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Massachusetts Denies Catholics The Right To Foster Children

by Summer August 11, 2023 0 comments

By: Summer

Can You Guess The Sole Reason Why???

Massachusetts deserves a major slapdown for grotesque anti-Catholic discrimination against a couple who wanted to become foster parents.

Helped by the Becket Law legal aid group, Mike and Kitty Burke filed suit on Aug. 8 against state officials who rejected their application to be foster parents. In an exhaustive screening process, state agents gave the Burkes high marks and glowing comments, but the state turned them down because their Catholic “faith is not supportive” of the state’s promotion of transgender medical procedures. The Burkes’ beliefs on sexuality were the sole reason for the denial.

Mike Burke is an Iraq War veteran, a small-business owner, and an organist at several Catholic parishes. Kitty Burke is a former special-education caregiver, a small-business owner, and a church cantor. They are willing to take in siblings, children of any ethnicity, or special-needs children, for whom Kitty Burke’s specialist training is perfectly suited.

The Massachusetts foster system is explicitly designed to assess whether each foster home is a good “fit” for the particular child being considered for it. As the lawsuit notes, the system is set up this way to ensure “families who may not be able to foster certain children are still able to foster those that fit well with that foster family.”

Yet, in this instance, even though gender transitions would be relevant to a minute proportion of children, the state denied the Burkes foster-care approval for any children, specifically because of Catholics’ faith-based qualms about gender transitions for minors. Even though the couple cleared all background checks with flying colors — they “really seem to understand adoption/foster care,” one interviewer said, and another called them “lovely people” — and even though they stated they would equally love children who said they are not heterosexual, the state said their faith-based refusal to support sex-change treatment was disqualifying.

This rejection was not only devastating to the Burkes but harmful to needy children. Some 19% of the 7,810 children in the state’s foster-care system are not placed with families. These unfortunate children are housed in institutional settings, with dozens in hospitals, despite not needing medical attention, because there is no room anywhere else. This is stunningly inhumane. The suit says others have been forced to stay in the agency’s own offices, “which are not equipped for overnight stays” because actual beds were so lacking. By the agency’s assessments, the Burkes could provide some of those children a loving home but will not be allowed to merely because of their religious beliefs.

Massachusetts, in effect, is saying children are better off institutionalized without a caring parent than they would be if placed with excellent parents who happen to be members of the largest Christian denomination in the world. This only needs to be said out loud to be recognizable as egregiously callous, stupid, and bigoted.

The Burkes’ lawsuit argues convincingly that Massachusetts violates the First Amendment’s protection against religious discrimination. Two years ago, in Fulton v. Philadelphia, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the city could not bar Catholic Social Services from placing children in foster homes even though the Catholic group would not approve of same-sex couples as parents. If a city is not permitted to exclude a private foster agency because of its religious foundation, a state may not legally exclude would-be foster parents for similar beliefs.

The practical implications are considerable. In 2011, 10 years before the Fulton decision, when Illinois refused to contract with Catholic Social Services in that state, a stunning 1,547 foster homes shut down, displacing as many as 3,000 children.

Massachusetts should not be allowed to ignore the Fulton precedent or the First Amendment. The state is arguably violating prohibitions on religious discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its progeny. A court-ordered reversal of the decision against the Burkes should be just the start of necessary remediation. State officials’ religious discrimination against the couple is so blatant that the individual officials arguably could be investigated for civil rights violations or subject to civil liability.

This case should set a national example to keep other states from similarly discriminating against people who still practice faiths that were instrumental in founding our civilization and exercise a wholly beneficial influence on our otherwise deteriorating culture. The Massachusetts anti-Catholic policy, as applied against the Burkes, should no longer fester, much less be fostered.