Assemblyman Gary Schaer is a democratic member of the New Jersey General Assembly. In 2018, he sponsored legislation seeking to ensure that children up for adoption are placed with families who share their faith.

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.

Ara Norenzayan is a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He authored a 2014 study asking whether religion makes people moral.

Lisa D. Pearce is a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She studies religious and family dynamics and how they affect a child’s transition to adulthood.