Posted on 06/10/2025 7:21:37 PM PDT by Morgana
NEW YORK – Free speech and religious freedom advocates, groups speaking out on the harms of radical gender ideology, and 22 states have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of two Vermont families who had their foster-care licenses revoked by Vermont because of their religious beliefs. On May 30, Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing the families filed their opening brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Wuoti v. Winters.
Despite a track record of success and high praise from social workers who knew Brian and Katy Wuoti and Bryan and Rebecca Gantt, Vermont’s Department for Children and Families revoked their foster-care licenses after the couples expressed their religiously inspired and widely held belief that girls cannot become boys or vice versa. The state applies this policy categorically—prohibiting families with these views from caring for any child, even if they sought to care for a relative, provide respite care for an infant for just one day, or care for a child who shared their faith.
“Vermont’s foster-care system is in crisis: There aren’t enough families to care for vulnerable kids,” said ADF Senior Counsel Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse. “As numerous states have attested, religious families play a critical role in the foster-care system. Yet instead of inviting families from diverse backgrounds to help care for vulnerable kids, Vermont is shutting the door on them, putting its ideological agenda ahead of the needs of suffering kids. When it comes to finding kids a loving home, everyone should be able to recognize that the needs of kids should come first. And even Vermont agrees that the Wuotis and the Gantts are loving and caring parents willing to open their door to any child.”
The state’s foster-care system has more kids in need than families willing to care for them, and officials have had to place some kids in institutions and unlicensed placements, including hospitals and police stations, to fill the gap. To help meet this need, the Wuotis became foster parents in 2014 and adopted two brothers from foster care. The Gantts became foster parents in 2016 and focused on caring for kids born with drug dependencies or with fetal alcohol syndrome. The Gantts have since adopted three kids.
Vermont officials described the couples as “amazing,” “wonderful,” “kind,” and “welcoming.” Yet the state revoked both families’ licenses when they expressed their religious belief that a person should live consistent with their sex and marriage is the union of one man and one woman. According to the state, that made them “unqualified” to parent any child regardless of the child’s age, beliefs, or identity. Vermont will not license these families to provide any type of foster care or even respite care. ADF attorneys say this exclusion burdens constitutional rights as much as it needlessly deprives kids of loving homes.
“Foster parents represent the best of society: local citizens who give back to their community by helping the State raise children that have fallen into its care,” explains the multi-state brief led by Florida and the Arizona legislature. “Unfortunately, foster-care systems are in crisis across the nation as states deal with a shortage of foster homes. Vermont’s brusque approach to foster care has only exacerbated that crisis…States like Florida, Oklahoma, and Idaho, whose foster systems are highlighted in this brief, employ foster-care programs that achieve the same interests through means that do not disqualify scores of good-hearted citizens with genuinely held religious and political views: by matching like-minded parents with like-minded children.”
In a brief filed by The Conscience Project on behalf of prospective foster families in Vermont, attorneys further detail the discrimination by state officials. “Despite the clear desire and ability to provide a safe and loving home for children in need, the Crams were denied a license to foster. According to the denial letter sent to the Crams in June of 2021 by Vermont’s Department for Children and Families, the Crams’ ‘fundamental belief’ of ‘God’s plan for all of us,’ would ‘not meet the emotional or developmental needs of children.’”
Pronunciation guide: Wuoti (WAH’-tee), Widmalm-Delphonse (VEED’-malm Del-FONS’)
Description: Vermont officials revoked the foster-care licenses of two families after the couples expressed their religiously inspired and widely held belief that girls cannot become boys or vice versa.
Evil.
Since the 90s they have imposed more and more restrictions foster or prospective adoptive parents when it comes to traditional or reality based beliefs while at the same time opening up fostering and adoption to perverts and abusers.
And yes they are now stepping into to prevent family members from gaining custody of their minor relations unless they are on board with the fantasy agenda. Which changes on a regular basis.
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