Adoption

The American Family Association's Bryan Fischer is warning that the adoption of children by same-sex couples is a "social tragedy of the first order." Calling adoption by gay parents "a devastating trend" of "narcissistic" and "self-centered adults," Fischer said that families led by same-sex couples are the greatest threat to children today:

The pages of the New York Times Monday morning were all aflutter with a story extolling the skyrocketing increase in the number of gay couples who are adopting children.

This is a social disaster, a social tragedy of the first order, and is something no society that cares for its youngest and most vulnerable citizens would do.

Every homosexual adoption places a child in a home with a missing mother or father. No society that loves children and places their welfare ahead of the desires of narcissistic adults would ever do this.
...

Placing children in settings that even homosexuals admit are inherently unstable and even dangerous is obviously a terrible, terrible idea.

While the trend line for gay adoptions is “absolutely straight up,” according to Adam Pertman of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, Gary Gates of the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law at UCLA estimates that only four percent of the adopted population lives in gay-headed homes.

That means it’s not too late to halt and reverse this devastating trend. Vulnerable young children, who have no choice in these matters, deserve no less from the adults in the room. Family, after all, is about optimal nurturing environments for children, not about self-centered adults getting what they want.

Today the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s opinion that a recently passed law that would prohibit unmarried, cohabitating couples from adopting or fostering children is unconstitutional. The court ruled that the law, which was targeted at gay and lesbian families, needlessly violated their right to privacy. As Arkansas Justice Robert Brown maintained, under the ban such couples “must choose either to lead a life of private, sexual intimacy with a partner without the opportunity to adopt or foster children or forego sexual cohabitation and, thereby, attain eligibility to adopt or foster.”

Naturally outraged, the far-right Arkansas Family Council condemned the decision as “judicial tyranny” and “anti-child.” The AFC actually brought in the Alliance Defense Fund to defend the adoption prohibition, which was passed in 2008, because the group didn’t trust the state’s Democratic administration to effectively defend the law:

“This is a classic example of judicial tyranny,” said Family Council Action Committee President Jerry Cox. “We have said all along that Act One was about child welfare, and fifty-seven percent of the voters in 2008 agreed. They declared that the State of Arkansas has an obligation to adoptive and foster children to ensure that they are placed in the best possible homes. The Arkansas Supreme Court has chosen to run roughshod over the people’s will and refused to uphold a good law that protected the children in the state’s care.”

Cox said, “I’d like to personally thank the 75 county coordinators and 2,700 volunteers who helped gather signatures to get Act One on the ballot. They worked hard to gather over 100,000 signatures between January and August of 2008. It is because of their dedication that this good law made it on the ballot and passed in 73 counties. I will be forever grateful to everyone who put time and effort into this worthy initiative.

“Today’s ruling was anti-child,” said Cox. “The ACLU couldn’t defeat this good law in a fair election, so they used the court system against the people of Arkansas. This is the worst decision ever handed down by the Arkansas Supreme Court.”