Lori Windham is a senior counsel with the religious liberty advocacy group Becket. She has represented faith-based adoption agencies that, for religious reasons, don’t want to serve same-sex couples.

Robin Fretwell Wilson is the co-director of the Family Law and Policy Program at the University of Illinois, where she also teaches. She is also the director the Institute of Government and Public Affairs for the University of Illinois System. Her books include Religious Freedom, LGBT Rights, and the Prospects for Common Ground and The […]

Andrew Whitehead is professor of sociology and director of the Association of Religion Data Archives at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. He researches the relationship between religion and other social forces, such as the family.

Katy Perkins is a social worker in Dallas who specializes in adoption, domestic violence, LGBT issues and peace building. In 2017, as the Texas Legislature considered new regulations related to adoption, religion and same-sex couples, she co-wrote an article on the danger of allowing foster parents to force their religion on children.

Emilie Kao is director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society at the Heritage Foundation. She specializes in legal conflicts related to religious freedom.

Leslie Cooper serves as deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBT & HIV Project. Over the last two decades, she’s worked on many cases related to the rights of LGBT adoptive parents.

Melissa D. Carter is executive director of the Barton Child Law and Policy Center at Emory University School of Law. 

Ying Chen is a research scientist with the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. She was the lead author of a 2018 study about the relationship between religious and spiritual practices in childhood and adult health outcomes.

Christel J. Manning is a religious studies professor at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut. She is the author of Losing Our Religion: How Unaffiliated Parents Are Raising Their Children.