Sen. Roger Marshall, R-KS, this week put forward a bill to stop a proposed Biden administration rule that would force “transgender” ideology on potential foster parents and foster care organizations.
Per its text, the legislation seeks “to prohibit” Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra “from finalizing, implementing, or enforcing the proposed rule, entitled ‘Safe and Appropriate Foster Care Placement Requirements for Titles IV–E and IV–B.’”
Marshall’s newly proposed bill is known as the “Protecting Religious Freedom for Foster Families Act.”
Under the leadership of Becerra, HHS announced its controversial pending rule in September of last year.
As CatholicVote reported in November:
[The rule] stipulates that a foster family must “establish an environment free of hostility, mistreatment, or abuse based on the child’s LGBTQI+ status.” Under the umbrella of “hostility,” “mistreatment” and “abuse,” ACF includes “unreasonably limit[ing] or deny[ing] a child’s ability to express their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression,” as well as any attempt to change a child’s “sexual orientation.”
If the rule is allowed to proceed, “foster families for LGBTQ-identifying children must be trained ‘… to provide for the needs of the child related to the child’s self-identified sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression,’” CatholicVote previously noted.
Marshall spoke with The Daily Wire about his effort to end the HHS’ controversial proposed rule.
“All children in foster care, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, deserve safe and proper placement,” the senator stated. “This extreme proposal by the HHS instead discriminates against faith-based homes and loving foster parents in pursuit of pushing their radical gender ideology and pronoun politics on religious families.”
Marshall indicated that the rule “would have an especially devastating impact in rural areas across the country, where there are fewer foster care providers than children in need of safe homes.”
“[The Biden] administration needs to leave the politics out of it and help as many kids that need their love, care, and support as possible,” he emphasized.
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Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-TN, is a co-sponsor of Marshall’s Senate bill. Rep. Josh Brecheen, R-OK, is sponsoring the House version of the legislation.
Marshall has been an outspoken critic of the HHS rule for the past few months.
In January, he and five other Republican senators penned a letter to Becerra urging him to “immediately rescind” the rule.
“If enacted, this proposal would place further strain on the child welfare system and undermine the ability of states to provide safe, stable, and loving homes to our most vulnerable children,” they wrote:
The Department’s proposal would put religious families and religious providers in the position of declaring themselves unfit placements for a subset of the foster care pool, in spite of their long track records of excellence in serving and loving all children who need help.
“[W]hen faith-based providers are excluded, there are fewer good homes,” Marshall and his colleagues noted.
“For example, Boston stopped partnering with faith-based providers in 2006,” they explained. “One year later, the percentage of children who aged out of the Massachusetts foster care system rose by over 50% and has not returned to pre-2006 levels.”
Becerra recently referred to himself as a “committed Catholic.”
Throughout his decades-long political career, he has established a reputation as a fervent supporter of both abortion and the LGBTQ movement.
LifeNews Note: Joshua Mercer writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
