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.”

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