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A Massachusetts couple says their foster license was revoked after they refused to sign a state contract requiring them to “affirm” a child’s gender identity because of their Christian beliefs.
Lydia and Heath Marvin, who live in Woburn, Massachusetts, with their three teenage children, have fostered eight children under age 4 since 2020, including a baby with special medical needs they fostered for 15 months.
“We decided that we wanted to do foster care because it’s a key part of being Christian to care for those who are most in need, like orphans,” Heath Marvin told Fox News Digital.
But everything changed after the Marvins received a new parent agreement in August 2024 asking them to agree they would “support” and “affirm” the LGBTQIA+ identity of children in their care.
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The Marvins asked for an accommodation or waiver from the state, citing their Christian beliefs about gender and sexuality. They said they assured the agency that any child in their home would be loved and taken care of.
“We would absolutely love, care, and support any child in our home, but this was asking us to go against our Christian faith,” Lydia Marvin told Fox News Digital. “We were ultimately told, ‘No, you have to sign the form as is, or else you will lose your license.’ And so, in fact, we lost our license in April of this year.”
The Marvins said they had just completed medical training in order to take care of another child with specialized needs when they learned they were no longer approved by the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) to do so.
“It’s obviously not been what we’ve been hoping for,” Heath said, adding that their focus has always been on providing a loving home for kids who need help.
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The couple appealed the decision in May and found out in September that the state upheld the decision to revoke their license.
According to DCF policy, the agency “actively recruits, screens, and assesses foster families for their ability and willingness to support and affirm LGBTQIA+ children placed in their care, including recruiting foster families that identify as LGBTQIA+.” But religious liberty advocates argue this requirement forces families of faith to violate their beliefs.
At least two other Christian foster families in the state are fighting the policy in court.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is representing the Schrocks and the Jones in a federal lawsuit against the DCF, alleging the policy violates their clients’ constitutional rights. These families also foster young children and refused to sign the gender contract. The Schrocks had their license revoked in June.
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According to the suit, Massachusetts did not previously require foster families to pledge verbal affirmation of a child’s gender identity. That changed between 2023 and 2024, when the state began requiring families to sign agreements to speak and act in certain ways, including affirming a foster child’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
Senior Counsel Hal Frampton told Fox News Digital the state’s actions are hurting vulnerable children instead of helping them.
“What really hurts about all of this is that this hurts kids more than anything else,” he said. “Every child deserves a loving home. And children suffer when the government excludes people of faith who are ready to provide those homes to them based on the government’s radical ideology.”
ADF argues the policy is particularly harmful to children at a time when the state faces a foster parent shortage.
“They have more kids than homes ready to support them,” Frampton said. “And so the idea that you’re going to take loving families like the Marvins, like the Shrocks, like Joneses, the people we represent in our case, who have successfully provided for kids for years and say, now those people are just out of the system. In the end, what that does is it deepens the crisis, and it results in more kids not having loving homes.”
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The Trump administration has also weighed in on the Marvins’ case.
In a Sept. 30 letter addressed to the DCF from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Acting Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children and Families Andrew Gradison called the state’s policy “troubling” and in violation of the Constitution.
“These policies and developments are deeply troubling, clearly contrary to the purpose of child welfare programs, and in direct violation of First Amendment protections,” the letter said, according to the Massachusetts Family Institute.
“It’s really heartening to see the administration noticing this issue and taking it seriously and coming down on the side of loving families like the Marvins and recognizing that states shouldn’t be in the business of using their radical gender ideology to hurt kids,” Frampton added.
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A spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families declined to comment when reached by Fox News Digital.
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