Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Steven Chapman of the Chicago Tribune has a column defending gay adoption and slamming the anti-gay right at, of all places, Townhall. Speaking of the Florida court overturning that state's ban on adoption by homosexuals, he writes:
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.Now a legal guardian who regularly observes the boys attests that they are, in the judge's 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.
Here's the only alternative:
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 CFCE 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. Gays are treated as more dangerous than felons, drug offenders and known child abusers -- none of whom is categorically barred from adopting.
I agree completely with his conclusion:
There are hundreds of kids in Florida who need adoptive families -- nearly 1,000 at any given moment. The average child spends 2.5 years in foster care before being adopted, and some wait forever. Noted Judge Lederman, "165 children in Florida aged out of the system in 2006 without ever being adopted."The Florida ban is simple and stark. It says, in effect, that a child may not be adopted by gays even when the adoption is in the best interest of the child . That's the main reason the court overturned it: It violates the rights of children and "causes harm to the children it is meant to protect."
Those who want to keep gays from adopting think that's a small price to pay for blocking the "homosexual agenda." But then, they're not the ones who will be paying it.
Well said.
Politics
Comments
I have rarely ventured into townhall.com; if the comments section is representative of its readers, my, my. The amount of hatred and propaganda spewed by the commenters on the linked article is every bit as ugly as it was decades ago.
Townhall.com is prominently featured and promoted by Bill O'Reilly on his Fox TV Show, now I better understand why we can calculate the frequency of his lies and mischaracterizations in mere seconds rather than seasons.
Posted by: Michael Heath | December 3, 2008 9:50 AM
Drug users, felons, and child abusers aren't barred from adopting, but gays are. That is just freakin' brilliant. Good thing they have the kids' best interests in mind. [/end sarcasm]
Posted by: dogmeatib | December 3, 2008 9:58 AM
The fact that this is even remotely controvertial shows just how far gone the religious right is, and how willing they are to put ideology before morality.
Posted by: WScott | December 3, 2008 10:08 AM
From the Townhall comments -- this guy has a rather odd perspective that seems quite tolerant... up until you get to the last sentence advocating eugenics:
"Well yes. I take homosexuals at their word. For years they have been telling the rest of us this not a choice that they were born that way. Well if they were born that way then homosexuality is the result of nature and not nurture. So this defect in genetic code will someday be correctable."
Posted by: Colin M | December 3, 2008 10:55 AM
I think this might be a case of Pascal's Wager gone to an extreme (that and the Christian 'requirement' to go out and spread the "good word"). Of course, there is a major problem with Pascal's Wager that many Christians seem to forget. What if they are worshiping the wrong God? What if the "real" God is one that wants all people to be treated equally? What if the "real" God wants Christians killed (since they worship a false God)? Christians put all their eggs (and the eggs of everyone else they can get their hands on) in one basket. It is, after all, their 'holy mission' - their 'struggle' - to bring people into the 'Kingdom of God' (and then abandoning them, apparently). After all, they know what is best for others. :P
Posted by: Umlud | December 3, 2008 10:59 AM
I propose a solution: Everyone voting for the ban, against the boys being adopted, must sign up immediately to adopt a child or two. Of course that has the negative consequence of putting children in fundie harms way but it would make most of them shut the fuck up.
It would also open up possible study opportunities to follow the fundies child rearing success rates compared with other groups. I'll bet that would open some eyes.
Posted by: Mike | December 3, 2008 12:28 PM
What if he's right? There is evidence that some sort of hormonal imbalance during pregnancy is a factor in determining the sexuality of the offspring (studies show that boys with more older brothers have a higher chance of being gay than their siblings).
What happens if an easy way to correct that imbalance (e.g. by taking a specific hormone during the first few weeks of pregnancy) is discovered, that reduces the number of gay people being born by, say, 33%? Will pregnant women be banned from taking the drug? I suspect that even many prospective parents who have no problems with gay people will be tempted to use the drug rather that see their kid struggle with being "different" in a largely heterosexual world.
Posted by: tacitus | December 3, 2008 12:56 PM
tacitus, accepting your premises for the sake of discussion, I'd be interested to see the resulting dust-up between those who would want to prevent "the gay" in utero and those who object to interfering with God's design.
Is it bad that I'm giggling?
Posted by: Abby Normal | December 3, 2008 1:27 PM
Yes abby you are a bad person, and so am I.... I suspect they would never accept that gay people were born that way, that way interferring with an unborn baby is evil from every angle.
Posted by: Ramel | December 3, 2008 1:57 PM
What if there were an in vitro test that could determine sexual preference? Would Sarah Palin abort a gay child? As long as praying away the gay works, I suppose she doesn't have to decide...
Posted by: kehrsam | December 3, 2008 2:43 PM
Palin would probably keep the child, but then that child would go through a living hell as she forced every single sexual stereotype (male or female depending on the sex of the child) on them in an attempt to "straighten" them out.
That's probably the biggest danger of an in vitro test -- the mental and perhaps physical abuse of the child involved.
Advances in medical technology will undoubtedly throw up hundreds of ethical issues over the next few decades. Determining sexuality may be one of them. The question is, if it's deemed to be ethical to tinker with a child's appearance or personality, then is it okay to modify their sexual preference too?
Posted by: tacitus | December 3, 2008 4:02 PM
There is evidence that some sort of hormonal imbalance during pregnancy is a factor in determining the sexuality of the offspring... What happens if an easy way to correct that imbalance...
I find it interesting that you continuously refer to gay people as being defective in some way. It's a hormonal "imbalance". They need to be "corrected." I notice you don't extend the same attitude towards straight people that are slaves to their biological drive to reproduce even in an overpopulated world with millions of children languishing without families and parents.
Posted by: Narc | December 3, 2008 10:46 PM
Strangely there is a similar dilemma among the deaf* community. Should affected children get cochlear implants or not? Is being deaf due to a (correctable) defect or a natural variation that places them into a particular community? It's ethically difficult.
Personally, if I had a child I knew was going to be gay I don't think I would do anything to prevent their birth, but I'd like to know so that I can be as supportive as I possibly could. The ignorance and bigotry of others is going to make their lives more difficult. -DJ
*To those who object to the word "deaf", I'd like to point out by this I mean those entirely without hearing, as opposed to those who have some hearing (hearing impaired), who face a similar, although possibility lesser, dilemma.
Posted by: DingoJack | December 3, 2008 11:14 PM
Narc, don't be so sensitive. I thought I was careful not to imply that being gay means you are defective. Ah well. If you want to be pedantic then read "imbalance" as "change" and "corrected" as "changed back".
I have no axe to grind, no prejudice to promote. I just find this type of potential clash between medical technology, the law, and societal prejudice interesting. It may never happen, but I am willing to bet that we (or more likely our descendants) will face it for real one day.
Posted by: tacitus | December 4, 2008 12:53 AM
Years ago I read a hypothesis somewhere that homosexuality rates would rise as a natural response to overcrowding -- a biological control to population growth outstripping resources.
I have no idea of there's anything to the idea, but it's interesting, and (extending it a bit) casts gays as sort of nature's philanthropists. I.e., their sexual impulses won't automatically lead to their own little brood that they then must support (as happens with hetero couples) -- instead they'll contribute to their larger community, including the very selfless act of adopting the children of others.
WRT the article under discussion -- nicely written, and to the point. Naturally the massive numbers of comments (which is perhaps why they published it...) include quite a lot of this sort of pig ignorance:
...but there's some variety.
Posted by: Rob W | December 4, 2008 6:33 AM
Townhall commenter writes: "Well if they were born that way then homosexuality is the result of nature and not nurture. So this defect in genetic code will someday be correctable."
Despite the ugly ideology involved, the commenter is undeservedly optimistic. Intolerance is more easily identified through the words of the inflicted than having to resort to in utero testing. Intolerance is more easily corrected by engagement and introspection than by genetic engineering. And yet we haven't been able to correct for intolerance in the population.
Posted by: Ex-drone | December 4, 2008 6:56 AM
You know, if as Tacitus reports there is some sort of hormonal event in utero that affects sexual preference, and if it is reversible -- or maybe better to say "switchable" -- then couldn't the proper hormones (or whatever would affect those hormones) given to the mother at the proper time not only select for heterosexual preference, but also the opposite?
If hormone therapy could make a gay-bound fetus straight, surely it could work the other way as well.
Once the fundies realize this, I think they'll have a whole new frontier of the "gay agenda" to flip out about.
Posted by: North of 49 | December 5, 2008 12:55 AM