City officials in Albany, N.Y., are actively targeting a faith-based adoption provider because it’s facilitating adoptions, unafraid to hide its religious origins. Following a review of New Hope Family Services’ policies, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services gave New Hope an ultimatum: revise its policy prioritizing the placement of the children it serves in homes with a married mother and father, or close.
OCFS sent New Hope Family Services a letter in October following a site visit the state agency made to the nonprofit group. While originally the OCFS letter praised New Hope’s program for “a number of strengths in providing adoption services within the community,” city officials changed their tune later following a review of New Hope’s policy regarding child placements, describing them as “discriminatory and impermissible” because they were faith-based. New Hope has never had complaints from prospective parents due to their policies.
Now, New Hope Family Services faces the interruption of adoption placements and the immediate phase-out of its adoption program if the religious nonprofit group doesn’t immediately change its policy.
New Hope is asking the court to protect it from being punished or forced to shut down because of its religious beliefs, beliefs that have informed the group about how best to place babies with families to care for them. (You can read the complaint here.) Since 1965, New Hope Family Services has been placing more than 1,000 children in adoptive homes throughout New York. It doesn’t accept state funding, and much of its organization operates via support from churches, individual donors, and private grants.
While not a widespread trend, this is not the first faith-based adoption agency this year to get flak from city officials for operating from a faith-based perspective. This summer, the city of Philadelphia cut ties with a faith-based adoption agency placing dozens of children in limbo and sparking a lawsuit.
If any adoption agency, faith-based or not, is operating within the law, the city does not have a right or an interest in interfering with its work. What exactly is the city’s interest in squelching adoptions of all things? Some statistics show there might be as many as 36 couples waiting to adopt for every one child matched with a family. As long as an agency is complying with the law and above board in its operations, intervening in the process actually hurts families and society at large. In this case, it’s especially discriminatory to target an adoption agency solely because it operates within a faith-filled worldview.
Albany city officials need to get back to the business of running their city and stay out of the business of adoptions.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
