Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu is calling on the Christian community to rally support for a piece of legislation that is aimed at making orphan care a priority in U.S. foreign policy.

Landrieu said that it’s not a well-known fact that the U.S. State Department does not hold the belief that children belong in families.  Therefore, the State Department does not usually consider the importance of children having parents in their actions.

“Government do a lot of things well but raising kids isn’t one of them,” Senator Landrieu said at a press conference.  “It’s time to make that very clear.”

The bill, Children in Families First, would require a reorganization of the State Department to handle orphan care and move oversight of international adoptions from State to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.    The focus on the new office would be to keep families together and to place orphans in loving homes.

Senator Landrieu said that the law will make the State Department “work for us, not against us.”

Several major Christian organizations have endorsed the Senator’s bill, including Focus On The Family, the Southern Baptist Convention and Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church.