irrational legislation: anti-gay, anti-kid

There is another bill coming up in Tennessee this time that mirrors previous legislation in Arkansas which would in effect prohibit same gender couples from adopting or even fostering unwanted children who are in the system. The November 2008 bill in Arkansas was, according to the so-called Family Council Action Committee, "to blunt a homosexual agenda thats at work in other states and that will be at work in Arkansas unless we are proactive about doing something about it."

The aforementioned "committee" is,

part of a nation-wide network of family policy councils associated with Focus on the Family and Dr. James Dobson. Our mission involves shaping public opinion through media interviews, producing voter’s guides for elections, and shaping public polices through the legislative process." Meaning, they are lobbyists pushing a specific fundamentalist agenda into the political sphere that shapes public policy.

Indeed there is a similar group in Tennessee that supports the same kind of legislation recently proposed there. Here is their statement:

On one hand we have the desires of adults, many of them very sincere, and on the other hand the welfare of children, and in this case children who are some of the most vulnerable children and who have the greatest need for the most optimal family environment. Without any doubt, from a social science standpoint and from just a commonsense standpoint, that optimal environment is with a married mom and dad. Therefore, the Family Action Council believes that Senate Bill 3910 and House Bill 3713 serves the best interest of children being placed for adoption.

Note that the focus is not on same gender partners and makes no mention of them in the actual legislation that is being proposed. This was the same case in Arkansas. By focusing on "co-habitation" it must affect same gender partners since their relationships get no legal legitimation at all. It essentially lumps all same gender partners in with all cohabiting couples skewing any data about such relationships and painting them all as "dangerous" or "not optimal" at the very least. To be sure co-habitation does not have a good track record for stability. Even Howard Stern eventually married his long-time girlfriend after for years vowing never to marry again!

However, can we say that a committed same gender partnership that has been consistent for 15 years is the same as a live-in boyfriend who has been squatting in his lovers home for six months? That would be absurd by any other means, but that is exactly the kind of reporting such "pro-family" groups are producing that misleads the public.

Lets be clear. This really has nothing to do with co-habitation. It is completely about same gender partnerships and their legitimacy as families under the law. This is not about care for the public good, it is about a specific fundamentalist agenda. That agenda has been out competing others with the amount of money they are able to raise and the amount of support they are able to garner by spreading untruth and filling political pockets with all sorts of votes and other goodies.

The so-called "homosexual agenda" is about one thing: legitimacy to love someone else of the same gender in committed relationships bound by legal contract and to build families based on that contract. It is about moving beyond mere co-habitation to find legitimate expression to the deepest form of human relationships through partnering and child-rearing.

I have argued before that this kind of legislation makes no sense from a social standpoint. It makes the determination that it is better to leave an unwanted child in the system than place that child in a permanent home. This has already been the active policy in Florida. With that I leave you with this example.

You could hardly find better proof than this that efforts to combat the "homosexual agenda" mainly serve to harm children in dire need of stable, loving families. Four years ago, Martin Gill and his longtime partner agreed to provide a foster home for two boys, one 4 years old and the other an infant, who showed the physical and emotional effects of neglect, including scalp ringworm.

Gay adoption targeted in Arkansas Gay adoption targeted in Arkansas Graphic

Now a legal guardian who regularly observes the boys attests that they are, in the judges words, "in excellent health, well-behaved, performing well in school and bonded to" their foster family. They have a dog, a cat and a rabbit. They attend a church.

But they have also spent four years in limbo. The adults whom they have come to regard as parents were only foster caregivers. Because of his sexual orientation, the state would not allow Gill to become their permanent, adoptive father.

No one else has asked to adopt the boys. Yet the Center for Family and Child Enrichment, which handles these matters, concluded that if the brothers could not be adopted by Gill, it would have to look for other adoptive parents.

Consider the implications of the policy in this case. It would mean removing the children from the home in which they have been raised—"one of the most caring and nurturing placements" the guardian has ever seen. It would mean putting them through the trauma, once again, of being uprooted and placed with complete strangers. And because of the difficulty of placing kids their age, the child enrichment center said, it could mean the brothers would be permanently separated from each other.

And for what? Solely to shield them from the supposed perils of gay parents.

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