In Ohio, a bill was introduced to ban children from being placed for adoption or foster care in homes where the prospective parent or a roommate is homosexual, bisexual or transgender.
State Rep. Ron Hood, the Ashville Republican sponsoring the bill, said he believes children raised by gay parents have increased risk of physical and emotional problems and might question their own sexuality.
“Studies have shown that the optimal setting to raise children is in a traditional setting with a mom and a dad,” Hood said. The bill would not apply to single men or women seeking to adopt.
However the bill is considered dead on arrival.
Scott Borgemenke, chief of staff to House Speaker Jon Husted, dismissed the bill on Friday as discriminatory and said Husted, a Dayton-area Republican, has other priorities.
“There’s a growing concern within the Republican party of continuing to introduce this divisive legislation,” he said. “We don’t think there’s some cottage industry of homosexual adoptions. We do believe people are losing their jobs.”
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times has a story today about 2 year old Sarah Chavez. She had been placed into the foster care of two women who wanted to adopt and raise her.
Soon after they got her they raised concerns to the social worker that she displayed behavior that led them to be concerned that her aunt and uncle may have abused her physically and perhaps sexually before Sarah came to them. However, due to a policy of trying to keep families together and because of inadequate controls in the system, Sarah was returned to her heterosexual aunt and uncle.
Where she was beaten to death.
To their credit, the Times focused on the lack of proper controls and did not mention the orientation of the foster parents or of the aunt and uncle.
However, considering the efforts made by anti-gay activists, including Exodus International, to paint gay and lesbian families as unfit parents which are always less satisfactory than opposite-sex parents, to me this tragic story became even more infuriating.
There is no doubt that had the scenario been reversed, had a child been taken from a heterosexual couple and placed with a gay couple where it was abused, Exodus and the other anti-gay lobby groups would be trumpeting this as an example of the unfitness of gay parents.
I am sorry for the foster parents of Sarah. And I am sorry for other children who – if the anti-gay activists have their way – will have no choice but remain in dangerous and abusive circumstances rather than find a home with loving gay parents.
Sad. It just makes my blood boil reading that article. Alan Chambers and his despicable ilk are partly to be blamed for this tragedy and many more to come. There’s a special place in Hell for these people.
I sent that article to a few of our posters here.
Not only do I have up close and personal experience through LAPD Forensic Photo Unit regarding the deplorable conditions heterosexuals can bear children, I also have first hand experience with many, many gay and lesbian parents.
The priorities of FOTF and AFA and ADR and FRC are extremely missplaced.
Their money and legal effort they put in keeping gay people from human rights and freedoms would are better served in another way.
It is THEY who failed this little angel and tens of thousands just like her.
The state welfare systems of many states are as overwhelmed as that of Los Angeles.
Does the alphabet of family advocates live by example?
No.
They are best known for their anti gay politics, rather than filling their homes with children needing one.
It is sad when I hear that religious fanatics don’t care about the welfare of a child, just the foster parents sexuality. Someday, hopefully soon, people will come to their senses.
Onanite
Timothy said:
There is no doubt that had the scenario been reversed, had a child been taken from a heterosexual couple and placed with a gay couple where it was abused, Exodus and the other anti-gay lobby groups would be trumpeting this as an example of the unfitness of gay parents.
This is the sad, unfortunate truth.
David
This is one of those stories that needs to be told. I a sorry it may hurt the relatives, but I bet the
foster family would love their story told and know they are supported. Not every “one man, one women” family is the best for kids. Sometimes the least likely is the best likely.
My heart goes out to all of them.
Logically I don’t get it. Nor should others.The anti-gay lobby are claiming that ANY heterosexual household will be better than ALL homosexual ones. That is the only reason you would ban any and all gay couples.Even if you believed — frankly, without any truth — that het. households were better on average than gays ones… that still does not mean that at least sometimes the best placement for a child would be with a gay couple.Anyone with a few minutes to spare may like to email Warren Throckmorton on that very subject.. and ask what he was doing in Ohio. 🙂 And yes, I know he’s not a child development expert…
The so-called “family” organizations are little more than fronts for anti-gay bigots, period.
When have you seen a single campaign from AFA, FOTF, etc. against child abuse? How about divorce? How about spouse abuse? How about marital infidelity?
Truth is, these groups could care less about families. They insist that they support the Federal Marriage Amendment (aka the Permanent Disenfranchisement of Homosexuals in America) because it will “protect” marriage. However, they have yet to complain how 1-2% (their numbers) of the population that is of same-sex orientation could possibly impact the marriages of the other 98-99% (again, their numbers). They chose to ignore the REAL threat to marriage: easy and quick marriages and easy and quick divorce.
I really am sick of hearing how gays like myself are “harming” the institution of marriage – especially from the mouths of fat-ass Republicans who are on their THIRD marriage (and most likely working on their fourth). If they really want to “protect” marriage, I have the solution:
1. Make it VERY HARD to get married. Right now I could go out on the street, pick up the first female I see, go down to the courthouse and we could obtain a marriage license with no questions asked. If there were a waiting period (say, 6 months) or if there were some scrutiny given to the relationship (“How long have you been together? Do you understand what marriage means?) then perhaps there would be fewer “vanity” marriages that inevitably lead to divorce.
2. Make it almost impossible to divorce. Of course there is a need to preserve divorce, since there are many marriages in which one spouse is being abused by the other (mentally, financially or physically) and there needs to be an out for the abused party. However, divorcing over “irreconcilable differences” is malarky. The quickie marriages (and quickie divorces) of many celebrities is proof enough!!
Jonathon,I cannot verify the “fat ass” part, but thinking back to DOMA…one does wonder about following THEIR marital behaviour…
State Rep. Ron Hood, the Ashville Republican sponsoring the bill, said he believes children raised by gay parents have increased risk of physical and emotional problems and might question their own sexuality.
“Studies have shown that the optimal setting to raise children is in a traditional setting with a mom and a dad,” Hood said.
I have no idea where these people get their figures, because every study I’ve seen shows that the children of gay parents are no better or worse off. That’s from, you know, reputable places. The American Psychiatric Association, for one.
When people making those comments actually have studies to back them up, you invariably find the studies they’re refering to are actually comparing male-female headed households with single parent households. Gay-straight parent comparison studies are very recent (and yes, show the kids are fine)
Kim and Boo,
I agree with you about the studies. But I think I understand what the wingnuts are thinking.
They don’t view a gay couple as a couple but as two individuals that are sex partners. Since the studies compare married folk to single folk, they think it applies. After all this is just a single person who (worse yet) lives a hedonistic lifestyle.
I can forgive some legislators for believing this. Many of them have literally heard no different and have no experience that tells them otherwise. I’ve seen a number of legislators that come around when someone tells them the truth (for example the Republican in Washington who changed his vote and joined the Democrats to pass the anti-discrimination law – or a number of Massachusetts legislators in both parties who switched to support gay marriage after being invited in to see gay couples in their homes).
But I have little patience for those who know better, especially those who claim to know all about the “homosexual lifestyle”. There is no excuse whatsoever for these anti-gay activists to see gay families on a regular basis (in debate) and then to lie. And even if they hide behind the idea that they haven’t personally seen any positive same-sex families, there is no excuse for these anti-gay activists to make claims about same-sex families and then avoid any exposure to them.
Bearing false witness is one of the ten (count ’em, only ten) things forbidden by God himself on Mt. Sinae. Lying is another of the ten.