Judge takes child from foster parents because they’re lesbian

A judge in Utah has removed a child from the care of a lesbian couple reportedly simply because of their sexual orientation.

April Hoagland and Beckie Peirce are married and were approved as foster parents earlier this year.

They have been happily taking care of a baby girl for about three months, but Juvenile Court Judge Scott Johansen has now ordered that the child be taken away from them within a week.

He claimed that research had shown that children are better off with heterosexual parents than with same-sex parents.

Judge Johansen, however, failed to indicate what findings he was referring to. An overwhelming amount of studies have in fact shown that children do equally well when raised by same-sex parents.

“We are shattered,” Hoagland told KUTV .”It hurts me really badly because I haven’t done anything wrong.”

On Thursday, Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton spoke out about the incident, tweeting: “Being a good parent has nothing to do with sexual orientation—thousands of families prove that.”

In response to the news, Chad Griffin, President of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), said removing a child from a loving home simply because the parents are LGBT “is outrageous, shocking, and unjust.”

He went on to say that, “It also flies in the face of overwhelming evidence that children being raised by same-sex parents are just as healthy and well-adjusted as those with different-sex parents.

“At a time when so many children in foster care need loving homes, it is sickening to think that a child would be taken from caring parents who planned to adopt,” added Griffin.

The parents, whose foster care is supported by the baby’s biological mother, hope to find lawyers to fight the ruling. Utah’s Division of Child and Family Services has also backed the lesbian couple as foster parents for the baby.