On Friday, December 4, 2015, documents regarding District Judge Kathleen Sloan’s 2013 ruling relating to the placement of a child by Kansas Department of Children and Family Services (DCF) were published by the Wichita Eagle. With the text of the ruling came a bombshell: the State of Kansas DCF practiced “witch hunt” tactics against LGBT foster homes and potential adoptive parents.
In the release, chronicled by Bryan Lowry at the Wichita Eagle, the Judge makes very clear the standard procedures of the state DCF.
http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article48108120.html
DCF placed “their concerns for the ‘gay/lesbian’ classification above concerns for the child’s best interest, contrary to established law,” wrote Sloan, a District Court judge in Johnson County.
E-mails from DCF officials cited in the opinion show that agency officials sought to have the women’s foster care license revoked and talked about needing a negative psychological evaluation to support their case.
“In essence, DCF conducted a ‘witch hunt’ and made a concerted, purposeful effort … to obtain negative information … because they are homosexual women in a committed relationship,” Sloan wrote.
An e-mail exchange between Myers and other DCF officials in June, quoted in the opinion, stated that Gilmore considered the case to be the “Highest Priority” and that she was pushing for the child to be moved into a home with the adoptive “parents of the siblings ASAP.”
Earlier that month Myers e-mailed Simoneau and another DCF official that “We need a strong psych and medical case against them,” referring to the lesbian couple. When a psychologist did not see any issues with their parenting ability, Myers and Simoneau “second-guessed” the assessment despite not being medical professionals themselves, the opinion said.
While the administration refuses to say whether or not it is connected, Michael Myers, Regional Director for Kansas DCF resigned his position on Friday.
Republicans, unhappy with the media attention on the issue fired back in the press this morning, sending email out to most media outlets.
http://ksnt.com/2015/12/04/kansas-senator-criticizes-gay-rights-foster-care-coverage/
“Today this view is no longer politically correct and is actually received by many with anger.My concern is the children. If the state has custody of children, should we not do the best we can at meeting their needs? There is no ‘right’ of certain people or classes of people to be licensed foster parents,” Knox said.
The Kansas Department of Children and Families has repeatedly said it does not discriminate against same-sex couples.
Republican Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook, the chair of the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee, said in an e-mail the traditional nuclear families are best for foster children.
“It fits with common sense, as we should be able to acknowledge that mothers and fathers interact with children in distinctly different and complementary ways,” Pilcher-Cook said. “Each sex is different in nature and necessary for the optimal development of a child.”
Pilcher-Cook currently sits in the Kansas Senate, but has recently drawn a Democratic opponent for the 2016 election. In light of the newfound challenge, Senator Pilcher-Cook has decided to go back to her roots with a pitch to hard line religious conservatives. In a mail piece sent to her district she asserted the need for a “religious freedoms” bill as well as her opposition to LGBT adoption. The senator backed up her newsletter with more than emails to newspapers and mail pieces, holding a senate hearing on the issue of LGBT foster care in Kansas.
Jim Ward, House Democrat from Wichita, Kansas issued out his own thoughts in many media formats:
“My argument to Forrest and Mary is they’re still trying to argue the world is flat and the rest of us have moved on”
Ward has called for an investigation of DCF practices.
Democrats are hoping to seize on the madness by ousting a senator prone to major gestures have hope that Vicki Hiatt, a Shawnee Democrat, will prevail in a fall contest.
In 2012, Pilcher-Cook was challenged by Democrat and disabilities advocate Mark Greene, who managed a placeholder campaign. Despite his placeholder status — spending less than $3,000 on a state senate race — Green finished with 43% of the vote against a Republican running for the first time for Senate. Four years later, with a senate committee ultra sound, a move to ban surogacy and IVF and a move to make teaching sex-education subject to prosecution as a crime, Democrats feel a bit better about a hard fought campaign, providing Hiatt more fundraising in her first week than Greene’s campaign total.
UPDATE
Important Note: The Kansas 10th District Court informed several this morning that the verdict was NOT unsealed, however, the documents were “released” or have made their way into numerous hands, including the Wichita Eagle who published snippets. The ruling an commentary above, as quoted by the Wichita Eagle, still stands.
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