Evangelical Agency That Embraced LGBTQ Parents Needs Help!

Bethany Christian Services has taken a financial hit, and that’s not all

With your big heart for children and families, you are welcome.

As this year’s Pride Month kicked off, Cheri Williams wrote that sentence directly to LGBTQ people. She’s a senior vice president for Bethany Christian Services based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Part of the Evangelical Christian world, Bethany is one of the largest private adoption/foster agencies in the U.S., hands down the nation’s largest Protestant agency, with operations spanning 32 states and several foreign nations.

For decades, like many private Christian child-services agencies, Bethany would not place children with LGBTQ foster or adoptive parents. But last March, kicking against the pricks of a current anti-LGBTQ backlash, the agency formally ended those restrictions nationwide, a step they had already taken in Michigan and a handful of other states.

Bethany leaders say they had to do “the right thing” for children

The move was stunning. Many people believed Bethany had thawed policies in Michigan for practical political reasons, but just about nobody thought the agency was set to do a complete about face.

To say an uproar ensued in the Evangelical world is an understatement.

Last March, Bethany CEO Chris Palusky explained the decision in a memo to all agency staff: “We will now offer services with the love and compassion of Jesus to the many types of families who exist in our world today. We’re taking an ‘all hands on deck’ approach where all are welcome.”

Williams continued to emphasize the needs of children in her statement this month, pointing to 400,000 U.S. children stuck in foster care and more than 100,00 children waiting for the “forever homes” many of them will never find.

Bethany is prioritizing the needs of children over ideology

This really matters, because Protestant and Catholic child-care agencies play a traditional and outsized role in state-run foster care and adoption. States have long outsourced such services to religious agencies, and many agencies have dug their heels in on excluding LGBTQ people as parents, restricting the pool of parents available to care for kids in need, especially in areas where religious agencies provide all or most child-placement services.

In Texas, for example, major Christian providers like Buckner International helped pass a 2017 law that lets agencies deny placement for religious reasons. In South Carolina, Miracle Hill Ministries was given a federal waiver in 2019 to allow them to deny placement to LGBTQ, Jewish, and Catholic parents.

Last year, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia took a case (Fulton v. City of Philadelphia) all the way to the Supreme Court, seeking a broad ruling allowing a Church agency with a city contract to set aside their contractual obligation not to discriminate against LGBTQ people. The Court issued a narrow ruling, sending the case back for review, but the fight goes on on. Some Catholic agencies have even closed their doors rather than place children with LGBTQ familes.

Bethany has stepped out of the brawl, proclaiming a Christian duty to put children first.

Bethany has taken a hit for their principled stand

When Bethany bowed out of the culture war, they acknowledged that Christians don’t agree about LGBTQ issues. They said it’s not their job to tell Christians how to believe. It’s their job to follow Jesus’s teachings about helping children.

Sadly, some of Bethany’s traditional backers don’t agree. Williams tells the LGBTQ-supporting New Ways Ministry that the agency has “experienced a backlash against their move toward non-discrimination, resulting in the loss of donations and of potential placement parents.”

Their budget has taken a hit and so has their pool of potential parents

If you’re an LGBTQ person, a family member, a loving ally, or simply a human being who wants to help children in need, Pride month would be a great time to look into helping out Bethany Christian Services.

Some of their conservative Christian backers have let them down, and they sure could use a shot in the arm. Click here to learn how to donate.

Click here to learn how to volunteer, advocate, sponsor a child, or involve your local church in Bethany’s critical work.

Click here to learn how to foster or adopt with Bethany.

What would Jesus do? He said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” Bethany is taking him seriously.

Will you? Click on one of the those links if you can. Happy Pride!

James Finn is a columnist for the LA Blade, a former Air Force intelligence analyst, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, and an “agented” but unpublished novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected].

My writing is always free to readers who click my social media links, but if you’d like to browse more, click here to join Medium. Your nominal membership fee will help support my work:

To get an email whenever I publish a new story, Click Here: