Home>Articles>Sen. Wiener Bill Requires All Foster Parents to Affirm LGBTQ and Transitioning Youth

State Senator Scott D. Wiener. (Photo: Kevin Sanders for California Globe)

Sen. Wiener Bill Requires All Foster Parents to Affirm LGBTQ and Transitioning Youth

In 2022, 19,953 children were removed from their homes and placed into foster care via the CWS system

By Katy Grimes, April 19, 2023 9:39 am

Despite a shortage of foster care families in California, a new bill by Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), would ensure that unless all potential foster parents are willing to “affirm” LGBTQ gender and sexuality in foster youth, and any gender transitioning, they will be prohibited by the state from being foster parents.

SB 407 “Requires a resource family to have an ability and willingness to provide a family setting that promotes normal childhood experiences to include that of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or plus (LGBTQ+) and gender expansive youth,” the bill analysis says. The bill “requires a resource family, should difficulties around issues of sexual orientation and gender identity arise, that they agree to seek out any and all available resources offered by the county, foster family agency, and other offered resources to meet those needs.” i.e.: gender transition.

SB 407 ensures that “foster youth aren’t placed w/ families hostile to LGBTQ people,” Sen. Wiener tweeted. He claims “30% of foster youth are LGBTQ.”

SB 407 “requires the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) to ensure that county-approved resource families are upholding the rights of a child in foster care and meeting the resource family’s responsibility to safeguard those rights, including the right to have fair and equal access to all available services, placement, care, treatment, and benefits…”

Sen. Wiener’s bill analysis states that in 2022, the state’s child welfare agencies received 440,212 reports of abuse or neglect. Of these, 51,806 reports contained allegations that were substantiated and 19,953 children were removed from their homes and placed into foster care via the CWS system.

Wiener’s analysis declares, “for some LGBTQ+ youth, their entry into the foster care system is a result of their family rejecting or mistreating them because of their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.”

During the Senate Human Services Committee Tuesday, Sen. Wiener said foster youth who identify as LGBTQ need protection from physical and psychological abuse coming from non-affirming foster parents.

At the hearing. Sen. Wiener introduced his bill saying, “We want to make sure we aren’t placing these children in homes where there is hostility towards them.”

The “hostile” homes the Senator refers to are religious families.

The bill appears to be designed to flush out any potential foster family practicing any religion which would not square with LGBTQ ideology and/or gender transitioning. During the hearing Tuesday, Sen. Wiener said every foster parent needs to be willing to raise a LGBTQ kid the affirming way the state expects.

Wiener said LGBTQ children need to be placed with foster parents who have the “necessary skills, knowledge and abilities to be parents of LGBTQ youth.”

And because these children may or may not be LGBTQ, only foster parents adhering to the strict ideology approved of by Sen. Wiener will be acceptable in order to affirm them.

“SB 407 ensures LGBTQ foster youth are raised in supportive environments by creating standard documentation for their needs, adding more follow-up from the Department of Social Services, and requiring LGBTQ youth’s needs be specifically considered in at-home assessments – including clarifying that conduct that poses risk to the health and safety of LGBTQ youth is a valid reason to deny a family the right to host a foster youth,” Sen. Wiener says on his website.

“SB 407 ensures that foster youth receive this essential support by specifically requiring LGBTQ acceptance be considered in the resource family approval (RFA) process, creating standard documentation for the assessment of LGBTQ youth needs, and ensuring more frequent follow-up,” Wiener said.

Why does this sound as if Sen. Wiener is designing a state-sponsored program not just supportive of LGBTQ foster youth, but also for for cultivating LGBTQ foster youth? What about the other two thirds of foster youth who ostensibly are not LGBTQ? And where did the 30% LGBTQ foster youth figure come from?

A 2019 article copyrighted by the American Academy of Pediatrics and published by the National Institute of Health reports on a survey which found “More youth living in foster care (30.4%) and unstable housing (25.3%) self-identified as LGBTQ than youth in a nationally representative sample (11.2%).”

The report said “895,218 students (10-18 years old) completed the cross-sectional California Healthy Kids Survey from 2013 to 2015. Surveys were administered in 2641 middle and high schools throughout California. Primary outcome measures included school functioning (eg, school climate, absenteeism), substance use, and mental health.”

The conclusions by the surveyors: “Disparities for LGBTQ youth are exacerbated when they live in foster care or unstable housing. This points to a need for protections for LGBTQ youth in care and care that is affirming of their sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The study/survey was funded by a grant from the NIH, and links to perhaps hundreds of journal articles about LGBTQ youth.

The California Family Counsel explains in detail Sen. Wiener’s SB 407:

The sponsors of the bill, LGBTQ activist organizations Equality California and Family Builders, believe the current system for evaluating potential foster care parents isn’t strong enough to weed out those who object to their LGBTQ beliefs about gender and sexuality. Jill Jacobs, executive director of Family Builders, explained that the change is justified because of the higher rates of abuse and suicide among LGBTQ-identified youth. The new criteria for foster parents in SB 407 “includes an ability to demonstrate an understanding of the unique needs of LGBTQ youth and a capacity and willingness to meet those needs,” Jacobs testified. “If the prospective caregiver can not meet those needs they should not be approved.”

But this isn’t just making sure LGBTQ-identified youth are matched with parents who affirm those identities. SB 407 would require every foster parent to agree to affirm the LGBTQ identity of their foster child if they express their gender or sexual orientation confusion. “We don’t know which youth are going to be gay or non-binary or which children will come out,” Jacobs explained.  “Therefore we must ensure that all caregivers are able to meet the needs of all children which SB 407 will do.”
Legislative Director for Equality California Craig Pulsipher confirmed the goal of the legislation.  “We … know that sexual orientation and gender identity evolves over time and families caring for any foster youth in this state should be prepared for that reality” he testified.
Pulsipher acknowledged the law already requires foster parents to receive training on sexual orientation and gender identity, “but quite frankly it is not enough.” he said. “California can and must do more to strengthen the resource family approval process on the front end to better prevent discrimination of these vulnerable youth.”

Someone on Twitter replied to Wiener: “If you were as obsessed with creating a good business environment or lowering taxes as much as you are obsessed with your LGBTQ stuff, you might actually be of value of 99 percent of your constituents.”

Another said, “SB 407 is forcing many foster parents to put aside their own values to affirm ideologies they don’t agree with. Some which lead to mutilation and sterilization of children. The foster parents won’t do this, in order to protect the children, and hold strong in their values. This will lead to less loving families actually fostering. This will lead to more children stuck in the system.”

SB 407, will be heard in the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, April 25.

Here is video of Tuesday’s hearing:

 

 

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20 thoughts on “Sen. Wiener Bill Requires All Foster Parents to Affirm LGBTQ and Transitioning Youth

  1. SB407
    Should be titled, Christians Need Not Apply.

    Watch out, Wiener may be POTUS one day. He proves himself to be demonic with each piece of legislation he produces.

    Meanwhile his home city is burning down to the ground each day. Build, Back, Better equates to Mayhem.

  2. This of course is all set up for their ultimate goal which is to remove children form their parents if they don’t “affirm” the pervasion that they have been subjected to by teachers and other agents of the state. There are going to be a lot less families in this state in the not too distant future and it will suffer greatly because of this. This state says that we should kill our children before they are even born and if somehow we don’t do that, then we must gender confuse them and then sterilize them with chemicals and physically mutilate them. Thier agenda is a sick and evil as it comes.

  3. Has this asshat EVER done or proposed anything normal? My guess is no…and I’ll put money on it, too.

  4. Great! THAT will discourage the pedophiles and child pornographers from signing up to be foster parents. NOT!
    This bill (below) from five years ago (AB 2119) STILL makes my blood boil to think it was EVER allowed to be passed and signed into law. Authored by then Asm, now destructive San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, with Wiener likely lurking in the background, AB 2119 saw to it that MINOR FOSTER CHILDREN could receive hormone injections on the road to likely surgery and God knows what all, IN SPITE of a parent’s objections. It also made illegal any earnest counseling effort that sought to address the transgender confusion. Yeah, folks, this was the one that did that. Now law.
    Notice how these freaks always go after what is not only a vulnerable UNDERAGE group with their sick hormone injections and mutilating Frankensteinian surgical experimentation, but in this case they go after the even MORE vulnerable underage foster kids within that group, those who WAY too often have NO ONE in their lives who cares enough to scream bloody murder while they claw them out of the jaws of this evil system.
    Take a look at the committee testimony video below in light of what you all know NOW about what goes on here. An endocrinologist testifies oh so sensibly. Doesn’t matter to these subhumans. Todd Gloria drips his sick apologist slime all over the desk. This occurred five years ago:
    “AB 2119 Foster Care Gender Bill” (5 mins)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Lu1r1pyGFc

  5. Apologize for posting again on this, but please at least find your state representatives below and write, call (or both) to register your vehement opposition to this bill. This is obviously NOT GOOD for foster children (God bless them):
    SB 407:
    Assembly.ca.gov/assemblymembers
    Senate.ca.gov/senators

  6. Democrat Senator Scott Wiener has an obsession with pushing legislation that promotes perversion at the youngest age possible? He looks like a creepy ghoulish groomer with those dead soulless eyes?

  7. What makes me even more disgusted is that Newsom and his cronies are all a bunch of ‘yes men’ that are too scared to go against Scott Wieners propositions . Propositions that are tailored to a very small slice of the population.

  8. Is there a punishment for raising straight kids?
    I never thought I’d see the day when the 1.9% would be running roughshod over the country!

    1. Communists have perfected their “Island of misfit toys” angle, freaks, geeks, “minorities”, illegal aliens… Class envy only is so 1900’s

  9. My wife and I are 72 and I remember asking my mom a dozen years ago before she passed away at 99, what she thought about all the idiotic laws and regulations being passed in Sacramento and she said, “I don’t care, I’ll be dead by then”. I’ve come to realize, that these were really wise words.

  10. Supreme Court Sides With Catholic Agency in LGBTQ Foster Care Case—But Avoids Major Religious Freedom Questions U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Thursday that the city of Philadelphia cannot refuse to work with a faith-based agency because it will not certify same-sex couples as foster parents. It was a win for religious liberty advocates in a case that has been closely watched not just by LGBTQ and religious freedom advocates but also those who work with foster children.

    The case, Fulton v. Philadelphia, began in 2018 after a Philadelphia Inquirer article reported the agency, Catholic Social Services (CSS), would not certify same-sex couples to be foster parents because of its religious beliefs. After Philadelphia severed the agency’s contract, saying the practice violated the city’s nondiscrimination clause, CSS and two foster mothers sued the city. They argued the city’s decision violated their right to religious freedom. Two lower courts had ruled in favor of the city; the Jun 17 Supreme Court decision overruled them., https://time.com/6074119/supreme-court-foster-care-ruling-fulton-philadelphia/

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