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The new bill takes aim at recent changes to HHS policy on adoption, ensuring LGBTQ+ foster children are placed in supportive homes.
U.S. Sen. Jim Banks introduced a bill on Thursday that would force adoption and foster placement services that receive federal funding to place LGBTQ+ children in homes with non-affirming guardians.
The Indiana Republican’s bill takes direct aim at recent proposed reforms to federal guidelines that require LGBTQ+ children to be placed in foster homes with a supportive environment for the child’s sexual and gender identity.
Banks’s H.R. 6658, tentatively entitled the Sensible Adoption for Every (SAFE) Home Act, targets the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its proposed reforms to the Safe and Appropriate Foster Care Placement Requirements for Titles IV-E and IV-B.
“The proposed rule would protect LGBTQI+ youth by placing them in environments free of hostility, mistreatment, or abuse based on the child’s LGBTQI+ status,” HHS said in a statement announcing the proposed reforms in September. “And the proposed rule would require that caregivers for LGBTQI+ children are properly and fully trained to provide for the needs of the child related to the child’s self-identified sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.”
Banks’s bill takes direct aim at the reforms in H.R. 6658, which would “prohibit entities receiving Federal assistance that are involved in adoption or foster care placements from delaying or denying placements under certain conditions.”
Those conditions would include denying adoption or fostering to potential parents, guardians, and foster parents whose religious or personal beliefs would lead them to deny affirmation of a child’s LGBTQ+ identity and denying medically necessary care to trans youth.
“The Biden administration is cruelly preventing countless children in the foster care and adoption system from going to loving homes just because parents are opposed to irreversible sex change procedures on kids," Banks told Fox News Digital, adding, “This isn’t a liberal or conservative issue. This is just plain wrong, and every sane person knows it.”
If H.R. 6658 were to become the law, some fear trans children could be placed in foster homes that would refuse to provide affirming and medically necessary care and therapy to the foster child.
While the bill may pass in the Republican-controlled House, it has little chance of passing the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Banks represents parts of Iowa. He represents parts of Indiana. We regret the error.
