This commentary is by Bryan Gantt, the lead pastor of Agape Christian Fellowship in Brattleboro. He and his wife served as foster parents for seven years and adopted three children through foster care.
Across the country, foster care systems are in strained, with thousands of children waiting for permanent placements. In Vermont, the opioid crisis has significantly impacted some of our most vulnerable children hardest. Now, Vermont has thankfully scuttled a previous policy that excluded loving foster parents that the state desperately needs just because of their religious beliefs.
After raising four children of our own, our family still felt incomplete. As soon as my wife, Becca, raised the idea of fostering and adopting, I immediately said yes. I’m a pastor of a church, and I believe adoption is at the heart of the gospel.
Within 24 hours of submitting our application in 2016, we had a newborn baby in our home, even before we had completed the licensing process. We adopted this baby, who was born with special needs. We adopted two other children in the years that followed.
“We don’t know how you do it,” people tell us. Of course, like all parenting, it takes a lot of patience. Each of our foster children is unique, and each has demonstrated some challenges from trauma or from medical needs that we never experienced with our biological kids. We’ve had to learn new ways of parenting and new ways of understanding what these little ones are communicating.
But we can’t imagine life without any of them. Each child we have adopted has filled a missing piece in our family. After all these years, there’s still no greater pleasure than coming home to hugs, kisses, that cry of “Dad!” and seeing that love in their eyes.
We thought of Vermont’s state agencies as our partners in this, too. For seven years, we were trusted as foster parents to care for little ones who were suffering, including children who are sometimes more difficult to place because they require more attention or appointments because of their medical needs.
In the fall of 2023, the Department for Children and Families (DCF) contacted us because they had a soon-to-be-born baby boy facing difficult circumstances. They told us that we were their first, unanimous choice to foster this particular child, because, they said, we were “the most qualified.”
As we do with all important decisions, we prayed about it as a family. We felt led to say yes. But before we could accept the child, we received an email explaining the state’s new rules about affirming a child’s chosen gender identity.
To foster any child — even an infant — we were asked questions to evaluate whether we met the state’s licensing rules: would we use a child’s chosen pronouns? Would we promote the idea that a boy can become a girl, and take our kids to events like Pride parades?
All of those ideas and actions conflict with our family’s religious beliefs. Conversations ensued with DCF licensing officials. In the end, the state not only withdrew its request for us to foster this special baby boy — they took away our license to foster any child.
With the help of attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom, we sued Vermont officials for violating our First Amendment rights. Imagine if Vermont required every foster family to promote any religious, cultural or ideological belief system that a child could hypothetically identify with. Must a Jewish family agree to erect a Hindu shrine? Must an atheist family agree to pray the Rosary? Must a family of meat eaters agree to go vegan? We will love and accept any child. We just want to abide by our conscience, just as any other family does.
Thankfully, Vermont has now dropped its discriminatory policy. Religious families need not speak against their faith just to qualify for a license.
It’s hard to believe that any other policy is in the best interest of vulnerable kids. The young children we adopted did not care about pronouns or Pride parades. What these children needed was someone to hold them when they were crying, to reassure them when they were afraid and to commit to unconditionally loving and accepting them into a family.
Pursuing a big-tent strategy will give foster children more opportunities to find a loving home. That’s a win-win for religious liberty and for children in need.
