L.G.B.T.Q.+ foster youth don’t just struggle within the system; they are among the most vulnerable of those preparing to transition out. (One of the many failures of residential treatment centers is that they also neglect to provide an appropriate education.) And yet the “Fostering the Future” initiative that aims to ease their transition out of the system is paired with efforts to put the religious rights of people who wish to foster above the civil rights of L.B.G.T.Q.+ youth. In this way, Trump’s executive order reënacts the original sin of America’s child-welfare system. For many years, the federal government failed to take responsibility for dependent children, creating a vacuum that would ultimately be filled by religious groups. By the time the government began providing substantial funding for states’ child protective services and foster-care programs, in the nineteen-sixties, religious charities—predominantly Protestant and Catholic ones—had been overseeing the out-of-home care of vulnerable children for centuries.
Since the start, there has been a gap between the good intentions of faith-based charities—spurred by religious belief to take care of the poor and vulnerable—and the actual effects on the children in their care. At the turn of the twentieth century, Progressive activists argued that orphanages—which were virtually all operated by religious charities—were heavily regimented, overcrowded spaces that isolated children from society and deprived them of the benefits of family care. Children were underfed, heavily worked, and educated foremost in the tenets of faith. At Catholic orphanages, physical and sexual abuse were also widespread, well into the twentieth century.
In 1950, foster care began to edge out religious orphanages. As states and the federal government gradually expanded the social safety net, religious groups fought to maintain their control, which came with access to government contracts. Speaking at a 1935 meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Charities, a bishop encapsulated this fight. “The poor belong to us,” he said. “We will not let them be taken from us!”