Free Republic

Five brothers stuck in Florida's foster care system have returned home to Michigan just in time for Christmas. The reunion came just days after their story aired on FOX 35 News. See video.

Democrats have been suggesting taking children away from ‘non-affirming’ parents for years now, but Biden’s HHS is getting the ball rolling.As Americans celebrate the holidays with their families, the Biden administration is laying the groundwork to destroy families by taking children away from their parents in order to sterilize and sexually mutilate them.The Biden administration has proposed new rules for foster care, which would treat any parent rejecting LGBT ideology as a child abuser. The public comment deadline is today, the Monday after Thanksgiving, a bureaucratic middle finger to the public it is supposed to serve. The proposed regulations state...

Religious freedom, Congress said unanimously in 1998, “undergirds the very origin and existence of the United States.” Today, however, an obsession with gender ideology is driving governments to ignore the First Amendment, defy clear Supreme Court precedent, and even violate their own laws and regulations to root out those with the “wrong” religious views about sexuality. This bigotry not only violates fundamental rights, but it also puts vulnerable children at risk. During the 2021-22 fiscal year, more than 9,700 children were placed in the custody of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families, which had already acknowledged a serious lack...

When I first moved to Massachusetts in 1969 from Protestant-dominated Minnesota, I was struck by the awesome power the Catholic church wielded there. Reverent media attention was afforded the Cardinal, the legendary Richard Cardinal Cushing, who died in 1970 and was replaced by Humberto Cardinal Medeiros. The funeral and selection of a replacement was a major media event in the Boston area. I had never seen the like of it in the Great Plains. There was more than a tinge of class resentment against the formerly dominant Yankees, who were Protestants. Things have changed in 2023, and it appears that...

San Bernardino County is being sued over its treatment of foster children. A 68-page class action lawsuit was filed on Thursday, May 25, in U.S. District Court in Riverside, on behalf of more than 5,800 children who are or will likely end up in foster care. The suit was filed against the California Department of Social Services, CDSS Director Kim Johnson, Gov. Gavin Newsom, San Bernardino County, the county Board of Supervisors and Department of Children and Family Services and CFS Director Jeany Zepeda. A second class of plaintiffs consists of hundreds of children with disabilities in the foster care...

The white Columbus police officer who fatally shot shot a 16-year-old black girl last year has been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, Ohio prosecutors announced on Friday. Ma'Khia Bryant was killed last April by Nicholas Reardon after she swung a knife at another young woman. Reardon was 23 years old at the time. Police have said they were called to Bryant's foster home on April 20, 2021, because a group of girls was threatening to stab other members of the household. Body camera footage showed Reardon, who was 23 at the time, asking what was going on when he arrived...

"Be my Mommy!" the banner in the CVS window read, part of a display of surplus Baby Emma dolls. It was the fifth day of Christmas, and I noticed during Mass -- shortly before I went to the drugstore to pick up prescriptions -- that one of the petitions during the service was for those struggling to have a happy, peaceful Christmas. We prayed for the sick, the grieving, the lonely. We didn't pray for the orphans, though, I thought during Mass. I did, in my heart, but seeing the Baby Emma display reminded me to do so again. Over...

In the abortion debates, the polarized discussion often focuses on death. Which is a shame, as foster care and adoption are important, even crucial, parts of the pro-life platform. In "No Way to Treat a Child: How the Foster Care System, Family Courts, and Racial Activists Are Wrecking Young Lives," Journalist Naomi Schaefer Riley highlights leaders "in a foster-care revolution happening across the country, even in some places you might not expect" using a "combination of evidence-based practical help and spiritual support." As one example, Riley takes readers to Journey Christian Church in Greeley, Colorado, where 100 or so people...

Yesterday, the Supreme Court unanimously held that Philadelphia violated the free exercise rights of Catholic Social Services and two foster parents when the city failed to renew CSS’s contract because the Catholic organization refused to certify same-sex couples as foster parents.While Thursday’s headlines proclaimed the decision, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, a victory for religious liberty, in reality it represented yet another failure by the high court to definitely end the ongoing governmental targeting of faith-based organizations.Here’s the Backstory to the CaseSince 1798, Catholic-affiliated organizations in Philadelphia have provided care to needy and orphaned youth. Until 2018, the legacy continued,...

The Supreme Court just ruled against the city of Philadelphia, which was trying to prevent Catholic Social Services (CSS) from helping children in foster care get placed in homes, due to CSS's views on homosexual marriage. Had the Supreme Court ruled differently, the case would have been heralded as a Pride Month win. But the Supreme Court went a different way. And this should give us hope that everything doesn't have to be about sex and politics. Sometimes it can be about our common humanity and the needs of the most vulnerable. "Maximizing the number of foster families and minimizing...

A segment of Democrats have been pushing for President Biden to have the ability to expand the roster of the Supreme Court and pack it with liberal justices, but Thursday's 9-0 ruling in favor of a religious foster care agency that would not work with LGBT couples is leaving some on the left disappointed with the entire court. The court's 6-3 majority of Republican-appointed justices that came to be after former President Trump got to appoint three within four years has led left-wing political figures and activists to promote court packing as a way to negate a perceived conservative advantage....

A plan to house migrant children from the surging crisis at the US-Mexico border will leave a Renton foster family with no place to call home. Edmundo Serena Sanchez said he and his wife were notified in February that they would have to vacate the Renton house where they have nurtured and raised Washington state foster children for nearly seven years. “It was just senseless. Everything they did was irresponsible,” Serena Sanchez said of the move-out order that came after a year of lockdown from the coronavirus pandemic. The couple have fostered about 20 children over the years in the...

Bethany may renew their federal contracts by deciding to abandon Christianity in foster-care placements. But in the bigger picture, more abandoned children will run the streetsOn March 1, Bethany Christian Services sent shock waves through the adoption and foster care community with its landmark decision to place children with same-sex parents. There staring out from the pages of The New York Times stood the imposing figure of Chris Palusky, president of this historic Christian agency rooted in the Dutch Reformed world of Grand Rapids, Michigan.The news of surrender hit hard. Bethany, the ten-ton gorilla of adoption and foster care, and...

Other than interdicting the flow of children entering the country illegally, solutions to this crisis are hard to come by.Where is Robert Francis O’Rourke today? In June 2018, while running unsuccessfully for Ted Cruz’s Senate seat in Texas, he was outside the gates of the Tornillo facility for unaccompanied alien children (UACs), megaphone in hand. UACs are children who cross the U.S. border illegally and without a parent. There was nothing for O’Rourke to protest about the children’s treatment. Rather, he was protesting the Trump administration for enforcing immigration laws as passed by Congress. Today the Biden administration is activating...

Thanks, but no thanks. That was the message that aspiring foster parents got this fall when they sent inquiries offering their services to the New Jersey Department of Children and Families. According to an automatic email reply from Dawn Marlow, administrator for the Office of Resource Families, the state is not accepting applications from any foster parents except those who are willing to take care of children with “complex developmental or medical needs.” How is it that states from Georgia to Michigan are struggling to find enough qualified foster homes to take in children—especially during a pandemic when many homes...

My brother and I were both placed into foster homes at a young age. He was lucky—he went to a family called the Ripleys. I went through four different homes in three years, and each one was worse than the next. I’d get to see my brother every few months. Ms. Ripley would take us for lunch at McDonalds, and that’s when she first noticed the scars all over my body. She immediately made arrangements for me to join their family. Back then the word ‘family’ didn’t mean much to me. But the Ripleys made me feel welcome in their...

Fulton is part of a broader effort to hold the government to a higher standard whenever it limits our freedom—from our ability to speak, work, exercise religion, or simply live as we choose. On Nov. 4, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, a challenge to the city’s exclusion of Catholic Social Services from participation in the foster care system due to its views on same-sex behavior. This may sound like a run-of-the-mill battle in the culture war, but there’s a lot more to it.Fulton is part of a broader effort to hold the government...

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in a religious freedom case on whether the city of Philadelphia acted unlawfully when it stopped placing foster children with a Catholic foster agency because it does not certify same-sex foster parents. The nation’s high court heard arguments on behalf of two Philadelphia area foster mothers who are seeking to reverse the decision by the city government, which no longer places foster children in the homes of parents who partner with Catholic Social Services of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The city objects to the fact that the organization does not provide foster certification...

From Judge Salvador Mendoza, Jr.'s opinion yesterday in Blais v. Hunter (E.D. Wash.): James and Gail Blais hope to foster, and eventually adopt, their great-granddaughter, H.V. After H.V. was born [in September 2019], concerns about her welfare arose. The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare ("IDHW") ultimately removed H.V. from her birth parents' care and later reached out to the Blaises about possibly fostering or adopting her. The Blaises expressed an interest in caring for H.V., so IDHW asked the Washington Department of Children, Youth, and Families ("Department") to evaluate the Blaises for a foster care license. To address the...

We tend to think if the road is hard, we are on the wrong road. With adoption, the opposite is usually true: The road is hard because we are doing it right. Myka Stauffer of YouTube fame has “re-homed” her autistic, adopted Chinese child, Huxley. Stauffer became widely known in large part due to the video documentation of her adoption journey. Huxley’s emotional gotcha-day video has more than 5 million views.Over the following two years, Stauffer posted regular updates of Huxley’s progress, including his autism diagnosis and references to his therapy. A few months ago, fans started noticing Huxley’s increasing...