FLA'S PUZZLING CASE AGAINST GAY ADOPTIONS: Steve Chapman

The state of Florida is not ridiculously selective when it comes to letting people adopt children--and with some 4,200 kids in need of adoption, it can't afford to be.

It allows single adults to adopt. It accepts people with serious illnesses and disabilities. It leaves the door open to drug addicts. It is even willing to consider people who are known to have neglected, abandoned or abused children.

It doesn't accept homosexuals. ...

Normally, the state assesses applicants individually, on the crazy assumption that it should focus on what's best for the child. But when the prospective parent is gay, the interests of the child go out the window. Despite everything Lofton has done for the boy, the state is trying to place him in another home.

This approach is not the preference of the people charged with looking after the needs of kids. When the state's chief adoption official was asked under oath if there is any "child-welfare reason at all for excluding gay people from adopting children," she answered: "No."

The original impulse, it turns out, was not to protect children but to penalize gays. The measure, passed in 1977, was an offshoot of singer Anita Bryant's successful campaign to repeal a Dade County ordinance banning discrimination against homosexuals. The bill's chief sponsor explained it as a valiant effort to open lines of communication with gays: "We're trying to send them a message, telling them: `We're really tired of you. We wish you'd go back into the closet.' "

The state now insists it has perfectly pure motives for the ban. It claims that a child is best served in a stable home that includes a married mother and father. This kind of family, it argues, gives a child good gender role models and spares her from "social stigmatization" about her parents.

If the state really wanted to avoid such stigmatization, it might stop treating such parents as if they are a menace and a disgrace. Expressing moral disapproval of homosexuality, after all, is one of the reasons Florida gives for the ban.

As for gender role models, it's not clear how important they are in a child's development. Almost all gays grow up with heterosexual parents and nonetheless adopt a different "gender role." Sexual orientation aside, Steven Lofton looks like a pretty decent role model. If Florida thinks gender role modeling is so critical, why does it let children spend years living with gay foster parents like him?

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posted by Eve at 4:33 AM VOTE

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