When a teenager in Texas is pushed out of their home because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, foster care is supposed to help. It is meant to offer safety, stability, healing, and the chance to begin again. But for many LGBTQ+ youth, rejection does not end when the state steps in. It simply assumes new forms.
I have spent much of my life working and researching within Texas’s foster care system. Over the years, I have interviewed LGBTQ+ young people who entered care after being exposed, outed, or treated as something to be fixed. Some were forced out of their homes. Others endured other forms of rejection: parents who stopped speaking to them, churches that condemned them, relatives who framed their identity as shameful. By the time they entered foster care, many had absorbed a traumatic message: Something is wrong with me. I do not belong.
Rejection is not just an event. It is a trauma. It reshapes how young people understand safety, attachment, and worth.
