NO to Adoption Discrimination in Congress

A foster care and adoption license to discriminate measure was recently put into a health and human services funding bill in the House Appropriations Committee.

The “Aderholt Amendment” allows foster care and adoption service providers across the country to discriminate against children and prospective parents based on sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, and marital status.

We need your help to tell Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker:  NO ADOPTION DISCRIMINATION in the 2019 Appropriations bill!  We will deliver hard copies to their offices.

Dear Senators Alexander and Corker:

We urge you to act to oppose the Aderholt amendment allowing discrimination in foster care and adoption services in the FY19 House Labor-HHS appropriations bill and ensure that the measure is NOT included in any Senate or final appropriations bill.

It would allow taxpayer-funded foster care and adoption service providers to discriminate against children in care and against prospective parents, based on sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, and marital status.

The measure breaks the cardinal rule of child welfare services: to act in the best interest of the child. This amendment would actually HARM CHILDREN.

This amendment would greatly harm the 440,000 children in foster care, particularly the 117,000 who are waiting to be adopted into loving, forever homes.  There is a crisis in foster care due to the huge shortage of available families for children. Each year, over half the children waiting to be adopted do not find a loving home, and most devastatingly, over 17,000 foster youth age out of care without a forever family.  Those youth are at greater risk of involvement with the criminal justice system, homelessness, unemployment, and being trafficked.

Speak out against this poison pill amendment,; let your leadership know you will not support a funding bill with the measure included, and vote against any appropriations measure that includes such discriminatory provisions.  Thank you for considering our views.

Who's signing

1,052 SIGNATURES
1,250 signatures

Will you sign?

  • Michael Stone
    signed 2018-07-18 11:35:21 -0500
    I am an adoptive parent.
  • Bethany Coke
    signed 2018-07-18 11:25:19 -0500
  • Lisa Cass
    signed via 2018-07-18 11:25:15 -0500
    I’m an adoptee! I ‘m definitely thankful that I was adopted by loving people who themselves weren’t able to have children! If it wasn’t for them who knows where I would’ve ended up! I lost my Dad in 2002 & recently lost my Mom in 2017! To me their the only parents I’ve ever known! I never felt treated any different bc I wasn’t their own biological child! It’s a shame that anyone would discriminate against any person opening up their lives to adopting a loving child! Who are you to say what a family is these days? As long as there’s love to share to these children that’s what matters! How many times are we hearing in our news a Mother or Father doing harm or killing their child /children? We have so many children waiting for their forever home, and the same goes with the adults wanting to give them a forever home! Stop the non-sense of what you feel makes a family today in 2018, that isn’t your decision to make! All I know is it wouldn’t have made a difference to me who I was being raised by, providing there was love & support given! This is my personal belief and I’m an adoptee!

    Why not put more of your time and attention into making all adoption records open so all adoptee’s in all states can at least see their medical records!!! My only negative I can say about being adopted is not knowing what runs in my family and the biggest is it’s always following me , my children and on and on! Look at it the way I live it, every time you go to a Dr what’s the very first thing they ask? Yes your right, what runs in your family?
    This is why all adoption records should be now opened, so we adoptees just might be able to offer our Drs. or better than that ourselves, and our children, and Grandchildren, etc. answers to what health issues actually run in our birth parents or their parents! I personally have lived now 32 yrs. with a chronic painful nerve condition! It started with an injury, however, now yrs later and research being done on this horrible nerve pain condition, their now thinking this pain condition could be hereditary! Without adoption records being opened how would I know or my Drs.? Than my children also have to worry about getting this horrible painful nerve condition which I hope never happens! So please, would you consider everything I’ve said here? Believe me, it comes from true thoughts and feelings! Unless your adopted you’ll never know how all this effects a person who is! Stop seeing things with closed eyes and heart! We make you our representatives to act on our behalf so why not start doing that by listening to what we’re actually saying! This isn’t just wasted words, there words from the heart!
  • Leslie Morton
    signed 2018-07-18 11:21:16 -0500
  • Jennifer Foley
    signed 2018-07-18 11:07:00 -0500
  • Diane Bird
    signed 2018-07-18 10:48:08 -0500
    Please don’t deny children loving homes with this discrimination
  • Ron Patterson
    signed via 2018-07-18 10:37:47 -0500
  • James Sullivan
    signed 2018-07-18 10:35:54 -0500
  • Missy Horesh
    signed 2018-07-18 10:34:03 -0500
  • Gina Núñez-Warden
    signed 2018-07-18 10:29:40 -0500
    Please stop this madness. The kids only want a safe, loving home. They do not care if it is 2 moms or 2 dads, why should anyone else care?
  • Robert Galloway
    signed 2018-07-18 10:24:45 -0500
  • Gary Hibdon
    signed via 2018-07-18 10:18:58 -0500
    Sen. Corker and Sen. Alexander adoption is about the core values of family and not about race or sexual orientation please support equality and let us not have Tennessee show we are a welcoming and open society of peoples willing to give great homes and love to children in all states as well as here at home .
  • Christy Osborne
    posted about this on Facebook 2018-07-18 10:17:48 -0500
    Sign the petition: NO to Adoption Discrimination in Congress
  • Christy Osborne
    @Sundownlee tweeted link to this page. 2018-07-18 10:17:45 -0500
  • Christy Osborne
    signed 2018-07-18 10:16:14 -0500
  • Melissa Mann
    signed 2018-07-18 10:12:40 -0500
    Melissa Mann
  • susan pankowsky
    signed 2018-07-18 10:06:22 -0500
  • Byron Kindig
    signed 2018-07-18 09:57:58 -0500
  • Stephanie Yoder
    signed 2018-07-18 09:53:45 -0500
  • Roxanne Wynn-Baum
    signed via 2018-07-18 09:51:46 -0500
  • Emily Adams
    signed 2018-07-18 09:46:33 -0500
  • Patricia Halper
    signed 2018-07-18 09:41:54 -0500
  • Sarah Barber
    signed 2018-07-18 09:40:07 -0500
  • Jeremy McNutt
    signed 2018-07-18 09:30:11 -0500
  • Susan Christophel
    signed 2018-07-18 09:26:50 -0500
  • Joanne Patterson
    posted about this on Facebook 2018-07-18 09:24:59 -0500
    Sign the petition: NO to Adoption Discrimination in Congress
  • Anna Morris
    signed 2018-07-18 09:14:12 -0500
  • Barbara McCay
    signed 2018-07-18 09:13:17 -0500
  • Kyle Southern
    signed 2018-07-18 09:11:30 -0500
  • Tom Hardin
    signed 2018-07-18 09:08:14 -0500

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