The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) has issued new “enhanced” policies which are aimed at promoting homosexuality and transgenderism among youth and say that they “will not tolerate” anyone who is not supportive of children’s “right to self-determination of sexual/gender identity.”According to an article by Mary Hassan, an attorney and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC, the department’s new policies are directed at preserving the “well-being of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ) children and youth in the Department’s care” and that they “will not tolerate exposing LGBTQ children and youth to staff/providers who are not supportive of children and youths’ right to self-determination of sexual/gender identity.”
In other words, Christians and any other person who disagrees with the new transgender ideology need not apply for foster care or any other position requiring a child-welfare license.
The state’s new policy now requires that "all LGBTQ children and youth be placed in an affirming safe housing, receive LGBTQ competent medical and mental health services, and have equal opportunity and access to care. . . . In no instance should LGBTQ children/youth be placed with a non-affirming caregiver who is opposed to sexual orientations that differ from the caregiver's own. Nor should LGBTQ children and youth be placed with caregivers who are unwilling/unable to support children and youth whose gender identity or gender expression differs from traditional expectation.”
The directives also mandate that whatever gender pronoun a child wants to use must be respected.
In order to promulgate these directives, anyone involved with DCFS children/youth will now be required to complete mandatory training in LGBTQ “competency” which will be a requirement for attaining a child-welfare license.
“The new DCFS policies are less about safety and well being and more about using state power to ‘overrule’ basic, empirical (and common sense) truths about human beings and to replace them with ideological assertions that validate adult feelings rather than benefit children,” Hassan writes.
It should come as no surprise that the new policies were created under the “guidance” of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois (ACLU) and LGBTQ activist groups such as Pride Action Tank.
As LifeSiteNews reports, the ACLU says that it is “pleased that DCFS incorporated nearly all of the changes requested by the ACLU.”
Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute is calling the new policy “a governmental experiment based on Leftist theories being performed on children who can neither understand what is being done to them nor offer informed consent.”
Even though the state believes that children’s safety hinges on insuring non-judgementalism in their ranks, their own policies contradict that missive by discriminating against anyone who disagrees with the policies.
“The DCFS evidently doesn’t see the irony in its command that ‘Staff may not impose personal, organizational or religious beliefs on LGBTQ children, youth and families’,” Higgins writes, which constitutes the imposition of their viewpoint on everyone who works for and with them.
But the most unsettling thing of all is that the DCFS policy revisions are based on ideology rather than real science.
“There is no research proving that children are best served by having gender dysphoria affirmed,” Higgins writes. “The best research to date suggests that if gender dysphoria is not affirmed in young children, it diminishes over time. Do the omniscient powers that be at the DCFS believe it’s better for children to endure castration or double mastectomies, a lifetime of cross-sex hormone-doping with its unknown health risks, and social struggles than to accept their immutable sex?”
Even worse is how widely these scientifically baseless mandates will be imposed. Not only will the state empower their LGBTQ “Coordinator” to oversee enforcement, but this person will also oversee the sexual orientation and gender identity of all children and youth under the state’s care.
As Hassan points out, “Every child in the system is given ‘LGBTQ appropriate’ sexual health resources and put through LGBTQ-oriented sexual health education (because any child could be LGBTQ, after all).”
The new protocol requires caseworkers to contact the LGBTQ czar “immediately” about any sexual orientation or gender identity issue involving any child in the system; however, the child’s right to privacy prevents disclosing these issues to anyone, including family members, unless the child gives permission. In other words, the state must know about the issues, but not the parents or relatives of the child.
Hassan goes on to say that the revised procedures will have “a chilling effect on DCFS staff, volunteers, foster parents, and others whose ‘speech and behavior’ will be monitored and evaluated according to ideological criteria by the state of Illinois.”
She adds: “Forget the democratic process. Forget free speech, freedom of religion, and the conscience rights of American citizens. Forget the welfare of vulnerable children. The state of Illinois heels to the commands of LGBTQ activists; it has embraced a new creed based on the LGBTQ vision of the human person. The only winners are progressive activists and lawyers eager to fill their litigation dockets. The losers? Illinois’ most vulnerable children.”
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