Today is Good Friday, but for one mother, it’s not so good. A Christian mother was recently told by the state of Oregon that she could not adopt, because her religious beliefs prevent her from endorsing LGBTQ ideology.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) announced April 3 that its attorneys had filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Jessica Bates, a widowed mother of five who wanted “to adopt siblings from foster care.” Unfortunately for Bates, Oregon demands prospective adoptive parents “respect, accept, and support … the sexual orientation, gender identity, [and] gender expression” of any kid. In other words, unless you agree that boys can wear dresses and girls can get double mastectomies if they feel male, you can’t adopt children in Oregon. That excludes any Christians who stick to the Bible and traditional teaching.
So the Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS), which administers state child welfare programs, denied Bates’s application. She had told ODHS that, while she would “love and accept” any child, she could not agree to do something contradicting her Christian faith. And in the United States of America, founded as a Christian nation, that has become unacceptable. ODHS policy, according to ADF, requires that parents “use a child’s preferred pronouns, take a child to affirming events like Pride parades, or facilitate a child’s access to dangerous pharmaceutical interventions like puberty blockers and hormone shots if the child so requests.” ADF says that not only punishes Bates for her faith, but forces her to use words against her beliefs. Oregon has also used Bates’s faith as pretext to deny her equal protection of the law, ADF added.
“Oregon’s policy amounts to an ideological litmus test: people who hold secular or ‘progressive’ views on sexual orientation and gender identity are eligible to participate in child welfare programs, while people of faith with religiously informed views are disqualified because they don’t agree with the state’s orthodoxy,” ADF Senior Counsel Jonathan Scruggs stated. Scruggs is the director of the ADF Center for Conscience Initiatives. “The government can’t exclude certain communities of faith from foster care and adoption services because the state doesn’t like their particular religious beliefs.” But that’s the whole point, of course. The woke want complete control over children, because if you control the youth, you control the future.
ADF has filed the Bates v. Pakseresht lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, Pendleton Division. “Oregon’s policy makes a sweeping claim that all persons who hold certain religious beliefs—beliefs held by millions of Americans from diverse religious faiths—are categorically unfit to care for children,” ADF Legal Counsel Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse insisted. “That’s simply not true. Oregon is putting its political agenda above the needs of countless children who would be happy to grow up in a loving, Christian home like Jessica’s. We urge the court to remind the state of its constitutional and moral obligations and reaffirm Jessica’s First Amendment right to live out her faith without being penalized by the government.”
Bates has five children, ages 10 to 17. Her husband died six years ago in a car collision, ADF said. A story of a man who adopted a foster care child inspired Bates to “follow the biblical teaching to care for orphans,” ADF continued. As sibling pairs are harder to place, Bates specifically hoped to adopt such a pair. Unfortunately, as noted above, Oregon officials rejected Bates’s adoption application for supposedly failing to “meet the adoption home standards” the state requires. State officials further excluded her from access to any child welfare services due to her Christian beliefs. Oregon has officially become an anti-Christian regime.
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