A Christian couple who spent more than a decade caring for foster children is celebrating a major legal victory after Washington state agreed to change its licensing rules following a dispute over requirements that foster parents use children's preferred pronouns and comply with gender identity policies, even when those requirements conflicted with their religious beliefs.

Shane and Jennifer DeGross told Fox News Digital in an interview Wednesday that the dispute began in 2022, when they attempted to renew their foster care license and discovered the state had changed its requirements concerning gender identity.

The couple said they were willing to love and care for any child placed in their home but could not agree to certain state-imposed requirements they believed violated their Christian faith.

"We were made aware that the state had updated and changed some of their requirements," Jennifer DeGross told Fox News Digital. "While we agreed that we would love and care for any child in our home, they had specific things that we could not agree to as Christians."

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Shane DeGross said the state required them to affirm the state's views on gender identity and human sexuality.

"Those views directly conflict with the biblical worldview of human sexuality," Shane DeGross said. "So, as Christians, we just couldn't accept that. Our allegiance is to God and the truth of Scripture. And we just couldn't abide by what they were requiring us to affirm."

Washington's licensing policies required foster parents to affirm and support LGBTQ children, including expectations concerning gender identity and the use of preferred names and pronouns. The DeGross family challenged the requirements on religious freedom grounds. Jennifer said the state eventually partially reinstated their license but restricted the ages of children they could foster.

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"We felt like even when they reinstated a partial license to us that they were still discriminating against us," she said.

"When a child reached 5, they had to be removed from our home," Jennifer said. "So not only was that upsetting to us, but that's not good for kids, right?"

Jennifer argued that such a restriction could disrupt a child's placement even if the child had already spent years living with a foster family.

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"If we had had a child for a couple of years, and then they have to be removed just because they turned or reached a certain age, it's definitely not in the interest of children," she said.

The legal battle resulted in a settlement under which Washington agreed to revise its foster care licensing rules, addressing the conflict between the state's gender identity requirements and foster parents' religious freedom claims.

Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, told Fox News Digital that the DeGross' case should serve as a lesson for the rest of the country.

"These foster care agencies, they have to respect the First Amendment rights of foster parents, as well as the children in the system and everyone that they work with," Widmalm-Delphonse said. 

"So, states should be on notice from this settlement, as well as some of the other cases that we've seen like the Bates v. Pakseresht decision, that they have to respect First Amendment rights, they have to respect free speech rights, and the way you do that is you invite as many foster parents into the system as possible on the front end, and then you match at the back end according to children's individual needs or family's abilities, comfort level, things like that, which is what they've been doing for decades, and this settlement shows that they can continue doing that now," Widmalm-Delphonse added.

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Widmalm-Delphonse said that since the settlement, Washington State has a new proposed regulation, WSR 26-20-103, currently undergoing the public notice and comment process which would in part give foster parents like Shane and Jennifer DeGross a religious exemption.

"This new rule, in part, would give foster parents like the DeGross's a religious exemption from any rule requiring them to violate their religious beliefs on gender or sexuality," Widmalm-Delphonse said.

Shane DeGross told Fox News Digital, "It's a great victory in the sense that more Christians can be available to love and care for foster kids without fear of being excluded because of their religious beliefs."

"It's a huge victory for kids that need a loving home," he added.

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"We are proud of the diversity of our foster parent and kinship caregiver community who have different cultures, religious beliefs, and lived experience," the Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families said in a news release on the settlement. "We are grateful that they all open their doors and provide a loving home to children and youth in foster care."

"This settlement agreement respects the religious beliefs of foster parents, while ensuring LGBTQIA+ youth are placed in an environment that is safe and supports their well-being," DCYF Secretary Tana Senn said.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Washington DCYF for further comment.

A friend was recently startled to find a Soviet-style hammer and sickle prominently displayed at a farmers market just a block from a monument to those who sacrificed their lives fighting totalitarianism. It's particularly jarring for immigrants from former communist countries to see these hateful symbols cheerfully displayed alongside fresh greens, organic honey and homemade pies.

When my friend engaged the affable twentysomething about her advocacy for communism in America, the conversation quickly became absurd. "Don't you know about the Gulag, the torture chambers, the Tiananmen Square massacre, the murder of 100 million men, women and children?" to which she replied, "I'm not sure what you're talking about…"

The young woman then parried, "All I know is that America has a shameful past and we should try to atone for the crimes of capitalism."

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"What ‘crimes of capitalism?’"

"I’m not sure about the specifics …" She then went on to deliver a short address on how communism will deliver a high standard of living by redistributing the obscene wealth of the rich.

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When pressed about the historical record, either of communism’s brutality or specifics about so-called American imperialism, the young woman’s friendly smile never faltered. She really couldn't name any of the crimes of capitalism.

Calling for the overthrow of the system that allows for a peaceful Saturday at a farmer's market made the entire conversation seem absurd.

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Conversations like this one, between average Americans and self-styled communists and socialists, break down due to differences of content and perspective.

When it comes to perspective, many of the 62% of young Americans, aged 18-29, that think that socialism or communism is a good idea have been educated with a simplistic neo-Marxist lens: U.S. history is a story of oppressor versus oppressed (i.e., patriarchy, race, religious bigotry). The Marxist model can be found in everything from "The 1619 Project" to the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America. Neo-Marxist critical theories attack the perspectives once widely held by most Americans regarding the American Dream and America’s exceptional service to humanity.

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The part of these conversations that's the most flummoxing, however, is not ideological. It is the part of the conversation that is about content: cold, hard facts. Anti-communists of all stripes typically point to the overwhelming evidence of the past and present crimes of communism. At 100 million men, women and children murdered, one would think that the evidence ‘proves’ that this is not just an inefficient system, but a diabolical one.

We have survivor testimony, government records, and some photographic evidence of the concentration camps (e.g., Soviet Gulag, China's Laogai), torture, extermination of minorities, deportations and forced starvation. The violence continues in today’s communist and communist-legacy regimes, from Belarus to Cuba and Eritrea to North Korea.

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The young person at the farmers market will blankly stare when you recite the crimes of communism. She has no point of reference. The crimes of communism are largely unknown; they are untaught and unchallenged in today’s university and high school settings. She has never heard of these things and she is not sure they are believable. Indeed, she will counter, these atrocities have likely been exaggerated and were undoubtedly justified self-defensive measures against capitalist imperialism.

When one does not feel (perspective) that the evidence of communism's crimes demands a verdict, and even disregards that there is evidence of wrongdoing (content), one is living in a different reality than that of most Americans born in the twentieth century. What is to be done?

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First, we need to work hard to return all of the institutions of our civic life – media, schools, houses of worship, the business sector, K-12 and higher ed and especially the family – to the basics. That is where we educate the rising generation with the facts and values of what we are for and what we are against. We adhere to the principles found in the Declaration of Independence, representative government, free-market economics, personal and local responsibility and democratic institutions.

Second, we need to transmit the facts: the personal stories and larger historical narratives of communism’s crimes and America’s valiant, sacrificial efforts at self-defense and global freedom: the Berlin Airlift, the creation of NATO and the United Nations, the defense of Koreans, Vietnamese and many other oppressed peoples, Cold War victory and post-Cold War friendship (i.e., Eastern Europe) and America’s stunning philanthropic giving.

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Accurate content and right perspective should also reinforce what we are against: all ideologies and regimes that are anti-human, anti-freedom and anti-family. Communism in any form is a political fantasy rooted in envy and a political program rooted in brutality. We need to make it clear to the rising generation of citizens that communism in any form has not been good for others and will not be good for them.

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How does one talk to a communist? Our best hope lies in inoculating our young against communism at the very youngest age with right perspective and accurate content.

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