Michigan-based evangelical adoption organization Bethany Christian Services has announced that they are beginning to provide services to LGBTQ parents and same-sex couples nationwide.
According to The New York Times, the announcement came on Monday through an email to over 1,500 staff members, which was signed by the organization's president and chief executive, Chris Palusky.
The announcement of the major Christian adoption agency read, "We will now offer services with the love and compassion of Jesus to the many types of families who exist in our world today. We're taking an 'all hands on deck' approach where all are welcome."
According to the report, this service will be provided to same-sex couples and LGBTQ parents "effective immediately," a major change for the organization, which traces its roots back to 1944, when it began as the Bethany Christian Home that soon moved to a 13-acre property in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where its current headquarters are located.
It was only in 1951 when the non-profit earned its child placement license and began serving as an adoption agency. From the beginning, the goal of the major Christian adoption agency was "to demonstrate the love and compassion of Jesus Christ by protecting and enhancing the lives of children and families through quality social services."
The major Christian adoption agency has offices in 32 states and by 2019 has facilitated 3,406 foster placements and 1,123 adoptions. Today, they are extending their services to the LGBTQ community, including same-sex couples, which finds new protections and rights under the controversial Equality Act.
The decision to let same-sex couples and members of the LGBTQ community to adopt children through the major Christian adoption agency comes at the heels of the recently passed Equality Act, which provides additional protections based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
According to The Daily Mail, Bethany Christian Services' Michigan arm has already been adopting to LGBTQ families since 2019, when the state announced it would cancel funding for adoption agencies that refuse to accept gay couples.
The major Christian adoption agency's new adoption policy that will start serving same-sex couples "effective immediately" did not explicitly refer to same-sex parents or couples, but rather implied it "recognizes that Christians of mutual good faith can reasonably disagree on various doctrinal issues."
Before this new policy, Bethany Christian Services would refer same-sex couples who were looking to adopt to other adoption agencies that were less faith-based. The New York Times report highlighted how adoption is a "potent issue in both conservative Christian and gay communities" and how the cultural climate today is riddled with "high-stakes cultural and legal battle that features questions about sexuality, religious freedom, parenthood, family structure and theology."
These changes are a reflection of what Rabbi Avi Shafran believed would be the effect of the Equality Act on religious groups and individuals. He wrote in an NBC News op-ed that under the Equality Act, "Faith-based adoption agencies could be forced to abandon their religious principles and place children entrusted to them with same-sex or transgender couples."
