no choice. Faith-based organizations could be forced to change their policies or face consequences such as being shut down or, worse, having their placements stripped from them like the great-grandparents in Washington.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
