A leading evangelical adoption agency opens to gay parents

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

The Michigan-based evangelical organization announced the change in an email to approximately 1,500 staff members 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 77-year-old evangelical organization, which is the largest Protestant adoption and foster agency in the United States. 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.

The decision comes amid a highstakes cultural and legal battle that features questions about sexuality, religious freedom, parenthood, family structure and theology.

Adoption is a potent issue in both gay and conservative Christian communities. More than 20 percent of same-sex couples with children have an adopted child, compared to 3 percent of straight couples, according to a 2016 report from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. Gay couples are also significantly likelier than straight couples to have a foster child.

Many Christians are also deeply invested in adoption and foster care issues. Faith-based agencies play a substantial role in placing children in new families, and 4 in 10 Protestant churchgoers say their congregations have been involved in the issue in the past year, according to a 2018 survey by Lifeway Research, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

Bethany’s practice of referring gay couples to other agencies was not official, leaders at Bethany 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.”

Bethany’s informal policy became increasingly challenging for the organization in recent years, as various states and municipalities began requiring agencies to accept applications from LGBTQ couples in order to maintain their government contracts.

When a lesbian couple in Philadelphia attended a Bethany information session on foster parenting in 2018, they were told “this organization has never placed a child with a same-sex couple,” one of the women told the Philadelphia Inquirer. They were eventually referred to another agency. Media reports about the incident prompted the city to suspend contracts with Bethany’s local branch and Catholic Social Services, another Christian agency with the same practice.

Some faith-based agencies have challenged new requirements to work with gay clients in the courts. Catholic Social Services sued the city of Philadelphia over its contract suspension, a case that the Supreme Court heard in November.