RELIGION & ADOPTION: Religious Freedom

What does adoption have to do with religious freedom? Quite a bit, actually.

Tune in to learn more about the ways religion--and especially, you guessed it, white Christian nationalism--shapes the adoption industry.

CN/TW: This episode discusses adoption, foster care, child abuse, and child removal.

As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.

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Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.

Chapters

• 0:17 Hi Hello
• 1:54 Content Warnings
• 5:31 What is an unfit parent?
• 15:20 Religious Freedom & Adoption: huh?
• 29:39 Case Study 1: Bates v. Pakseresht
• 42:06 Case Study 2: Rutan-Ram v. TN Dept Child Services
• 58:17 Homework!
• 1:01:18 BONUS: C'mon, Ride The Train

Transcript

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 0:17

This is keeping it 101, a killjoys introduction to religion podcast, which is part of the amplify podcast network, we are grateful to live teach and record on the current ancestral and unceded lands of the Abenaki and Wabanaki peoples, as well as the lands of the one federally recognized native nation, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and seven North Carolina state recognized tribal entities. Increasingly, though, native folks are pushing us to forgo land acknowledgements altogether and focus on action items. So with that land back and also ways, you can find material ways to support indigenous communities on our website.

Megan Goodwin: 0:50

What's up? Nerds? Hi, hello. I'm Megan Goodwin, a scholar of American religions, race, gender and politics.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 0:56

Hi, hello. I'm Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, a historian of religion, Islam, race and racialization and South Asia. Goodwin, hi, hello. I'm so excited to be back today.

Megan Goodwin: 1:11

Hi, hello to you. Why are you so chipper?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:13

You know, teaching folks about how the adoption industry works, because it is an industry, dear nerds, is a major and how it's a major religious freedom issue. It just like, I don't know, it just like, does something for me!

Megan Goodwin: 1:26

alarmed, disturbed, but also intrigued. Pretty continue.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:30

Well, I should hope so.

Megan Goodwin: 1:34

All right. So if you're playing along at home, we are in the middle of a four part series on adoption and religion. This is part two, if you want what has been described as, quote, deeply fucked up personal stories and lots of food for thought, overviews about what adoption is and how a few religions imagine adoption, go check out part one.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:54

Yeah, there's just so much to say about adoption and religion and again, trigger warning. A lot of this is just fucked up. I don't know how else to say it. If these are hard issues for you, a, of all, welcome to The Club, and B, of all, feel free to tap out. We're going to keep going, because we can and do think about and do hard things, but we can't go back and repeat. We haven't the time. This time around, we're talking about religious freedom and adoption, citing themes and lawsuits mostly, but with this central point, adoption is absolutely inextricable from every other social system, included, but not limited to religion, and importantly, modern adoption is rooted in really, really troubling notions of Christian imperialism and supremacy.

Megan Goodwin: 2:39

Yeah, that that's the part that usually makes people wild. So let's, let's say a little more, and then get to the cases. Ilyse?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 2:50

yes, dear?

Megan Goodwin: 2:53

my beloved, no one has ever accused you of ignoring or downplaying imperialism.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 2:59

That is correct.

Megan Goodwin: 3:01

But I thought adoption was this nice thing that nice people do when they can't have children biologically, or they want to do something kind, or they identify with the plight of a parentless child or bear, or they do the math about what happens when children age out of foster care systems. Surely that is not white Christian imperialism.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 3:21

Well--

Megan Goodwin: 3:22

um, how, why? How. How is this white Christian imperialism

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 3:29

look? We already said last time that the narratives of adoption include major themes of saviorism, the good parent taking in an unwanted bastard child or an unfortunate one or one whose circumstances are ill suited

Megan Goodwin: 3:44

hmm. We did say that I also, when I express my admiration and appreciation for how often you've worked bastard into this conversation, it's really, it's great chef's kiss.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 3:56

I just, I really like when a swear is actually just descriptive, yeah, like, this is a word that has legal ramifications. It's important to me that we know that bastard and illegitimate are legal classifications, so I'm going to use it. If you're too prim to hear that, then I suspect this is not the podcast, right?

Simpsons: 4:19

Any idea where this bastard lives, whose parents aren't married? Are they? It's a correct word, isn't it, because he's got us there. Bastard, bastard,bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 4:32

Look, I want to, I want to be clear, we can talk about narratives of adoption and white Christian imperialism without pretending that there are, in fact, a metric ton of children growing up in absolutely unacceptable conditions where abuse is rampant. But that logic, the Christian imperious logic, that a good person saves a child and. Child should be absolutely grateful, and nothing else. Well, it has a lot of Christian stuff going on, yeah, not even undertones. These are just statements. This is a Christian idea, and its implementation has been really troubling and frankly, genocidal under very particular white Christian imperialist regimes. Okay,

Megan Goodwin: 5:21

I'm gonna, I'm gonna play the straight man for once. How so tough. Thank you. I'm just trying on. It doesn't feel right. I don't like it. How so? How could, how could that be?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 5:31

I feel like we're gonna deep dive into that. But for the sake of, like, avoiding monologs, what makes let's, let's do this. Let's do some banter. All right, Megan, what an unfit parent.

Megan Goodwin: 5:45

How much time do you have? Sorry, we're not not making jokes about my mom this whole time, though. Anyway, I would, I would hope that abuse factors into who gets qualified as an unfit parent.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 6:00

Absolutely. One would hope that Megan, how do you know what abuse is? Oh, scholar of religious abuse, whose first book is literally titled abusing religion,

Megan Goodwin: 6:12

I knew you were gonna do this shit to me. Fine.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 6:12

Yeah, you know, do your list. I won't All right, fine. All right, that's the big question. And I want you to know that in compiling this list, I did not actually review my sources for abusing religion. I mentally went over things I know that I and other folks I loved survived. Yeah, so major doglevich moment, you are welcome moving on. I think a working definition of abuse needs to include physical or psychological harm or violence, which includes, but is not limited to sexual violence and harm, deprivation and withholding. So, food insecurity, housing insecurity, financial insecurity, for collect force, yes, forced or not? Forced, well, so forced deprivation, forced withholding, intentional. I'm only asking because it's well, because we're going to come back to that, right? interrupt. I got excited about abuse. I guess that's upsetting.

Megan Goodwin: 7:04

Yeah, that's the weird space that I occupy where let's talk about it. It's terrible. It should be the tagline of our podcast, right? So intentional, deliberate, not forced, deprivation, withholding of food, housing, resources, money, any of that intentional neglect, isolation, again, intentionally keeping your child away from other people who care about that child, coercion, and for me, it's a lot about not having any other options. So no reasonable right of exit, no way to get out of that situation.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 7:39

Now, all of those things are that's like a really robust list, and they all sound like scenarios in which we would want someone, whether that's the state or our communities, our extended families, you name it, to step in. We don't want. We should not want. Frankly, I don't want a listener who thinks that any of those are tolerable. I want that for any of us, especially children, historically, one of the most vulnerable populations.

Megan Goodwin: 8:06

Yeah, right. And in in a world where it's possible for institutions to act benevolent, benevolently, yeah, sure, it would be great to have someone, or someone's ride to the rescue of abused children. It would be great to have like an abuse cavalry. But knowing your love of the Beastie boy is, I can sense that you're about to let the Beat Drop.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 8:31

Could you imagine not feeding your own child as abuse, or not allowing them to see relatives or participating in school events? Would abuse entail teaching children to do crimes. For example, could you imagine abuse being defined as raising your child within a belief system where right and want wrong are so warped, so troubling that someone has to step in? Yeah, yeah.

Megan Goodwin: 8:56

I mean, all of that sounds really harmful. And yeah, I would, I would say that sounds like abuse, and these are not thought experiments. We know that parents and guardians engage in behaviors like food withholding, which is so prevalent actually, that the Food and Drug Administration in the US has policies about it. In fucking schools. It is a matter of state law definitions of abuse and neglect, which is not a thing I knew before today, and I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. Kids should get to eat. Feed kids, is how I feel about that. Other behaviors that sound like abuse are isolation, and again, where I want to be very clear that we're not talking about parental alienation, as in the case of like a Woody Allen, because that is some self published bullshit, non science, but while cutting family members out can be really good and healthy for children and families, because some people are abusers, they need to be cut the fuck out. I say this from personal experience, but also isolation is part of patterns of abuse, so disallowing visits with like a trusted aunt, or again, just people who love and care for that child. And not letting them see people who love and care for your child can be abusive. A religious indoctrination is also a place where we can see abuse happen. Like I have said, I will always say that religion does not cause abuse. That's incorrect, and it's dumb in the face. But I have said many, many times that religion can hide abuse, can excuse abuse, can make abuse harder to spot, make it easier for abuse to thrive or survive, because of how power often works in religious institutions and the space, frankly speaking, of religious freedom made for specific, powerful religious institutions to get away with abuse. So we have seen, and I have written about, how the US government sometimes finds weird cult religions abusive and has acted accordingly.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 10:45

All of that sounds really plausible. Goodwin to keep up the Socratic kind of thing we've got going on. Sure, what if not feeding your child? What if food withholding is due to chronic un or underemployment, say, because of racist systems that bar black or native folk from getting jobs or what if it's just plain old capitalism's fault. We know the data in the US, literally in zero states in the United States, can the minimum wage support paying rent?

Megan Goodwin: 11:18

Yeah, and that's just rent, like, not even just your rent. That's not even food, or like, shoes,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 11:25

yeah, we have plenty of working parents who are homeless. Yeah. Okay, so does that mean that they're unfit parents because the bosses are stealing wages, or what if not seeing relatives was because of abuse, like you had interracial children and one of the grandparents are, you know, basically Klansmen. What if the people making the decisions about what defines abuse count raising your child to disregard Jesus or believe in Satan or believe in Muhammad as unfit, what then?

Megan Goodwin: 12:05

So I hear you setting up what sounds suspiciously like a gotcha moment, because I thought we were talking about like obvious abuse, and now you're making it all complicated. I suspect this is a fabulous teaching moment about whoever gets to define what characterizes unsafe or unfit parents is actually a question about power, and power is never, ever, ever neutral.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 12:25

Play the dings. Megan. [bell dings] whoever defines what is an unsafe home gets to decide what makes an unfit parent, but they also get to decide what makes a safe home and what makes a safe parent and for generations and not like a billion years in the past, like you and I, Megan, are old enough to have had our entire education in a native residential school. Had we been born to native parents, which were utterly famous for this kind of bait and switch move, which we're going to get to in our next episode. For generations, white Christians, holding Imperial or state power, were allowed to declare that Muslim, native, Black, Asian, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Parents were unfit, literally, because of their ethnicity, race and religion. We see child removal en masse from Native communities, but we also see the reassignment of those very children to Catholic and Protestant care with the explicit stated goal to make them civilized, which is to say Christian

Megan Goodwin: 13:34

Yeah, yeah. So what I hear you saying is that we cannot talk about adoption, past or present without talking about power, and especially white Christian power, and this here, White Christian nation of ours, being declared an unfit parent might mean that the state thinks you don't make enough money, or you don't make your money the right way, or that you're raising a child to have the wrong values, wrong in quotation marks, again, you insist on being not white for some reason while raising a child, or you have not accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. Or maybe you have actually, but you're doing it wrong and like I'm being snarky here, because I am whomst I am. But also this is accurate, I promise. I'm gonna let you drive this episode, but I will briefly remind our listeners that the single largest custodial seizure of children in American history happened in 2008 when the state of Texas decided that the practice of plural marriage, that is polygyny, marriage of one man to multiple women, was sufficient evidence of abuse, not specific cases being reported. The practice of polygyny meant that there must be abuse happening, that this was an abusive family structure. And they, they, they scooped up. Sorry, not sorry. Nearly 400 children from the FLDS yearning for Zion ranch in El Dorado. And for more on this, please see my published works.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 14:50

Yeah, you've got it. Look. That's a really brief overview. And I hope that, I hope a sense that making decisions about. Can be allowed to parent or raise children is literally anything but neutral or clean. So let's talk about that for the rest of this meat of the episode, which is about religious freedom.

Megan Goodwin: 15:20

All right, so I I'm not sure, honestly, religious freedom and adoption as an issue would have made a ton of sense to me years ago, like, frankly, again, this isn't something that I encountered during any of my coursework, despite the fact that adoption and religion have played such an important role in US nation making but since you've been dominating my brains for about two decades now, let's decades now, let's I learned something. Let me, let me take the lead. Sure. Bestie, go ahead. Hey, thanks, Sarah. The thing about religious freedom is that it's not just an idea. Religious freedom is not a vibe. It is not as they say, brat. Religious freedom is a legal framework, not exclusively, but definitely within the US. It isn't a hall pass to do anything in the name of religion, as Mormons learned the hard way back in 1878 Religious freedom is a set of constitutional protections as well as other laws and judicial rulings that outline how the government, the government, cannot establish a religion or actively place too heavy a burden on practitioners to practice their religion to be broad and vague. So we may say, then that religious freedom is constitution maxing. But frankly, with this white Christian activist Supreme Court in charge, these protections and laws are shifting and not in ways that we find good. To put it very mildly, yeah, yeah. No, freaking kidding. Anyway, adoption can be a religious freedom issue for a few reasons. Reason The first religions have their own way of thinking about orphans, children with their guardians and adoption, and those things aren't the same at all. But the government, any government, has its own ways of thinking about adoption in particular, and state and religious definitions or legal frameworks often do not line up.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 17:06

Reason The second is that adoptees do not have rights for a billion reasons, but usually because they are minors adopted at birth. Great. Your adoptive parents get to name you and raise you in the tradition or lack of tradition of their choice. Adopted as a child, doesn't really matter if you had a strong religion before. Doesn't matter if you had none legally, your adoptive family controls your religion now, and there's best practices, but they're not mandated. You didn't get adopted. Too dang bad, even your foster family has the right to allow or not allow religious attendance and participation up to age 18, when in the United States, one would age out of these systems. And don't get me started on how American churches in particular see the foster care system as an opportunity to do missionary work. There are literally dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of ministries for foster cares. There are pleas for major church organizations encouraging churches whole ass. Churches like the church is fostering children. There are 504, 3c organizations trying hard to get access to these poor, wayward souls. Adoptees are here a commodity for God, and I find that kind of disgusting, even if there are good intentions behind it.

Megan Goodwin: 18:25

Yeah, that's gross, just so I'm clear, because, again, I know like half a thing about adoption in Christianity, but the orgs are adopting the children directly to families, right? They're not, like, owned by they're not the possession of the organization? It's

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 18:41

a really great question that has changed over the years. There were many years where churches literally adopted children and then the church owned the child and, yeah, farmed out to other people. Yeah, currently that is not the practice. We do not have that in place anymore, though, functionally,

Megan Goodwin: 19:01

I would say, yeah, yeah, it's real. Greg,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 19:04

what does it mean when, like, I really careful here and not use specific denomination names. So what does it mean when a specific denomination is putting out a call for its flock, yeah, to do fostering, and then they are providing material resources to make that possible for individual churches within that denomination. Oh, that

Megan Goodwin: 19:23

just feels like you've got a Cayman Islands bank account kind of moment. Yeah,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 19:27

you're not wrong. It does feel a little bit like we are playing a three card monte, yeah, yeah. And Baby is the thing we're moving. Oh, no, yeah. I mean, like it does feel a little smoke and mirrors, yeah, yeah, but, but, but, to answer your question, no churches, babies anymore, anymore, right?

Megan Goodwin: 19:48

Well, because that was, that was the thing that I knew, was that one of the reasons there are so few shakers now is not only because this is the United Society and the of believers in the second coming of. Christ, there are now, I believe three shakers in existence because they were a celibate movement, but they flourished in the 19th century because shaker communities as as a church could just adopt children. Yes, they just, they just again. Store bought is fine. But then in the early 20th century, the laws changed. Churches couldn't directly adopt children anymore. And so then you get the card shifting around.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 20:24

It's a complicated history, because America moves from an orphanage model system to a family placement model system, which is why we have foster care as opposed to orphanages. Gotcha. That is not the case globally. And so like these are again, this is where adoption as a premise has lots of global stigma and global signifiers, but as a practice, it is mediated through your local nation states, governments and state to state adoptions are really different, because the laws around like, as we'll get to in a little bit like Oregon has its own laws about what qualifies for a fit parent, for children being adopted in that State, which may or may not line up with Arkansas or whatever. So there's a lot of like nuance here, but no children cannot be owned by the church

Megan Goodwin: 21:09

current anymore at this moment. All right, okay, so point the third major adoption agencies, historically and today, are, frankly, all about Christianity and not 100% but most, most of them, that history is beyond fucked up, as we're going to get to but it includes, well, is not limited to the Express statements of the Catholic Church, its agencies and other US backed Protestant organizations promoting the removal of native children To be raised by good white Christians to kill the native but save the child. We're going to get to the i CWA, or Indian Child Welfare Act, the removal of native children and attempts to adopt native children out of native homes for their own good. Also heavily in scare quotes in our next episode, which is an entire episode that focuses on the Indian Child Welfare Act.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 22:03

Yeah. And finally, let's be real, we can't cover everything. Conservative activists have been using and abusing religious freedom laws for a while now to claim that white Christians are oppressed. Listener the fuck they are. They are absolutely not sure

Megan Goodwin: 22:21

about that one. The fuck they are keeping it one on one done.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 22:28

But that hasn't stopped lawsuit after lawsuit claiming that the state owes Christian would be adoptive parents string free babies to raise in the name of their Lord. And we're going to get to some of those cases in a second. One

Megan Goodwin: 22:41

of my favorite things about having known you for so long is I can always tell when you're annoyed or angry or grumpy about getting back. It's a lawsuit, lawsuit after lawsuit. It's great. I love it. I

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 22:56

love it so much. I'm mostly in control until

Megan Goodwin: 22:59

I'm not. I mean same, our thresholds are just very different. Working on it, shout out to mind therapist and also meds. So what is? What I hear a saying is that adoption and religion intersect in a bunch of ways, not the least of which is because religious traditions have practices around parentless or guardianless children that sometimes play nicely with state based law. But I also hear us suggesting that white Christianity as the source code for the US is both a major driver of adoptions past and present, and as we'll spell out more below, a framework that all folks in the system have to confront regardless of their religion, almost like I don't know, religion isn't done with them. Religion is not

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 23:43

done with them. And sometimes this is explicit. There's, um, there's this great documentary by one time CBS Anchorman Dan Rather, called adoption or abduction. It's a good title, which outlines. It's a great title, depressing like it is emotional cutting, because it outlines these global lawsuits and allegations against Catholic Charities, which is one of the largest nonprofit organizations, literally in the world, which in many cases, and this is not an exaggeration, It stole children. It is a major actor in the baby scoop era, and it is the major actor in baby scoops globally. And and how that worked is like, often women were just lied to. Like women who had just given birth were literally told that their baby died, and instead, that healthy baby was taken and redistributed to a good and I want you to read Christian or Catholic family, or there are loads of examples in this particular documentary, and these lawsuits around this documentary where priests counseling women would con them, using tactics of religious or spiritual abuse into giving up their. Unsaved bastard children who surely would go to hell unless this woman, often a teenager, gave them their baby. Yeah,

Megan Goodwin: 25:13

Jesus and Baby Jesus? Yeah, yeah. Not to go all primary sources. Primary sources on you, but I don't talk to my mother, as we mentioned up top, it is good and fine actually, to disconnect from abusive and harmful people. But I do really wonder about her decision to give her first child to Catholic Child Services. Like, who influenced that decision? Was it her parents? Was it priests? Was it a decade plus of parochial school? I will never know, but I definitely wonder, and it seems not unlikely that she got the hard sell for adoption.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 25:46

Honestly, like, if I were a betting woman, and you know, I'm not, I'd bet my salary that that's the case, because the stories about bio mom, harassment, abuse and gaslighting are rampant. Like, truly, there are no good stories, yeah, that come out of this, even if the story is like, I was okay after this was I did not want to be a parent at this time, but the way in which that happened was fucking trauma, trauma on trauma on trauma. Lie on lie on lie. Yeah. And because most of these agencies, whether they're Catholic Charities or not. Most of these agencies worked in systems of closed adoptions, which meant once those records are sealed, that's it, babes. There is no legal way for a bio parent or bio child to reconnect, especially when that child is still a minor without things like private investigators. Back in the day or more recently, a major outlet for folks has been those like DNA kits, like 23andme as a brand of those, which are a wing and a prayer, the adoptee does the swab and hopes to learn something about their ancestry, but the secondary hope is that you'll be connected to some sort of biological relative, because that is what this DNA stealing company is doing. They're they're batching your DNA across across time and space. And I get it. I do. This is my life. I promise. I have thought about this from every angle for the last 41 plus years. The cases against Catholic Charities is one example of major corporations, among several disgust me, because it is genuinely about harm. You are harming the pregnant person who is clearly, if not, in distress in a moment of sheer stress and panic. You are harming the child because you've created a life of lies. You are harming the folks around those precious people. Because what work does it take to maintain those lies? Who else is involved, right? Because this is married up the baby scoop era is married up with the era in which we did not tell adopted children they were adopted because of stigma and because, like, social norms. Yeah, I don't use the word hypocrisy a lot because it assumes that everyone and everything is clear or can be clear, and so violating that clarity of conscience is also, you know, clear, but the hypocrisy of saving a child by mistreating and mis discarding their biological parent is so fucking vile to me that I can, I can, like, honestly, barely stand to have this conversation without, like, vibrating with anger. Yeah,

Megan Goodwin: 28:34

yeah, yeah. And that save your narrative might not be explicitly religious, although, come on, like, who are we kidding? But the emphasis on saving children from their terrible biological roots, their unfit parents, their ungodly parents, is religious as heck, especially when we think about the ways that adoption, orphanages and decisions about parental or guardian fitness are all literally mediated by religion and often white Christian actors, definitions, governments and power systems.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 29:07

All right, good. One. We listed four main ways that adoption is a religious freedom issue. But let's look at some cases to like actually flesh out our claims.

Megan Goodwin: 29:16

Yeah, great. I love facts about abuse and other depressing shit. Yeah, I bet this won't make me need to stare at a wall at all afterward. Yeah, sure, great. Let's do it

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 29:25

all right. Well, with that ringing endorsement, there's about a billion examples. So I got to be honest, dear nerds, it was really hard for me to just pick a couple. I was like, I want to do really, all this history stuff. I want to do all this like, but I

Megan Goodwin: 29:39

Yeah, found two to be one episode. I just want to say, like, originally, we pitched a religion and adoption episode, and now it's similar

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 29:48

So, and that's like me really cutting it back, trying not to live in my own trauma here. All right, but I've got two really great cases coming at you. The first, oh no. Is a great and by great I mean horrifically focused case out of Oregon last year that's still working its way through appeal. So both of the cases that we're talking about today are live cases, and hopefully nothing changes between now a drop date, but they're not scheduled on any lawsuit. Like, I check court dockets, like, we should be good, but like, soon this will be out of date. That'll be great. I love when things get out of date because incoming information. But I want our nerds to know these are not I feel like I live in the 19th century. You know what I mean? I don't want everyone to be like, Oh yeah, she's bitching about something that happened 150 years ago. Things are different now. No, they're not. She is live in Oregon right now. On today.

Megan Goodwin: 30:40

On today,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 30:42

this case in Oregon follows a really particular pattern around religious freedom First Amendment cases of late, which is to say, a Christian, a white Christian, a good white Christian, often kind of pretty claims that they're being discriminated against for their hateful positions.

Megan Goodwin: 30:58

Yeah, so it's like the gay cake case, right, where a shop owner is allowed to deny services to a gay couple because their owner's interpretation of the religion is against gay marriage. Yeah, very

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 31:08

that. So let's get into this lawsuit. Spoilers and trigger warning. I do not think people are entitled to children. I do not think you hearing from God that this baby is your baby. Is true and more so admissible in court. I further, do not think that the state of Oregon, when it processes parents fitness, is anything but fucking spot on to ask questions about how you will deal with raise or foster a child in your care. Should they be queer or trans? And one more spoiler, I think if you answer that question in a way that demonstrates you will be a hateful ass piece of shit, then it is absolutely correct that the state was like, well, maybe we don't trust you to have children in your care if the choice is up to us,

Megan Goodwin: 31:53

what if we don't hand a potentially queer or trans child, which is every child, over to a family that is telling you up front, oh yeah, I'm fucking hate that kid like I didn't realize that we were still debating whether teaching your child to hate themselves was like acceptable parenting. But just sure tell me more about what I understand to be a harrowing case that will leave me ready to punch people and they're bigoted nerds.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 32:17

Get your boxing gloves ready, girl.

Megan Goodwin: 32:21

You know, I stay ready right.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 32:22

Here we go. In Oregon in 2023 a woman named Jessica Bates, no relation to Norman, as far as I can tell, was denied the right, and I need you to hear me choking on that word, the right to adopt two children by the Oregon Department of Human Services as part of routine screenings, Bates told a caseworker, a state employee, and therefore mandatory reporter, that her Christian beliefs prevented her from, quote, following a rule that requires adoptive parents to support and respect their child's sexual orientation and gender identity. End quote. We'll do a little Okay? Bitch says in the interview for whether or not you can adopt a child like they're in your house. They're looking for cockroaches, they're making sure you got a bed for this kid. And they're like, Yo, are you gonna be cool with gay kids? They're

Megan Goodwin: 33:13

like, Nah, no, definitely not into that. Now

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 33:17

for us mere mortals, without deeply seated racialized senses of entitlement. We might think, oh, yeah, girlfriend broke a state mandated ruler policy meant to protect children, especially those in the care of the state, which are the children Oregon is allowed to dole out to other people. This seems open and shut. Don't follow the rule. Don't get the prize. Yeah. I

Megan Goodwin: 33:40

mean, I don't care for children being I'm just like, picturing the claw machine, yeah? Like, he's not one Rosen, I don't love that. But yeah, I hear what you're saying. Like, this is a rule. She said, Nah, so keep it pushing Yes.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 34:02

Sure. Except that's not how entitlement works, because Bates openly breaks this rule. The question is asked, she says, No, thank you. That is a disqualifying answer, and instead of being like, shucks, maybe I should change my answer, or this isn't the way for me to adopt. She says, actually, there's a fucking lawsuit. So she hooks up with the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is a right wing organization founded and maintained by conservative Christians whose entire purpose, as far as I can gather, is to undermine legal frameworks in favor of instilling Christian worldviews into law. Yeah, yeah.

Megan Goodwin: 34:40

I mean, like, more, so, right? Because us lost, so, like, it's, it's pretty Christian from the jump, like, but we're, we're just, like, underlining and highlighting and, like, maybe using a sparkle pen.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 34:54

I mean, they don't think that, but I find them to be scummy, so that doesn't, that don't mean nothing. But. Yeah.

Megan Goodwin: 35:01

I mean, tell us how you really feel.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 35:05

I mean, honestly, anyone who thinks a vulnerable child deserves a parent who, out loud says they can't possibly change their minds about anything is a fucking monster and also a terrible parent. And honestly, I've been a parent for more than 11 years now, and the idea that you never change is the most insane hubris I have ever heard in my entire life. But I digress anyway, Bates's representation this conservative Christian like org says, and I'm quoting here quote, no state should abandon children in favor of a dangerous ideological agenda. End quote. And they added, like a separate pair, a separate sentence down the line, they say quote, Jessica Bates is a loving mother who feels called to adopt siblings under the age of 10 from foster care. End quote. In this statement that the legal representative makes, he says a bunch of really transphobic shit too, like she's held a normal view that most normal people hold, which is boys and girls are different, and that difference should be honored and celebrated. Which like to transphobia. However, we expect that from this kind of organization. I want to call our listeners attention and your attention. Megan, to two things. Okay, first, like that's going on this lawsuit. First, the accusation is that the state is, quote, abandoning children in favor of ideology,

Megan Goodwin: 36:36

and the ideology is people who are queer and trans exist.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 36:43

And, yeah, okay, yep, okay. And their claim is that the state therefore is doing the violence because the state is allowing children to go unadopted, which is an unacceptable premise here.

Megan Goodwin: 36:59

So better a hateful parent than no parent at all.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 37:02

That's exactly right. Wow. And as an adoptee, I hear that as like, take what you get, you get what you get, and you don't get upset. And you know what? No, thank you. The second thing I want to point out here is the language of calling the legal counsel says Jessica is a loving mother who feels called to adopt siblings under the age of 10 from foster care. There is no universe in which that calling is not religious. She feels a calling. Who the fuck cares? Honestly, the part that gets me, though, and that what there's a lot of reporting about this case. This is a big case. A lot of these cases they do as like stunt cases, right? Like the gay cake case is a stunt case. This is clearly a stunt ask case, and that's fine. But the thing that the media is not picking up on, but that adoptee, like message boards and like discords are talking about is that this bitch put in an order. It's not that she feels called, or maybe it is, but she called specifically. She feels entitled to children under 10 who are siblings, when they're cute, when they don't talk back, when you still have influence over them, right?

Megan Goodwin: 38:19

Yeah, I mean, that's what she ordered off the menu, right? Exactly?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 38:23

Girl Wants chicken thingies. I'm like, that's fine, but this is not a restaurant, yeah? This,

Megan Goodwin: 38:28

this sure feels like a person who thinks about kids is, like, I don't fucking know, like a thing to own a choir is this like some horrible white Christian nationalist Pikachu scenario in which she attempts to collect them all? I hate it. I hate it a lot. I hate it. I don't like it. There's

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 38:41

nothing to like. In fairness, she lost the first suit. The judge in that case reasoned that Bates had not demonstrated that the government is endorsing or mandating a secular worldview over a religious one, and wrote, and this is this is the religious freedom part. Quote, it appears that the rationale behind why an applicant would be unable to accommodate a child's LGBTQ plus identities is irrelevant. The only relevant inquiry is the applicant's willingness and ability, not their reasoning. End, quote,

Megan Goodwin: 39:17

so it doesn't matter why you hate queer and trans people. The part that the state is saying matters in this in this decision, is that you don't think queer and trans people should exist, and regardless of why you think that, that's what's relevant here, yeah,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 39:35

and I think, um, I, I've listened to a few, like, legal podcasts about this case in like, the adoption network, and I'm gonna put in our show notes a few, like, really great adoption podcasts that are, like, fabulous. But one of the ones for this was, like, this is a slippery slope, because the state of Oregon has said that keeping children safe means attending to their mental and physical needs. Mm. Yeah, makes sense? Yeah. If you undermine this particular question on the questionnaire, the question is for legal experts, what else can be undermined? So like, are we going to allow corporal punishment? Well, like, you can't take children who've been removed from abusive homes and like, fucking hit them. Or like, can you say my religion doesn't like therapy, and therefore the state mandated therapeutic sources for kids transitioning from one home to another, because she's not asking to adopt a baby she's asking to adopt out of foster care, right? So there are parental rights that have to be terminated. There are also mandated mental health things that have to happen and and so, like, it's a slippery slope. If this were to pass, or if this were to say, like, that question is unconstitutional, then the question is, well, what else can be? What else can be said to be in violation of religious freedom? Could you say reasonably, and I say this with tongue in cheek, but also not for nothing. Could you say my religion says children should be punished by like, being hung on a crucifix for a few hours a day? That's fucked up. But like, people do shit to their kids, they really your state is mandating that, like, we make sure these children are cared for in every way. And so legal experts were less concerned about the religious freedom of it and more about the child minority rights of it that like undermining this one question actually can unruly undo quite a lot of the other care questions. Yeah, yeah,

Megan Goodwin: 41:35

all right, so obviously the case is moving to appeal. We don't know what happens next, but it's important to note that this denial of the right in scare quotes to be a parent only refers to the state of Oregon's finding that she is not suitable for child placement. It has nothing to do and no bearing on whether private agencies would rule in the same way, which suggests, as many experts have argued, that these cases are less about anything real and more about an agenda to push and test the limits of the law with a hope to defeat them frankly and instill again, more white Christian privilege in legal codes. Yeah,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 42:07

yeah. And we're going to transition to our second case now, because private agencies are also not immune to religious freedom concern. So let's take this case also ongoing, which features a Jewish couple based in Tennessee who tried to adopt, and like most Americans, found themselves seeking a private adoption, though this time, mediated through a Christian affiliated agency. Now that sounds confusing, but we'll get to the to the beef of the case in a second. All right, we've already established, maybe we haven't. Maybe it's worth repeating that an overwhelming majority of adoption agencies in the US are Christian outright, or affiliated. Okay, the fact this, the data on this is something like 85 plus percent of adoption agencies in the country are affiliated with Christianity in some capacity. So before y'all say, shop around, what are these Jews doing this Christian organization in the first place? Jews should shop at the Jewish store, I have several comments, all of them accusatory. Primary among these are, why? Why are children's records and ability to be adopted being held at private agencies. Like, why is that thing we allowed? Because that's a money question. That's a capitalism question. When people say adoption is expensive, this is what they mean, because it can cost 10s of 1000s of dollars to navigate your way through this shit. Second question, why are we okay that private agencies have religious affiliations, and what does it mean that guardianless children can be moved through religious or non religious private agencies which make money? So I want to remind everybody that I'm not just being an anti capitalist commie. Those are true things about me, but this is also data supported according to IBIS World, which is a comprehensive industry market research database, the market size, measured by revenue of the adoption and child welfare services industry, was$25.2 billion in the year of someone else's Lord, 20, 23,

Megan Goodwin: 44:25

billion, so human, human children are traded on a market like commodities. Children are literal properties. Cool, cool, cool, cool. No doubt, no doubt, no doubt, no doubt. This is fine. Dot. GIF.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 44:46

Okay. Anyway, aside from that really depressing thing, so we've got these two Jews, the Rutan rom family or root and RAM. I'm not sure they're a hyphen, they're spelling. Well, we'll put their spelling in a. At the show notes in I'm gonna go with root and RAM versus Tennessee Department of children's services. This is a lawsuit. The root and RAM family are Jewish people. They are a Jewish couple. They had identified a child they wanted to adopt in the state of Florida. Sure, we're not gonna get into because I do not have the stomach for it. The websites that advertise the children available for adoption, like, fucking dogs society ad, like, pet finder, no. Like, get me the like in

Megan Goodwin: 45:32

the arms of an angel. Like, just get me the like,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 45:35

Sarah McLaughlin, soundtrack behind it. But show me babies, and show me predominantly children of color and children with disabilities. Okay. Anyway, the root and RAM family of Tennessee has identified a child in Florida that they would like to adopt. In order to do that, they have to complete the process to become both Foster and permanent parents in their home state. That's a pretty, pretty typical thing. You're not allowed to start the adoption process before you've been cleared by the state that your home is a safe place to raise children. Again, the idea that this couple couldn't have their own children and so went shopping for one is super not okay with me, but that's not the issue currently. I just want us to hear how troubling the scenario is. In Tennessee, they turned to an explicitly Christian organization, the Holston United Methodist home for children. And again, you might say, hey, Jews, what? What are you doing? Should you know better than to play with with Christian organizations. And I would say, Yeah, of course, they know better. But this is also one of those scenarios where we're going to both test the law and we might have limited resources, because Holston is a state funded and state approved agency. Okay, so the Tennessee Department of Children's Services outsources who can conduct their screening processes. One of their partners in this is the Christian organization, Holston, United Methodist home for children, cool,

Megan Goodwin: 47:20

which doesn't sound like an establishment of religion at all, like at all. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. All right, so let me get this straight. A Jewish couple living in Tennessee chose a Tennessee approved and funded agency to conduct their strings to start the adoption process, and then the state affiliated religious agency, Christian religious Agency, said, Sorry, no, Yids. No. For listeners, this is an herb scripted episode. I don't think I've ever said Yids in my life, but here we are all sob.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 47:51

I mean, I purposely made it a slur because I actually want, I want us to hear like the No Irish Need Apply. But yeah, before and like before we go ham on yelling about Christian hubris, which like could take another 40 years of my life. It is vital to note that the lawsuit is not against the Holston United Methodist home for children. It is against the Tennessee Department of Children's Services precisely because holston's discrimination is explicitly sanctioned by a Tennessee law that authorizes child placing agencies to deny services based on the agency's religious policies, even if those services are funded and outsourced by state money. Yeah,

Megan Goodwin: 48:38

yeah. So that sounds like the lawsuit hinges on the idea that the statute is unconstitutional, and the root and rum family and their legal representation provided by a secular organization, Americans United for the separation of terms of the state they are setting about to make that law go away.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 48:55

Yeah, that's what I'm taking away from this, definitely. And here's what I want everyone to hear here, the state outsources this work. The state pays for it. The state allows the contract holders, the agency here, to take taxpayer money from the root and RAM family, only to turn around and say that that family fails to meet the standard of buying or adopting a child, because that standard is being Christian. Now, I have no clue. Truly, I can't find it in the literature. I can't find it in the research. I have no clue if this particular Jewish couple could have found a local or even statewide Jewish organization I, or I don't know, like, I don't know someone more friendly, like the Unitarian, Universalist thing, to do the adoption paperwork, maybe they could have and maybe they should have, but the idea that a religious organization can have state funding and legal protections to say only Goys is so fucked up that I cannot quite calm my heart rate down. It is you. Messed up in every single reason, including, but not limited to demography and history, right? Christians love adoption agencies because they have 500 plus years of stealing children. They're at a debt. They're at an advantage here, clearly, Jews or other, any other religious minority would in this situation have to rely on the existence of non Christian adoption agencies, or as the root and RAM family experienced to be denied the right to even start the process of being declared fit to adopt. This is like out the gate your yarmulke denies you the right to try to adopt a child from across state lines, for some reason

Megan Goodwin: 50:45

that just it feels so blatant, like, like, how is that possible? I mean, like, and however we feel about the adoption industry, not good, by the way. It seems problematic at best, that someone's religious views, identities, community of accountability and belonging would bar them from even filing the paperwork. Yeah,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 51:07

and I have to be honest. Like, as a total aside, there was a an an article that came out literally yesterday with Religion News Service by a rabbi, an orthodox rabbi, who's like, I like this case. This is about religious freedom. If Jews want to adopt Jews. This is great, and I have never read something and thought this person's a fucking idiot so quick in my entire life, because you can want your own community to take in your own people. And I think that that makes sense in ethno religion spaces in particular, right? And we're gonna, in the next episode, we talk about the ICWA. We're gonna really talk about that as a hinge. We want native children to stay with Native families, because the removal of native children and the removal of Natal culture is literally cultural genocide. Yeah, so how can you argue Elise out of one side of your mouth that removing native children to white families is bad, but allowing a Christian child to be raised by a Jewish family is good, readers, you have missed the fucking point. The question isn't whether like people should be with like people. That's like a fraught hornet's nest. Yeah, rule number one in that is always punch up, right? Christians be stealing natives on purpose to remove their culture. Ergo, you lost the right to adopt those natives. Yes, get your own babies somewhere else, right? You punch up, not down. But the second thing here, though, is that, why is the state of Tennessee outsourcing the state's obligation to vet parents for fitness. And why are we trusting churchmen with that job? Yeah,

Megan Goodwin: 52:50

yeah. And

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 52:52

how? What is the burden there? How many Jews are in Tennessee?

Megan Goodwin: 52:58

Well, two, at least, at least two, but they're actively trying to keep there from being a third. Apparently. Why

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 53:05

do Jews in Tennessee need to have their own adoption organization with credentialed people that are allowed and certified to do those assessments to make sure that those parents could be adoptive parents? Yeah, why are we relying on private nonprofit organizations with religious and can like values attached to them to do the work that the state is saying is mandatory. That is the religious freedom question. Because in this case, which seems open and shut to me and yet, and yet, I have a feeling it won't be Yep, but which seems open and shut to me is the state of Tennessee has no business endorsing one particular worldview or allowing anyone on its roster so that, like, if in my neck of the woods in Tennessee, there is only two adoption agencies, and the one that can see me faster is goyesha, and they're like, sorry, it's Jesus or the highway. That's messed up. Yes.

Megan Goodwin: 54:07

And again, feels like an establishment of religion, which is the very first thing that the Bill of Rights says we can't do governmentally. You don't get to pick sides. So it just, it seems like a very clear First Amendment violation. But again, with with this country, in this moment, who can say, and again,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 54:25

none of this is actually taking into account the children. Yeah, okay, the adoptees here are absent. Yeah, Jessica, not related to Norman Bates in Oregon, feels entitled to children and is mad that the state doesn't doesn't let her have them. Yeah, the rut and RAM family is stuck working through Tennessee's system, and Tennessee's system explicitly says it's super okay if our assessing organizations discriminate based on religion, cool. None of that's about the children, none of that is about the. Child that, in theory, is the problem that needs solving. A child without a parent or a guardian, requires one and people out here bickering on Main about which child they're entitled. It's

Megan Goodwin: 55:13

solve a problem like an adopter. Reno, anyway. Oh.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 55:26

Lady, we have barely scratched the surface, but I am mindful that it's time for us to wrap up. So here are my takeaways for this episode. Religious Freedom and adoption are utterly tied up. Point the first, yep. Point two, recent lawsuits, test cases or not demonstrate how blurry the line between state and church actually are. Third point is that religious freedom of the fucking child is not part of the story. Jessica Bates, her wishes, her concerns, her demands, are the primary concern. And with the written RAM family, I don't know what it means that they identified a child to adopt. And in a lot of the literature, it says they adopt, they identified a disabled child to adopt. So there's like, some fucked up stuff going on there, but I'm going to leave that horn. It says for another therapy session. But they didn't even get to the point of being screened for adoption based on their religion alone. Their religion alone made it possible to say, No thanks, babes. And the fourth point here is that adoption cannot be separated out from religion because the system of adoption is part of governments. The churches are all up in there, and how we are thinking about values is being as being threatened by folks who want to use their religion to abuse children is also present before you yell at me, dear nerds, as a parent, as an adoptee, as a human, if you do not think that it is abusive and harmful to refuse to use a child's preferred pronouns raise them to understand their own bodies and minds, then you're mistaken. And honestly, I hope you don't have kids biological or otherwise. And frankly, lose our number. That's real. That's

Megan Goodwin: 57:03

not the community we're cultivating. You can't sit with us? Yeah, no, I love it when you're in full fuck 'em up mode.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 57:09

Fuck'em up link, listen like imagine you're a bunch of siblings in foster care. Imagine how much you have survived to be there, and then imagine some crazy ass bitch with her Pumpkin Spice Latte has a calling, and that calling is to what, make sure you're not gay anymore.

Megan Goodwin: 57:31

No, she's gonna live. Laugh, love the gay out of you,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 57:34

like if this is you, then you've misunderstood the assignment. Molding a child in your own image is hubristic on a good day, it's messed up when that child shouldn't look like you. Yeah.

Megan Goodwin: 57:49

All right. Well, on that note, let us remind you that next time we're talking about child removal, the ICWA and native communities. And as a special treat, we are being joined by the director and founder of the Duke Native American Studies Initiative, enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation and cultural anthropologist Dr Courtney Lewis. Dr Lewis will help us situate the ICWA and the broader contexts of adoption Native American history and experiences her own life and lineage and religion. But

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 58:17

before we go, a few items of homework. Homework. What homework? And just like in the last episode, there's a lot that I'm gonna list in the show notes that I'm not gonna say right now, in particular, I'm gonna throw a bunch of adoption podcasts on there, because there's really cool work being done by a lot of cool people. But a thing that you should read or should look at, get your eyeballs on, is Dan rather's 2012 expose on adoption or abduction. It's available. It's it's pretty great, and it's streaming. I really like a Time magazine article from not that long ago about private adoption profits and how shady it is to figure out it traces a woman who gave her child up for adoption under duress and very quickly changed her mind, and then it was unclear what to do next, except to try to buy her baby back. Jesus, really heavy trigger warnings, but a really smart expose. There's also a really great PBS set of resources on the history of adoption in the United States, which includes a timeline and some interactive website stuff, which I'll link us to, and my my favorite is, is a lot of stuff on the orphan trains and their use in the americanizing of Jews and Catholics, which We did not talk about but please, picture a train picking up in major cities until 1929 when the stock market crashed and they couldn't afford anywhere from like the 1870s till the 1920s and people were like, all aboard, get on the orphan train, and then they would stop in little cities, and they would put the children on the platform, and they'd say, Okay. Good people. Which ones do you want? And they were mostly Catholics and Jews, and all the white people were like me. I'll take a GID. I'll have one of those Catholics, and then then you raised them good and Protestant. So that's a treat, and you should read about it, because it's sad. Goodman. Do you have any homework for our nerds?

Megan Goodwin: 1:00:19

I am just going to add that I thought the film Philomena, which came out in 2013 did a really excellent and compassionate job of bringing to like the heartbreaking experience of trying to reconnect with a birth family after your child has been trafficked by Catholic institutions. Yakers, anyway, yeah, you can find us across social media. We're still on Twitter, reluctantly and Insta and Tiktok and Facebook, and if none of that trains your orphans, we have a newsletter you can join via our website, which is keeping it one, oh one.com, drop us a rating or review in your podcaster of choice. If

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:00:54

you want to invite us to your campus or your local bookstore to talk about the podcast or our book, religion is not done with you, please, please, please, reach out to us directly, or better yet, hit up Caitlin Meyer, who is our incredible marketing and publicity Maven over at Beacon Press. All of those contact data is on our website, and with that, peace out orphans.

Megan Goodwin: 1:01:18

Do your homework. Adopt syllabus. You can do it on the train. We're so fucked up. You