Foster and Adoptive Families in Tennessee Can’t Be Rejected for Religious Beliefs Under New Bill

State agencies would be banned from requiring foster and adoptive families to support LGBT policies that conflict with their religious and moral beliefs.

A file photo of the Progress Pride flag. Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

Tennessee lawmakers have passed a bill that would prohibit the state from preventing parents who disagree with the LGBT movement due to their moral or religious beliefs from fostering and adopting children.

The state Senate passed Senate Bill 1738 on April 1 by a vote of 73–20.

If Gov. Bill Lee signs the bill into law, the measure will prohibit the state Department of Children’s Services from requiring prospective or current adoptive and foster parents to support certain policies regarding sexual orientation or gender identity that conflict with their own moral or religious beliefs.

The Senate bill was sponsored by Republican state Sen. Paul Rose. The House version of the bill was sponsored by Republican state Rep. Mary Littleton.

“The real concern of this bill is to strengthen the pool of available parents who are able to foster,” Ms. Littleton said. “Placements should always be made and consistent in the best interests of the child.”

Tennessee’s Democrat lawmakers and LGBT organizations were quick to condemn the measure.

In a debate with Ms. Littleton, Democrat state Rep. Justin Pearson said the legislation “isn’t concerned, in a very meaningful way, about the children. In fact, with each answer, you told me about the parents not being discriminated against, but we have to be worried about the children and prioritizing the children in our care who are LGBTQI.”

Democrat state Rep. Justin Jones described the bill as “discrimination” and “hate” cloaked under the guise of religion.

“This Legislature has done everything they can to bully LGBTQ children and teens, and it is wrong,” he added, suggesting the lawmakers “should be ashamed.”

The Tennessee Equality Project, an LGBT advocacy group, actively campaigned against the measure. After the bill passed, the group posted a message online urging supporters to call the governor’s office and urge him to veto the bill.

“Placing these children in homes where the fundamental truth of who they are will not be honored is in no one’s best interest,” Cathryn Oakley, senior director of legal policy for the Human Rights Campaign, told The Tennessean. “Not their best interest, not the state’s interest, not the interest of the parents either.”

However, language in the bill contends that “moral beliefs regarding sexual orientation or gender identity ... do not create a presumption that any particular placement is contrary to the best interest of the child.”

The Statistics

The most recent data from the National Council for Adoption, reported on March 20, showed that fiscal year (FY) 2022 saw the fewest number of adoptions from foster care in the United States since FY 2015.

The latest data available from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Children’s Bureau shows that the number of children being placed in foster care and the number of children waiting to be adopted in Tennessee have increased steadily since 2017.

While there were 8,558 children in foster care in Tennessee in 2017, there were 9,227 in foster care by 2021. The only time the number fell was in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns, when 8,839 children were in foster care.

While 1,322 children were waiting to be adopted in 2017, there were 1,872 children were waiting to be adopted in 2021. Most were in their teens at age 17 and 18, and males outnumbered females at 54 percent to 46 percent, respectively.

The Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth reported in January that of the children entering the foster care system for the first time in 2022, more than one-third had been placed in three or more homes by June 30, 2023.

A study published in Sexuality Research and Social Policy (SRSP) in 2020 claimed that LGBT youth are overrepresented in the foster care system.

While estimates vary, studies have shown that 15 to 30 percent of children and teens in the foster care system identify as LGBT, compared to about 3 to 11 percent of those outside of foster care, the authors of the SRSP study wrote. They said many of these youths enter foster care because of conflicts with their parents over sexual orientation or gender identity.

The authors cited other studies showing one-third of LGBT youths in the foster care system were subjected to violence after coming out to family members.

The Policies

President Joe Biden declared in a June 15, 2022, executive order that the federal government had to address the disparities faced by LGBT children in the foster care system as well as the failure of child welfare agencies on state and local levels to ensure that their mental health needs are being met.

He also vowed that his administration would protect LGBT children from “dangerous practices like so-called ‘conversion therapy,’” defined by Psychology Today as a discredited practice that tries to force LGBT individuals into abandoning their preferred sexual orientation and to embrace heterosexuality and their biological sex.

The State of Tennessee Department of Children’s Services Foster Home Selection and Approval form outlines the minimum requirements for someone to become a foster parent.

The applicant must be at least 21 years of age, be a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident, and be a legal resident of Tennessee for at least three months before approval.

At least one member of the household must be functionally literate, and all members must be up to date on their vaccines for influenza and whooping cough to foster children under the age of 18 months. Prospective foster parents must provide documentation of sufficient income, the residence must be in reasonable condition, and members of the household are not allowed to smoke, vape, or use any other form of an e-cigarette in the home or in a vehicle with a foster child inside.

Minimum requirements specifically state that “applicants are eligible regardless of gender, race, color, or national origin.”

Desired characteristics for foster parents state that married or single people can apply. Approval is based on the applicant’s “ability to meet the special needs of children/youth in foster care” and whether they are “physically and emotionally healthy enough to carry out the duties of a foster parent.”

Foster parents are also expected to demonstrate the ability to “preserve the continuity of the child’s spiritual, racial, ethnic, and/or cultural identity in a positive manner” as well as having the capacity to gauge their own racial bigotry and ability to cope with racial discrimination.

They must also demonstrate the ability to embrace and care for the child’s behavioral, emotional, physical, and psychological needs.

As of January 2023, Tennessee was one of 39 states, along with the District of Columbia, that provided explicit protections from harassment and discrimination for LGBT foster children based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

The Epoch Times contacted the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services asking about the potential effect this legislation will have on those practices.

In an emailed response, the agency confirmed that before this legislation was passed, the agency’s home study process did include asking prospective foster and adoptive parents a series of questions designed to gauge their preferences for the potential placement of a foster child in their home.

Among those questions were inquiries about their willingness to parent a child who identifies as LGBT, the agency said, adding that its goal is always to ensure the most suitable placement to meet the individual needs of each child in the state’s care.

The Law

Sarah Parshall Perry is a senior legal fellow for the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. Her work focuses on civil rights, constitutional jurisdiction, regulatory policy, and the proper role of the courts.

She told The Epoch Times that Tennessee lawmakers have simply legislated what the Supreme Court already determined in Fulton v. The City of Philadelphia in 2020.

In that case, Philadelphia city officials tried to force Catholic Social Services, a local foster care agency, to certify child placements in homes with same-sex couples, even though this was against the Catholic Church’s doctrines. The court ruled that organizations seeking to participate in generally available government benefits or programs cannot be discriminated against because of their religious beliefs.

“Tennessee has rightly recognized the fact that we’re seeing much of the work in the gender identity space moving toward child welfare, custody, and domestic relations law,” Ms. Perry said. “This is an entirely necessary bill, specifically because we’re seeing well-meaning religious organizations and prospective foster care parents and, in some cases, the biological parents, being either divested of custody of their biological children or being cut out of government funding programs and government foster programs simply because of the nature of their religious beliefs. The Supreme Court has already held that this is odious to the Constitution.”

As for the claims that those who do not embrace LGBT beliefs and practices will try to force “non-conforming” children to change through conversion therapy, Ms. Perry quoted a speech from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, saying the warnings are “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

“An individual’s religious beliefs have to be separated from the prevailing, leftist hysteria on conversion therapy,” Ms. Perry said. “This has nothing to do with conversion therapy. It has everything to do with an adoptive care parent’s right to exercise their sincerely held religious beliefs. The Constitution protects an individual’s free exercise of religion under the First Amendment. This is such a red herring. But it precisely indicates the level of hysteria surrounding this notion of gender ideology and how this transgender juggernaut has invaded every aspect of the American culture.”

While agencies can certainly screen parents and organizations to determine a placement best suited to a particular child, she said they cannot disenfranchise other organizations by cutting them out of the process completely “just because they happen to hold to what has somehow quickly become a controversial religious perspective that sex is immutable and determined by God.”