A Christian couple in Vermont said the state threatened to terminate their foster care license due to their stance on gender ideology and “gender-affirming care.”

Melinda Antonucci, 44, and Casey Mathieu, 42, told Fox News Digital that they were forced to participate in LGBTQ training as part of the application process. These trainings discussed medical treatments for children suffering from gender dysphoria:

They secured their license in January and fostered one child on an emergency basis for two weeks in February. Relations with the Vermont Department for Children and Families (DCF) began to strain that month when Antonucci posted to her personal Facebook page a link to a petition advocating for parental rights in the Essex Westford School District.

Antonucci says DCF started questioning the couple’s stance on gender issues a few weeks later and threatened to revoke their license if they wouldn’t affirm gender ideology. The couple have refused to go along with the requests and say that their foster license has been effectively shadow-revoked, since they have not received correspondence about foster placements in weeks.

Now the married couple say they are speaking out against the state’s gender-affirming rules, which they say appear to be required for parents to be assigned foster children.

"There’s probably been a lot of mixed emotions. In some ways we are angry and also very frustrated that we're trying to do something good, trying to give something back," Antonucci told Fox News Digital.

"And we’re essentially being told that we're not fit to do that because of our beliefs, basically DCF's beliefs on gender ideology. And their beliefs, in my thought process, is not even really based in fact, it's just their opinion. And because of that, they're not allowing us to foster children, and there's a lot of children out there that need a home."

The couple already has three children, but wishes to expand their family, which prompted them to pursue obtaining a foster care license.

On the application, the couple indicated they would be willing to foster an LGBTQ child, but expressed reservations about facilitating “gender-affirming care” for the child.

The “gender-affirming care” approach typically involves the use of puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and even surgery, an issue that has caused controversy when it comes to using these procedures on children.

The parents said they went through LGBTQ training that focused heavily on medical interventions for children suffering from gender dysphoria. This made them even more hesitant about taking in a trans-identified child because they did not want to “go along with giving them hormones,” which was “a real point of contention.”

After several email exchanges and conversations, the licensor said the agency decided to pull the parents’ license due to their refusal to foster a trans-identified child. However, the agency has not yet followed through on revoking the license, which means the process is in limbo at the moment.

A similar incident happened to a Massachusetts couple who said they were discriminated against when they tried to become foster parents:

Becket, the non-profit legal group that is supporting the Burkes, put out the following statement. The full text of the lawsuit can be found by clicking here.

When Mike and Kitty applied to become foster parents in 2022, they underwent hours of training, which they completed successfully. Their instructor reported their positive contributions in the class to DCF, noting that the couple helped to enrich the training program for other parents. The Burkes also underwent extensive interviews and a home study. Throughout this process, Mike and Kitty emphasized their willingness to foster children from diverse backgrounds and with special needs. They expressed their openness to fostering sibling groups, as well, so that children in need could maintain those critical family ties. In all respects, the Burkes were an ideal foster family.

During their home interviews, however, the Burkes were troubled that much of the questions centered on their Catholic views on sexual orientation, marriage, and gender dysphoria. In response to these questions, the Burkes emphasized that they would love and accept any child, no matter the child’s future sexual orientation or struggles with gender identity. However, because Mike and Kitty said they would continue to hold to their religious beliefs about gender and human sexuality, Massachusetts denied them a license to foster any child because, as the reviewer put it, “their faith is not supportive and neither are they.”

Unfortunately, far too many foster agencies are discriminating against couples over their religious beliefs, which could mean that many children are being kept as wards of the state because couples are not being allowed to provide them with a home. In too many of these cases, it appears the government is more concerned with promoting gender ideology than with finding loving homes for kids who need them the most.