ADOPTION AGENCY TO SERVE GAY PARENTS

One of the country’s largest adoption and foster care agencies, Bethany Christian Services, announced Monday that it would begin providing services to LGBTQ parents effective immediately, a major inflection point in the battle over many faith-based agencies’ opposition to working with samesex couples.

Bethany, an evangelical organization announced the change in an email to about 1,500 staff members that was signed by Chris Palusky, the organization’s president and CEO. “We will now offer services with the love and compassion of Jesus to the many types of families who exist in our world today,” Palusky wrote. “We’re taking an ‘all hands on deck’ approach where all are welcome.”

The announcement is a significant departure for the organization, which is the largest Protestant adoption and foster agency in the U.S. Bethany facilitated 3,406 foster placements and 1,123 adoptions in 2019, and has offices in 32 states. (The organization also works in refugee placement, and offers other services related to child and family welfare.) Previously, openly gay prospective foster and adoptive parents in most states were referred to other agencies.

Bethany’s practice of referring gay couples to other agencies was not official, the agency’s leaders said. “It was a general understanding that was pervasive,” said Susanne Jordan, a board member and former employee. But since 2007, the organization had a position statement saying that “God’s design for the family is a covenant and lifelong marriage of one man and one woman.”