This is the reality Vermont parents Melinda Antonucci and Casey Mathieu are facing.

Melinda and Casey want to provide Vermont’s most vulnerable children with a loving home, so they signed up to be foster parents.

But when Vermont discovered that Melinda and Casey oppose radical transgender ideology, the state revoked their foster care license. 

In February, Melinda signed a petition encouraging the local school board to protect parental rights by passing a parental notification policy for students who express confusion with their gender identity. After she signed, she posted the petition on social media, urging other parents to voice their support.

This commonsense petition crossed the line for Vermont government officials. After learning about Melinda and Casey’s belief that schools shouldn’t exclude parents from critical decisions regarding their own kids’ mental health, the Department for Children and Families (DCF) informed Melinda and Casey that their status as foster parents was under review pending an investigation.

A DCF official called Melinda and interrogated her over her beliefs. The official badgered Melinda with a series of questions about her stance on indoctrinating kids with transgender ideology. The conversation kept returning to one central point: Melinda’s objection to medically transitioning young kids.

Melinda and Casey have sincerely held beliefs about gender and the role of parents in the upbringing of children. Moreover, they believe those views are backed up by science. Studies show that most kids naturally outgrow discomfort with their sex and that coercing kids into procedures like hormone therapy or a double mastectomy only cause more harm.

However, those beliefs are in direct conflict with Vermont’s radical position on transitioning minors.

In Vermont, parents who aren’t willing to medically transition a child are disqualified from providing a foster home. Vermont would rather have a backlog of foster kids stuck in the system than allow loving parents who refuse to indoctrinate children to become foster parents.

That’s why Melinda and Casey are standing up to Vermont’s radical transgender ideology regime by filing a lawsuit demanding that Vermont reinstate their foster care license.

Vermont’s most vulnerable kids deserve to be placed in homes with caring parents, like Melinda and Casey.

It’s time for Vermont to stop putting woke gender ideology ahead of helping vulnerable kids.