Kansas guidelines force foster parents to indulge kids’ LGBT gender confusion
Kansas pro-family advocates are up in arms about a draft of guidelines that would require prospective foster parents to subscribe to LGBT orthodoxy in caring for children who may suffer from gender confusion.
In July, the Kansas Department of Children and Families (DCF) released a set of draft guidelines backed by Democrat Gov. Laura Kelly for how the agency’s Foster Care Licensing and Background Checks Division should handle the placement of “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth.”
It calls on such children to only be placed in homes that “respect their identities,” including recognizing a child’s preferred “gender identity” and pronouns, choice of clothes, and a guarantee that foster parents “not try to impose traditional gender roles on the youth.”
The Associated Press reported that the draft isn’t final and won’t be a binding directive so much as informal “principles” by which the agency will operate, but conservatives see it as an attempt to get around a law passed last year protecting religious adoption agencies’ right to place children only in homes with a mother and a father, which Kelly has previously stated she doesn’t want to enforce.
Republican state Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook argued that the language advising foster parents to let males who “identifies” as female share bedrooms with teenage girls presents a safety risk, and that more generally the guidelines could infringe on whatever rights biological parents may retain.
"It's a problem when government takes such a heavy hand to coerce people to live out beliefs that they don't embrace," she said.
“The foster care system must not be used as a social experiment or to push a social agenda,” Republican House Majority Leader Dan Hawkins wrote in a newsletter last month, pledging to follow the situation closely. “In 2018, the Adoption Protection Act was passed to protect faith-based child placement agencies from being discriminated against by the state. These faith-based organizations serve a crucial role in providing homes for children in need. The new guidelines from the Kelly administration are at the very least a first shot at taking down the Adoption Protection Act."
“With children in Kansas sleeping in government offices at night, there’s no denying that we have a foster care problem. Instead of working to find loving homes for these children quickly, Governor Kelly is once again abusing her power to thwart the law and drive a sexual agenda,” said Brittany Jones, advocacy director for the Family Policy Alliance of Kansas. “Forcing foster families and placement agencies to agree with Governor Kelly’s sexual ideology in order to help children in need will only limit opportunities for children in Kansas, as many service providers will have no choice but to stop serving.”
While the guidelines are framed around patient safety, a variety of scientific literature indicates that reinforcing gender confusion often fails to prevent significant emotional harm up to and including attempted suicide (with or without surgery), because fixating on “gender affirmation” tends to distract from exploring other issues that may be at the root of a patient’s mental or emotional unrest.
Elected in November 2018, Kelly has also drawn conservatives’ ire this year for vetoing legislation requiring abortionists to inform women considering chemical abortions about the possibility of reversing them within a certain time window.
Concerned citizens can contact Gov. Kelly, Kansas DCF, and Kansas lawmakers using the following information:
Kansas Governor Laura Kelly
300 S.W. 10th St.
Topeka, KS 66612
Phone: (785) 368-8500
Email: Link
Facebook: Link
Twitter: @GovLauraKelly
Kansas Department for Children & Families
Office of the Secretary
555 S. Kansas Ave.
Topeka, KS 66603
Phone: (785) 296-3271
Email: Link
Facebook: Link
Twitter: @DCFKansas
Kansas Legislature
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