Of all the things happening in the world, I didn’t expect this to be the thing that made me emotional.
KFOR, a news station in Oklahoma, runs a regular segment called “A Place to Call Home” that highlights children in the foster care system in need of a loving home. It’s not a surprise that those kids have tragic stories, but it’s also clear that they’re strong and remarkable people in their own right.
The most recent segment featured Dax, a 16-year-old who loves chickens and school.
The segment shows Dax on a farm caring for the animals, and my first thought was that it’s hard to imagine a family not wanting to take Dax in, if they have the ability to do so. But then the story took a weird twist.
It turns out Dax was adopted. They lived with a family for seven years. But that arrangement apparently ended when Dax came out of the closet:
Dax says they were adopted at one point and lived with a family for seven years.
“It was nice, but then they like — they started not loving me anymore for who I was, being LGBTQ,” Dax told News 4.
Dax has dreams of finding the perfect family.
“Probably a same-sex couple or someone who is very understanding of my situation,” Dax said.
What. The. Hell.
A family adopted a nine-year-old child, cared for them for seven years, then kicked them out because they were LGBTQ?! WHO DOES THAT?! What is wrong with people?!
The segment doesn’t tell us anything about Dax’s former family, including whether religion came into play. We definitely aren’t told if they’re conservative Christians, though it’s really hard for me not to jump to that conclusion.
But there might be a happy ending to this story. After that segment aired a couple of nights ago, a woman on Facebook told KFOR she was interested in adopting Dax.
That woman told me last night that the necessary conversations are starting to take place today… which doesn’t mean it’s a done deal by any means — obviously they all need to meet each other and see if it’s a good fit for everyone — but it’s a reminder that there are decent people out there who aren’t going to kick a child out of the house due to being LGBTQ. Let’s hope there’s a happy update soon.