The article loses all credibility with me upon the assertion, "...demanding that you stop, not because you’d be a threat to the kids, but because you don’t believe the state religion." Vermont does not have a state religion. Asserting otherwise is simply a sensational misrepresentation of a situation devoid of all accuracy.
When a child becomes a ward of the state, the state acts in loco parentis for that child. The state's responsibility is to those children in its care, not to satisfy the yearnings or beliefs of its foster parents. Foster parents are merely an available resource to the state for providing alternative care for the state's wards. Children's services in states do not exist for the primary purpose of giving waiting people children. They exist for protecting children.
What the article mislabels a "state religion" is merely discrimination law as it exists in the state. Children who are state wards have histories of neglect and physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse. Once the state removes them from their parents, the state, acting in loco parentis, has a responsibility to provide them adequate care that does not re-traumatize them by placing them in environments where neglect and physical, sexual, or emotional abuse happens to them again. As such the state has every right to say "here are the ways you must treat a child if you want to do business with us."
It is not about foster parent rights; it is about children's rights. If foster parents can't meet the job description, they shouldn't sign up for the job. The article is bunk.
