Friend,

The Trump administration kicked off National Adoption Month in the worst way possible, proposing that our tax dollars can go toward organizations that use personal religious beliefs to discriminate.

If they succeed, some of the $500 billion in grants awarded each year by the Department of Health and Human Services will flow to faith-based adoption and foster organizations that refuse to work with same-sex couples, atheists, transgender individuals, and others who can provide a safe, loving home.

It's a heartless, devastating change that won't just affect parents. There are more than 440,000 foster youth in the United States waiting to be adopted, and these new rules would make it harder to find them the family they deserve.

We have to stop this before it happens, and the Every Child Deserves a Family Act is how we can do it.

Introduced earlier this year in both the House and the Senate, the Every Child Deserves a Family Act would bar discrimination against children, youth, parents and others by taxpayer-funded foster care agencies based on religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status.

We cannot let religious zealots stop qualified, loving parents from building their families because of who they are, who they love, their faith or lack of faith.

Especially during National Adoption Month, we need to ramp up pressure on lawmakers. They must end this harmful discrimination before the Trump administration can loosen the rules even further.