when trying to find a home for a gay child should child protective services give priority to foster parents who are either gay them selves or at least say they’re accepting?

23 comments

1. Yeah, this thread’s not going to be open long. Good luck.

2. Straight parents have gay kids all the time and are often great parents. Your sexuality doesn’t impact the kid.

   Just have parents that aren’t zealots and will let a kid be what they want to be and accept them. Don’t try to force a sexuality, religion, political side on kids.

3. That sounds ridiculous to me. There are so many children in foster care that they really should go with any parent who can take care of them. There should be consideration to LGBT couples, but just a consideration, not priority.

4. There’s a shortage of foster parents to begin with, but assuming that there wasn’t, I’d be in favor of disqualifying anyone who’s not “accepting”. It’s basic reality, gay people exist, sexuality is a diverse spectrum, we shouldn’t be sending kids to live with people who are going to treat them differently based on factors they can’t control.

   The real problem with your premise is “gay children” as if there’s a litmus test. It’s not so simple to give yourself that label at such a young age, let alone articulate it. Identifying them would be impossible.

5. CPS should tailor their placements to the best situation for the child.

   They should also be monitoring for any issues with the placement. That is almost always going to be getting them into a stable household that can care for them. Sexuality at a young age is a side thought when you have a kid with no parents in their life.

   If they believe there is an issue with the orientation of the kid and placement then they should take it into account. It should always be “the best interest of the child.”

   I have a good friend who is gay that was placed with very religious straight foster parents. He was not an easy child to raise and got in a lot of trouble. He still has a great relationship with them and refers to them as mom and dad. It actually confuses me all the time because he got back in touch with his biological mom and they have a good relationship. So when he says mom I don’t necessarily know who he means.

   He is by far the most religious gay guy I know. Like evangelical levels of religion.

   So you can’t necessarily make sweeping judgments. That’s why being a social worker in CPS (or CFS or DCYF whatever it is called in your state) is not an easy job.

6. My straight parents have a bisexual me so I don’t see why straight parents wouldn’t be fit. They just have to not be terrible. So I guess in a way they should be accepting, but if you’re signing up to do foster care you should just be generally accepting because you’ll get all kinds of kids from all kinds of backgrounds and identities.

7. Of course they should. It should be malpractice if they didn’t.

8. By the time they’re old enough to know they’re gay, in my state at least they have a say about who adopts them and what their preferences are. I’ve seen it all spelled out in foster care profiles

9. Preferably, yeah. A gay kid being in a house with foster parents who are openly not accepting sounds like a distressing experience. That being said, there’s kinda a shortage of foster parents.

10. There is a shortage of foster parents as it is, why would they make the pool smaller. There are so many straight parents that do a great job raising lgtbq+ kids.

11. I think it needs to be what’s in best interest for the child. If that’s a gay family then it’s a gay family. But this can also be considered discrimination and can come with its own can of worms.

12. Nope. How else can you sure the problem?

    That’s the answer you want

13. If the kid’s old enough for that to be clear, the kid is old enough to have opinions of enough substance to be given weight in their placement.

    The state shouldn’t be placing kids with foster parents who the kid doesn’t want to be with.

    But sure, if the potential foster parents are unable to say they’d be accepting of the known characteristics of that child – regardless of what those are, the child obviously shouldn’t be placed with them.

    I do not think there’s any reason that the orientation of the parents should matter. (And not being straight isn’t some guarantee that they’re accepting of every orientation or possible characteristic of a child, either).

14. It’s less that they should prioritize gay or accepting and more that they need to disqualify families who are first and foremost interested in adopting a gay child to “deconvert” them, which is really the primary issue.

    It’s just another variation on the same issue of adoption has always been had: What do you do about the people who say they’re willing to raise a child, but who really only want the child for their own egos or for some form of symbolism.

15. No

16. Absolutely. But more specifically sympathize with the child’s journey.

17. I feel like putting LGBTQ+ kids that have been removed from their original families into homes that are accepting of LGBTQ+ identities and relationships is kind-of a no-brainer. Putting LGBTQ+ kids in homes with bigots seems like it’s most likely going to result in them being mistreated or abused. There are people who change their views on LGBTQ+ folk after having a LGBTQ+ kid but demanding a child who’s already been removed from a bad situation into another situation with a hostile foster parent is a different situation and asking them to be evangelists there to change the ways of the foster parents is an irrational burden they shouldn’t be forced to bear and are likely unequipped to handle.

    Seems like a lot of people reading this question heard “give priority to foster parents who are … gay” and typed their responses without paying attention to the subsequent “or at least say they’re accepting” part.

18. No? Just give them to people who can care for a child.

19. I have no idea how the foster system works but I think having parents declare political views, etc. is silly. The goal is to place them in a household capable of caring for them then continuing to monitor the situation to make sure they’re getting that.

    I see no reason you need to declare yourself pro-gay or whatever to foster a child.

20. Accepting? Yeah, obviously don’t place a kid with someone who won’t accept them. Gay themselves? No. Should straight kids be places with only straight parents?

21. My one concern is that if gay teen, say 15-17, is able to meet up with others, whether in a gay youth group or just knowing others in school, they’re going to have opportunities for sex. The parents or foster parents, whether gay, straight, bi, or whatever, need to understand that whatever conversation they’re going to have will be different from the conversation they’d need to have with teens going to experiment with the opposite sex. Or at least it was in my day, pre-AIDS, when promiscuity in the gay community was far more normalized.

22. There’s a difference between the two. Of course, a gay child should have foster parents who are at the very least accepting of homosexuality. But that doesn’t mean that they have to have parents who share that sexuality. I will admit that it can make certain conversations easier and provide more relatability. But there is so much to parenting that that small positive is so easily outweighed by myriad other factors that could or could not be present. In the grand scheme of things, a slightly less awkward ‘birds and the bees’ conversation is not worth making foster decisions over.

23. I think they should be placed in a loving home where they’re supported regardless of the parents sexuality. An example of a healthy adult relationship is an example of a healthy adult relationship