The state of Illinois’ social services policies now bar social workers from employment and foster families from caring for children if they refuse to facilitate a child’s gender transition. The state’s director of the Department of Children and Family Services approved “enhanced department procedures” that established “mandatory minimum standards for LGBTQ children under its authority.”
These state standards, reportedly drafted with the assistance of the ACLU, “will not tolerate exposing LGBTQ children and youth to staff/providers who are not supportive of children and youths’ right to self-determination of sexual/gender identity.”
“No matter that sexual difference is a scientific fact, or that billions of sane people across the world acknowledge it,” said Mary Rice Hasson, director of the Catholic Women’s Forum at The Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., noting that vulnerable children in the care of the state will not be entrusted to people who believe human beings cannot physically alter their sex.
What it ultimately amounts to is an “erasure of the human person,” said Meg Kilgannon, executive director of Concerned Parents and Educators. “If a government entity is set to be the ultimate arbiter of someone’s truth, being or existence, then at what point do parents get left out of the equation?” she asked.
In Illinois, according to the new policies, parents are already being left out in significant ways. “When a child is in state care, parents have no say in whether the child will receive puberty blockers or hormone treatments, as long as two physicians, or a physician and a counselor ‘who is culturally competent in transgender healthcare,’ sign off,” Hasson added, citing the new procedural guidelines. “If a child’s ‘permanency goal’ is to return home to the care of his parents, then the state will notify the parents that hormone therapy is being initiated, but parental permission is not required.”
Andrew Walker, director of policy studies for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, noted that gender dysphoria was once viewed as an “ailment” linked with gender identity disorder. But activists have politicized the field of medicine making “what was once a pathology into an identity, a worldview, and a political virtue.”
The language of transgenderism is important since those who control the language have the power to frame the debate on ultimately false premises, Walker argues. Those new words assign meaning to new concepts and those concepts become unquestioned truths as society becomes more accustomed to their use over time. “So the label ‘transgender’ not only denotes the positive affirmation of a mental illness, it communicates a metaphysical fiction seeking acceptance and adoption throughout all channels of the culture,” Walker said.
The Illinois procedures also state that DCFS staff must “provide supportive and affirming care regardless of one’s personal attitudes, beliefs, preconceptions and/or judgments, if any, surrounding matters of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. Top of FormShould anyone have difficulty with this they will be referred to an “LGBTQ coordinator,” who is granted significant authority governing the department’s internal affairs.
Terms like “discipline” and “discharge” are used to describe what could happen to an employee or volunteer who in any way allows his or her “personal beliefs [to] impact the way individual needs of children/youth or families are met.”
Kilgannon said she knows of several foster parent couples who are devout Christians that when applying to be foster parents were subjected to all kinds of bureaucratic “LGBTQ trainings” in an attempt to reeducate them about sexuality and gender identity that violated their core beliefs. But they kept their mouths shut, opting to tune it out lest they be denied the opportunity to foster a child.
“It almost means that only if you are a liberal secularist can you be in service of foster kids,” said Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies at the Family Research Council. “And, frankly, I don’t think there are enough liberal secularists who are interested in serving as foster parents and maintain the system. I think it is ultimately going to hurt them by driving potential foster parents out, a negative consequence by anyone’s standards.” The procedures Illinois has adopted are “completely ideological,” he added.
“[Activists] may claim it is scientific but the fact that engaging in homosexual and transgender sexual conduct, particularly as an adolescent, is associated with numerous negative mental and physical health consequences. It cannot possibly be a health-related requirement to have this,” Sprigg asserted.
“Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot.” Luke 17:28.