Waiting to be Adopted

According to the Children’s Bureau of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, on September 30, 2013, more than 400,000 children were in foster care in the United States. Of those children, more than 100,000 were identified by the Bureau as “waiting to be adopted”. A mere 13% of those children were, on that date, living in what the Bureau calls a “Pre-Adoptive Home”. This simply means that, for these kids, an adoption was in the works, but wasn’t finalized as of the September 2013 reporting date.

That leaves 87% of those kids – more than 88,000 living, breathing human children – in a state of limbo. Waiting to be adopted.

Now, when in that very same Fall of 2013 my wife Dawn and I trained to become licensed foster parents here in Texas, we were besieged by a veritable deluge of frightening statistics like these. It got to the point where the statistics ran together so much that I couldn’t even keep them straight. There are x-hundred thousand kids in care across the nation and some-teen thousand kids in the system in our region and blah blah blah. Like I said, I lost track of the actual numbers. But the statistics above are drawn from the most current edition of The AFCARS Report and are as credible and they are devastatingly disturbing.

What I found even more disturbing this week, though, was a link in an email forwarded to me by our foster family home developer. The original email came from Dr. John Degarmo, a speaker, trainer, and author who specializes in the foster care field. In this monthly email update, Dr. Degarmo typically includes links to news stories from around the nation and the world concerning the general state of the foster ca and adoption system. One of the links in yesterday’s email carried the following headline: Adoption agencies could gain right to deny gay parents on religious grounds.

I was aghast. The tone of the headline. The words in the order in which the Tampa Bay Times‘s copy editor placed them. I couldn’t believe that this was being conveyed as a positive thing given the state of children in care, the sheer number of children who need a HOME. Not a bridge. Not a rest stop. A permanent, loving, forever home. So I clicked the link.

Sure enough, the tone conveyed by the expert copy editor at the Times exactly portrayed the push being led Florida Rep. Jason Brodeur, R-Sanford, which would allow private adoption agencies in the state of Florida to invoke their “deeply held religious convictions” as a legal defense in the event of a discrimination lawsuit brought against them by a same-sex couple who’ve been denied the privilege of adopting a child based on their sexual orientation. In other words, if this bill passes, the state of Florida, would support private adoption agencies when they choose to keep a child in the foster care system rather than placing the child in a loving home if the couple who wishes to adopt the child are homosexuals.

The right to do this, as explained by Michael Auslen, Times Staff Writer, would, under this law, rest in the fact that many of the private adoption agencies that would be protected by this law are affiliated with religious organizations.

I was reminded as I read Auslen's article of the issue raised by the Boy Scouts of America back in 2013. I remarked on that episode here, and I’m not going to rehash the whole argument in this post, but I am so similarly stunned by the actions of so-called Christians that I can’t help but draw the parallel. I wonder sometimes whether we’ve just read out of different versions of the same book.

The thing is, the Jesus that I’ve read about and heard about would never, ever let someone harm a child or get in the way of someone raising a child with love and stability. At least, I don’t think he would. He would never judge someone the way that our organized religions in this country and around the world have decided to judge those who live with same-sex partners. He would certainly never give his blessing to a decision certain to ensure that traumatized kids remain longer than necessary in one of the worst possible situations in which a child can grow up.

Remember...the Children’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children Youth and Families labels these children as “waiting to be adopted”.

Why would any servant of the people work so hard to make the children wait any longer than they have to?