A juvenile court judge in Utah has ordered a child removed from the home of her married foster parents because they are a same-sex couple.
April Hoagland and Beckie Peirce of Carbon County, Utah, were stunned when Judge Scott Johansen ordered their foster child removed from their home, reports The Advocate. The judge said the baby would be better off with heterosexual parents.
That decision has been met with outrage from LGBT advocates and even Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The couple, who legally wed in October 2014, have taken care of the 1-year-old girl for three months, and her birth mother has asked them to adopt the child. The Utah Division of Child and Family Services has been forced to find new housing for the child, but officials say they will appeal the judge’s decision.
“We love her and she loves us, and we haven’t done anything wrong,” Peirce told the Salt Lake Tribune. “And the law, as I understand it, reads that any legally married couple can foster and adopt.”
HRC President Chad Griffin called the move shocking and issued the following statement, “Removing a child from a loving home simply because the parents are LGBT is outrageous, shocking, and unjust. It also flies in the face of overwhelming evidence that children being raised by same-sex parents are just as healthy and well-adjusted as those with different-sex parents. At a time when so many children in foster care need loving homes, it is sickening to think that a child would be taken from caring parents who planned to adopt.”
The prevailing professional consensus is that the sexual orientation of parents has nothing to do with their ability to be good parents. All major studies on the matter show that parents’ sexual orientation is not related to a child’s mental health and social development.
Studies have also documented that LGBT adults are willing to adopt the very children most in need of homes and those who wait the longest in temporary foster care – those who are older and who may have special needs – and do so at a higher rate than non-LGBT adults. A 2013 survey by the Child Welfare League of America showed that in Utah there were 2,706 children placed in out-of-home-care, and more than 600 of them were waiting to be adopted.
Watch the KUTV2 report above.
