Trump Admin to Allow Sanctioned Homophobia at Adoption Agencies

The Trump administration has leaned into their efforts to persecute and alienate the LGBTQ+ community with an agency moving to enact policy that allows adoption agencies to discriminate against possible parents. The decision is a reversal on Obama-era directives.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed a regulatory change on Friday that the government "may not punish adoption providers who operate according to their faith," according to a release by Family Research Council. This is a faith-based organization that supports discrimination of LGBTQ+ people on the basis of their religion. This change would mean that under the new guidelines, adoption providers could still receive support from the government, even if they denied their services to same-sex households.

Since an Obama administration mandate in 2016, agencies that employed this sort of homophobia, were not eligible for federal money. According to CBN News, that administration added sexual orientation language at the end of Obama's term into an already existing rule at the HHS.

On the state level, there have been similar moves. According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), "13 states including Alabama, Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia," have passed laws over the past few years allowing this sort of discrimination at taxpayer expense. This latest move would bring that to the federal level.

The news is in lock-step with Trump's previous initiatives. This administration has continually assaulted the rights of the LGBTQ+ community and sought to rollback policies that provided equality. But, at every step of the way, queer and trans people (as well as allies) have been challenging him. This proposal, which is still in its preliminary stages, will no doubt be challenged in court, as well as publicly.

"As we begin National Adoption Month, the Trump-Pence administration has launched yet another attack against the LGBTQ community, this time proposing to allow taxpayer-funded child welfare agencies a license to discriminate against LGBTQ people," HRC wrote of the news.

As CBN News points out, there is currently a foster care crisis in America. Some "443,000 chilldren are in foster care and about 100,000 are waiting to be adopted." This move is certainly not in the best interest of those children looking for families.