Judge takes foster child away from LGBT couple citing fake evidence that kids in hetero homes do better

A Utah judge has ordered a baby to be removed from the foster home of her potential adoptive parents because the couple caring for her is gay, the New Civil Rights Movement reports.

April Hoagland and Beckie Peirce were shocked when Judge Scott Johansen ruled the little girl could not stay with them because he had seem some research indicating children with LGBT parents don't do as well as those with heterosexual parents.

Hoagland called it "heartbreaking."

"We've been told to care for this child like a mother would and I am her mother," she told KUTV. "That's who she knows, and she's just going to be taken away in seven days... It's just not fair, and it's not right and it just hurts me really badly, because I haven't done anything wrong."

Though Johansen chalked the decision up to his own research, Peirce said she doesn't buy it.

"I believe it's a religious belief," she told the station.

The couple already has two children, aged 12 and 14 and wanted to adopt the baby. The child's biological mother also wants the baby to stay with the couple and has appealed the judge's ruling.

The women, who are legally married and state-approved foster parents, said the judge refused to produce the evidence he cited, when asked.

In fact, research does not support the judge's claim.

According to the Washington Post, studies show children with same-sex parents actually fare better in some ways than those with heterosexual parents. In other measures, children of same-sex couples are no different than their peers.

"It’s often suggested that children with same-sex parents have poorer outcomes because they’re missing a parent of a particular sex. But research my colleagues and I published in the journal BMC Public Health shows this isn’t the case," lead researcher Simon Crouch wrote.

He suggested the higher degree of well being in children of same sex couples in physical and social health because these couples share responsibilities more equally than heterosexual couples.

"It is liberating for parents to take on roles that suit their skills rather than defaulting to gender stereotypes, where mum is the primary care giver and dad the primary breadwinner," he wrote.

Watch the report, via KUTV, here: