1. The best interests of the child should be the sole factor in deciding whether a child should be placed with a prospective foster care or adoptive parent or parents.
    
2. State-licensed child placing agencies should not be allowed to discriminate against children or prospective parents based on race, national origin, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, political beliefs, sexual orientation, disability and family status.
    
3. The State Board of Social Services should restore to the final rules the protections against such discrimination included in the proposed rules. 

     Virginia was the first colony, but the 10th state. Virginia, in the name of public safty, would castrate inmates of state hospitals. Virginia made it illegal to marry anyone of a different race until the Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia. 

      Please do not make the same mistake again and take us back to the Jim Crow period of Virginia history.