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A JEWISH COUPLE WERE REJECTED AS FOSTER PARENTS BECAUSE OF THEIR
RELIGION. THIS IS THE FUTURE PROJECT 2025 ENVISIONS  
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Rebecca McCray
July 24, 2024
The Guardian
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_ A Jewish couple were rejected as foster parents because of their
religion. This is the future Project 2025 envisions: ‘a biblically
based’ definition of marriage and to protect adoption agencies that
only work with Christians. _

Liz and Gabe Rutan-Ram., Photograph: Liz and Gabe Rutan-Ram

 

In 2021, Liz and Gabe Rutan-Ram decided to take the next step toward
growing their family and applied to foster a child. After identifying
a three-year-old in Florida who they hoped to ultimately adopt, the
Rutan-Rams turned back to their home state of Tennessee
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become foster parents.

But their plans quickly fell apart when the Christian state-funded
foster care placement agency informed them by email that they “only
provide adoption services to prospective adoptive families that share
our belief system”. The Rutan-Rams, who are Jewish, were out of
luck.

“There’s already emotions playing into wanting to be a parent, and
then to have us attacked personally just made it that much harder,”
Liz Rutan-Ram told the Guardian.

The Rutan-Rams sued the Tennessee department of children’s services,
arguing that a state law permitting private agencies to refuse to work
with prospective parents on religious grounds violates the Tennessee
constitution’s equal protection and religious freedom guarantees.
The case will soon go to trial.

The predicament facing the Rutan-Rams could become more common under a
second Trump administration. Project 2025
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a 900-plus page blueprint for the next Republican administration and
the policy brainchild of the conservative Heritage Foundation,
contains an explicitly sympathetic view
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“faith-based adoption agencies” like the one that rejected the
Rutan-Rams, who are “under threat from lawsuits” because of the
agencies’ religious beliefs.

Project 2025’s Adoption Reform section calls for the passage of
legislation to ensure providers “cannot be subjected to
discrimination for providing adoption and foster care services based
on their beliefs about marriage”. It also calls for the repeal of an
Obama-era regulation
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prohibits discrimination against prospective parents and subsequent
amendments made by the Biden administration.

Though Donald Trump has tried to distance himself
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the project, his campaign’s own 16-page policy agenda
[[link removed]*1lumwh1*_gcl_au*MTc4OTg4NTE0LjE3MjEyMjg0MjI.] echoes
many of its goals, and his ties
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the plan’s architects are well-established. In Milwaukee last week,
the Heritage Foundation’s role in the Republican national convention
was on full display, both on welcome banners
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the airport and in the millions
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dollars invested in the event itself. Following Trump’s announcement
of his vice-presidential pick, the organization’s president, Kevin
Roberts, said
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was “good friends” with JD Vance, and effusively declared
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man who personifies hope for our nation’s future”. Vance has
previously said
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“some good ideas” in Project 2025.

Project 2025 is divided into four broad pillars, the first of which is
to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and
protect our children”. A conservative vision of family pervades the
document, and the authors call on policymakers “to elevate family
authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use
government power, including through the tax code, to restore the
American family”.

The plan envisions upholding “a biblically based, social
science-reinforced definition of marriage and family”. It would
remove nondiscrimination roadblocks governing faith-based grant
recipients, such as the agency that denied the Rutan-Rams. The authors
argue that “heterosexual, intact marriages” provide more stability
for children than “all other family forms”. In addition to calling
for the passage of the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act, which
would allow adoption and foster care agencies to make placement
decisions based on their “religious beliefs or moral convictions”,
it also calls on Congress to ensure “religious employers” are
exempt from nondiscrimination laws and free to make business decisions
based on their religious beliefs.

To the Rev Naomi Washington-Leapheart, a professor of theology and
religious studies at Villanova University and a queer parent, the
image of family portrayed by the policy agenda is blatantly
exclusionary. The Christian nationalist plan rejects unmarried
parents, single parents and LGBTQ+ families.

[white billboard with red and blue words: ‘You gotta keep ‘em
separated’]

A billboard in Milwaukee, part of a campaign by Americans United for
Separation of Church and State, to raise awareness of Project 2025,
that ran during the Republican convention. Photograph: Americans
United for Separation of Church and State

“The definition of family according to Project 2025 leaves a lot of
folk out,” Washington-Leapheart told the Guardian. “This blueprint
really delegitimizes the kinds of families that are day in and day out
raising children, paying taxes, contributing meaningfully to
society.”

The Rutan-Rams have become the face of a campaign
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Separation of Church and State, who are representing them in
their lawsuit
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that seeks to shed light on what they call the Christian nationalist
goals of Project 2025. As part of the campaign, visitors to the
Republican convention last week may have seen billboards reading
“You gotta keep ’em separated,” in reference to church and
state.

Project 2025’s vision is already law in a number of states. The
Rutan-Rams are battling a Tennessee law
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similar laws in at least 10 other states, that permits faith-based
foster care and adoption agencies to exclusively work with prospective
parents who share their beliefs.

Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for
Religious Liberty and author of a book titled How to End Christian
Nationalism, contends that the scale and reach of Project 2025 pose a
far greater danger to democracy than a patchwork of state laws.

“What’s different about Project 2025 is the sweeping nature of its
plan,” said Tyler. “It would really rewrite the federal government
and change policies in so many different areas at once in a way that
would hasten our journey down that road to authoritarian theocracy.”

The Holston Home for Children
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2025 and the Heritage Foundation did not respond to requests for
comment.

Tyler worries that Project 2025’s deliberate erosion of the
separation between church and state, a founding principle embedded in
the first amendment to the US constitution, will get a helping hand
from the US supreme court, which has handed a series of victories in
recent years to Christian activists. She specifically mentioned the
2021 decision in Carson v Makin, which struck down a Maine law that
banned the use of public funds for religious schools. It was “an
earthquake of a decision that a lot of people didn’t really pay
attention to that has really opened the door to government funding of
religion”, said Tyler.

The threat of a theocracy doesn’t seem far-fetched to
Washington-Leapheart.

“Project 2025 says that religion is a permanent institution that
should influence American life,” said Washington-Leapheart. “That
alone communicates the kind of arrogant way Christianity
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inevitability. And it’s not. I say that as a Christian person who is
firmly grounded in my faith. It is not an inevitable part of my
identity, it is a choice I make every day.

* Project 2025
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* Christian nationalists
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* adoption
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* discrimination
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