Editor’s note: The following commentary is a lightly edited excerpt from remarks presented before the Presidential Religious Liberty Commission on March 16, 2026.
We have dedicated many years to serving our community in Vermont. Together, we’ve tried to live by God’s call to do justice, love mercy, and care for the orphaned.
In 2014, we saw a growing crisis in Vermont. The opioid epidemic had hit our state hard, and there were more children in foster care than available loving homes. Our church had started a recovery group, but we felt called to do even more.
So we stepped forward, and our family had the privilege of fostering and ultimately adopting two brothers.
Foster care is partnership with the state—working together to bring children safety, stability, and, whenever possible, reunification with their biological parents. For years, our relationship with Vermont’s Department for Children and Families was a success.
But in 2022, that changed.
When we sought to renew our foster-care license, the state introduced a new policy. It required foster parents to promote gender ideology, including telling children they can change their sex and using inaccurate pronouns if a child desired.
We told the state that we will love any child who walks through our door. And loving a child means telling them what is true.
We believe every child is wonderfully made. We would never tell a child that God made a mistake and that he or she was born in the wrong body.
This issue is deeply personal for our family. As a child, I, Katy, struggled with gender dysphoria. That experience confirmed what research shows now: The majority of children who experience these feelings will find peace with their bodies if they are given time, support, love, and the freedom to grow. There is nothing compassionate about confusion. Love requires truth.
When we told Vermont that we would love and care for any child but could not harm them in this way, the state revoked our foster license.
Vermont also revoked the license of another remarkable family, Bryan and Rebecca Gantt, for similar reasons. The Gantts specialize in caring for children with special needs and have adopted three children from the foster system. At the time their license was revoked, they had just agreed to welcome a soon-to-be-born baby boy whose mother struggled with addiction.
That baby needed a home. But instead of putting the child’s interests first, the state turned away a loving family that was waiting for him. This was heartbreaking—especially in a state where children have slept on police station floors because there were not enough foster families.
Vermont excluded families like ours and the Gantts—not because we did anything wrong—but because the government did not like our beliefs.
And Vermont is not alone. Kids are suffering in other states that have enforced similar policies, including Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington. These policies label families like ours “unfit,” even though many of us have spent years successfully caring for foster children.
That raises a troubling question: If the government can declare families unfit to foster a child because we believe sex can’t be changed, how long before the government decides we are unfit to raise our own biological children?
This is why we felt we had no choice but to sue Vermont for violating our First Amendment rights, which we did in 2023 with the help of Alliance Defending Freedom. Thankfully, in February, after more than three years of litigation, Vermont finally agreed to rescind its decision, allow us to reapply for our license, and end its discriminatory policy.
But this should never have required a courtroom. The government shouldn’t target parents who embrace the truth that there are only two sexes—equal in worth, different in design.
Today, we are grateful to the Trump administration for the steps it has taken to protect kids. We appreciate the Administration for Children and Families sending letters to Vermont and other states warning that their exclusionary policies violate the First Amendment and federal funding guidelines.
We know that when the law rejects truth, there is always a human cost. But when government respects religious freedom, more families step forward, more children find forever homes, and communities grow stronger.
Our hope is simple: that every child will have the chance to grow up in a safe, loving home—and that no state will stand in the way of families eager to provide one.
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