Adoption & Foster Care Stories

For the most part, we received tremendous support from friends, family, and most care providers throughout the adoption process. Ours was a parental placement open adoption. The first time we experienced discrimination was when it was time to take our newborn daughter home from the hospital.

Peter and I had been together 5 years, but it was not yet legal in NY for a gay couple to adopt. I made an inquiry through the Council on Adoptable Children (COAC). Because I was a social worker, I knew that there were many children in the public system that needed a loving home, so we decided to pursue public not private adoption.

My wife and I live in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. My wife is an emergency medicine physician and I formerly worked in the pharmaceutical industry but with the birth of our first daughter in June 2015, I became a stay at home mom. From the beginning, creating a family and children has been a cornerstone of our relationship, and being parents to our 2 daughters brings us immense joy.

“Can you take a 13-year-old Caucasian boy?” I got the call in my office, just after lunch. It was the call my wife and I had been waiting for–our first foster placement. It caught me at work, my wife incommunicado at her job for the afternoon. But foster care training had emphasized checking in with each other every morning on whether we would be open to a placement that day, so that whoever got the call could say yes or no on the spot. I was ready.

My boyfriend and I first attempted to adopt in 2006. We identified a child for adoption who had lived in an institution far from NYC in western New York State, and whose parents were no longer fighting for custody. We had a home study, were fingerprinted, and were given a green light, so we contacted the county worker in charge of the 8-year-old boy we hoped to adopt. We'd had MAPP training, but were otherwise not being advised or coached or helped. We were instructed to make the six-hour drive to meet the child.

My name is Orion Olsen, I am twenty years old, and I am transgender male. At the age of 4 years old, I was adopted out of the foster/child welfare system. Previous to that I had been in two other foster care placements, and my biological home.

“Allowing state laws to exclude potential adoptive and foster parents because of their marital status, sexual orientation, or gender identity is not in the best interests of the child and reduces access to permanent, loving homes for these children. “

“It is comforting to know that during such an important time we do not need to hide who we are or worry that someone along the way will use their personal bias to determine we are unworthy parents for our daughter.  It is also heartbreaking to know that while there are thousands of children in need of great homes like ours, many potential LGBT parents are unable to open their hearts and their doors to these children due to the discrimination that remains throughout the system.”

“In the two years it took to become his dads, he had become accustomed to calling us daddy and papa. Our happiest moment was the day that we got to tell him that we were going to be more than his foster dads. He was ecstatic when he found out that he didn't have to leave and that we would be a forever family!”

“It pains me greatly to have worked for an agency that would discriminate against my daughter and others just because of the person that they love.”

“As a person of faith, I cannot agree with those who oppose this legislation based on freedom of religion. Faith calls us to love, to put the needs of another before our own. Allowing loving LGBTQ families to open their homes to foster children is a blessing to all involved… and should never be illegal.”

“I know that limiting families for children and youth in foster care results in harm. It comes down to a feeling of safety. When I was in care, I knew I couldn’t reveal my identity to my foster parents; if I did, they would kick me out.”

From trying to get fertility treatments to finding housing, [Charise and Erica] have been literally turned away at the door. The recent passage of Oklahoma Senate Bill 1140 promotes this type of discrimination, with dangerous anti-LGBTQ statues that allow publicly-funded adoption agencies to discriminate against LGBTQ prospective parents, single mothers and interfaith couples, among others.

“When I would tell my foster mom about the type of bullying I was experiencing at school, she just told me to ‘suck it up’ and that I should expect this type of treatment because I am different,” Tristan said.

They may seem to be the ideal prospective adoptive parents. Yet when they reached out to state-contracted child placing agencies to move forward with adoption, they were turned away because they are a same-sex couple.

He recounts not only being shamed for his sexuality, but also forced into following his foster parents’ religious practices and beliefs. During his six years in foster care, Terry was placed with over 20 different families — an experience not unique amongst LGBTQ youth.

“We were running away from a community that was our community, and also a community that needed to see us, visibly... They needed to understand that we are out there and we deserve the same rights and laws as them."

“I would just say for any parents looking to adopt, the process at times can seem extremely tedious and it could be hard — the waiting and the process they put you through. But if you want it in your heart it would be beyond anything you can imagine.”

The process of adoption brought Christopher Harris through three different agencies, having faced discrimination at the first two. Although he superseded all requirements — having five recommendation letters and taking additional parenting courses on top of extensive paperwork — Harris often found himself waiting for months to years with no word from the agencies where he had placed all his resources.

"Grandma told us that before she gave the kids up to foster care, she asked her church for help finding these kids a home. No one came forward. When she went back to church and told the pastor that the kids were with two gay men, all of the sudden the church was full of options. But it was too late, Grandma realized that these kids are the kids that Wes and I have been dreaming of..."

Brittany and Jessica are still interested in adopting a child from foster care. But despite helping overturn the state’s ban on same-sex adoption, Mississippi lawmakers doubled-down on discrimination in 2016, passing HB1523, a sweeping “license to discriminate” law that authorizes Mississippi child welfare providers to refuse to work with LGBTQ prospective parents.

Drew Pierson is a Texas dad who first tried to adopt and foster over a decade ago, but was pushed away and discriminated against by several child-placing agencies for being a gay man. 

Jason and Joe, a gay couple living in Dallas, fell in love and knew immediately they wanted to build a life together. But the couple’s dreams would be challenged by bigotry and bias against same-sex families.

“As long as I can remember, I have been in DCF care….My mother was amazing. I remember always wanting to tell her that I was gay but just couldn’t muster the courage to. We had one problem though. Money. Every month, on the last week, we would go out to every church we could to get food to last us until the next food stamp payment. To this day I can't stop feeling like I'm not allowed inside a church because of who I am.”

“In foster care we try so hard to please everyone as best as we can on top of dealing with any past demons. I always feared I would be kicked out of a household for being who I was or not be able to get adopted. Unfortunately, I never did get adopted, but the independence and confidence I gained from that was definitely helpful for me. I began to come out to my friends and other foster youth and was able to embrace and accept who I was.”

“To this day I can still not figure out why the department thought that it was a good idea to put an LGBTQ youth in a Christian organization that is openly against LGBTQ. While with this organization I felt like I was a prisoner and could not openly be who I was.”

“Even worse was having to join [my foster parents] when they would go on anti-LGBT rants just so I could feel secure in that I wouldn’t be kicked out of their home. My story isn’t all bad. Eventually, I became comfortable in who I was – I made friends in high school who identified on the spectrum. They made me feel safe and helped me to understand that I wasn’t an abomination – I’m just human. “

“Even though my foster mom, who came to be my adopted mom didn’t accept who I loved; I was stronger than everything I went through. I overcame so much to be who I am.  I went through a lot of court dates, trial, losing people and gaining people; it wasn’t easy, but it was my life. I wasn’t going to let one more adult ruin it for me.”

“I finally found a home where I can live my authentic self and began loving who I am as a person, not hiding a part of myself that society has deemed wrong. I was placed with my two dads and 6 siblings. My dads showed me what it was like to witness a true marriage and live a normal life, expressing the meaning of what a family was about.”

“A common question in child welfare is “what does normalcy look like?” …. As it pertains to LGBTQ youth, there may not even be a stable household open enough for youth to have these conversations to help themselves figure their life out; or being forced to participate in a religion that admonishes individuals who identify as LGBTQ.”

“Being in foster care is hard enough without tacking on the extra weight of being LGBTQ….there is no curriculum in the state of Nevada’s foster parent training that focuses on how to care for LGBTQ foster youth. For example, my caseworker’s supervisor saw no problems with my caseworker's behavior toward me, openly admitted to not understanding trans issues and refused attempts to have conversations about it. “

Isaiah was placed in two separate, but very religious foster homes. Read about the two very different experiences and how having a supportive foster family can help LGBTQ youth thrive.

“Aside from refusing to believe that I was genuinely attracted to the same sex, [my foster mother] also punished me by… Ironically, I would later find out that her actions were not fueled by hate at all and that she herself was also gay. Fearing that the state would remove her foster parent license for influencing my sexuality, she adamantly discouraged me from being vocal or honest about whom I was attracted to.”

“My background in foster care left me vulnerable… I had much more to lose than the average young person if those relationships were to dissolve.”

“No one can prepare you for the rollercoaster ride of parenting but our success is based on always considering our son’s needs first. We partner not only with each other but with teachers and other LGBTQ parents and our ‘Village’ to find solutions that work.”

“The road to adoption is far from easy but definitely worth the trip. We couldn’t imagine our family without our boys.”

“Unfortunately there is no standard roadmap for LGBTQ prospective adoptive parents pursuing adoption. Every journey is unique.”

“In 1992 Janet Simons and Mary Hynes, two white women, were looking to adopt, and visited me at the orphanage my mom had given me to. Two months later I went home to live with them.”

“When we adopted, Ginger was listed on the home-study as my ‘roommate’ and legally, I was the parent that was adopting. It wasn’t until same-sex marriage became the law of the land, some 8 years later, that Ginger was able to also legally adopt our daughter.”