Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / November 2004

http://www.houstonvoice.com/2004/11-26/view/columns/children.cfm



The real losers are the children
It’s easy for ‘good Christians’ to stand tall on ‘saving marriage’
when they’re perched on a pile of children

Friday, November 26, 2004
Michael Alvear

IT’S BEEN A couple of weeks since we got hammered like nails at a hardware
store convention. No, not by the presidential election; by the 11 states who
voted to amend their constitutions to prevent same sex marriage.

In 8 of those states, the amendments also forbid other forms of legal
recognition for same-sex coupling, such as civil unions or domestic
partnerships.

Most of us are suffering from that odd combination of depression and helpless
fury that comes with persecution. All 11 amendments passed by whopping margins.

BUT AS BAD as we may feel, there’s one group we should feel even sorrier for:
children. Millions of them. The ones caught between the hunters and the hunted.

Take the 568,000 orphaned kids languishing in institutions. There are plenty of
gay and lesbian families willing to adopt them, but statutory bans and local
judiciaries who refuse to grant gay adoption won’t let them.

According to the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute’s latest national
survey, only 40 percent of public and private adoption agencies have placed
children with gay adoptive parents. The same survey showed that a majority of
childless gay men and women would like to become parents.

Would children in foster care be better off living in loving gay homes or
institutions that warehouse and shuffle them from one home to another until
they turn 18 and “age out” of the system?

Ask the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Child Welfare League of America,
the North American Council on Adoptable Children, the American Psychiatric
Association, the American Psychological Association and the National
Association of Social Workers. They all voted for gay and lesbian homes.

What’s the best way of making that happen? Giving gay couples automatic
adoption rights. And the most effective way to do that? Allow them to marry.
The very thing the proposed amendments are intended to prevent.

Gay marriage wouldn’t just improve the lives of orphans; it would also
improve the lives of children who have parents that happen to be gay. And that
figure depending, on who you believe, is somewhere between 250,000 and three
million.

LET’S SAY TWO women with average incomes have a child together named Billy.
Because the women aren’t allowed to marry, Billy doesn’t get the financial
and emotional safety nets other kids get.

For example, if Billy has a serious accident while his biological mother is
away, the hospital can deny him the right to see his second parent, effectively
torturing the child at the time of his greatest need.

If Billy comes home to recuperate, the boss isn’t legally obligated to
provide sick leave to Billy’s second parent, effectively preventing a child
from being soothed by his nurturing parent.

If Billy’s biological mother dies, the surviving parent has no legal rights
to Billy, effectively allowing the state to rip him from the arms of a loving
mother and throw him into the foster care system.

If Billy’s parents separate, the departing parent is under no legal
obligation to provide alimony or child support, effectively depriving Billy of
his rightful support network.

From his parents’ inability to get joint health, home and auto insurance
policies to his own inability to access his second parent’s Social Security
survival benefits, Billy suffers.

Allowing same-sex marriage would eliminate the unfair penalties children have
to bear. But that doesn’t matter. There are scores to settle.

Sorry, Billy, but there are too many preachers gunning for your parents. You
don’t have a prayer in their churches. If it comes down to helping children
like you or sticking it to the gays, you don’t stand a chance.

That’s why these amendments should be called the Leave Some Children Behind
Act. Lost in the argument between “preserving the sanctity of marriage” and
“writing bigotry into the constitution” was the fate of millions of
children who’ll be damaged if these amendments pass.

America is used to seeing “good Christians” on TV looming large on the
issue of “saving marriage.” I just wish the cameras would pan down to show
that anyone can look tall when they’re standing on a pile of children.

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A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown