[Mb-civic] Taking the gay insults personally - Ellen Goodman - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  Taking the gay insults personally

By Ellen Goodman  |  March 24, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

IN MY business, it's only fair to acknowledge a bias. My bias is named 
Ruthie.

Ruthie is the youngest cousin in a bumper crop of babies that have 
extended our family over the last few years. When she was adopted, we 
didn't pass out cigars, we passed out Baby Ruth bars. So maybe it's our 
fault that she's now in the sugar-rush stage of toddlerhood, leaving her 
parents joyously breathless and regularly transforming her grandmother's 
house into Early Childproof Decor.

Did I mention that Ruthie has two daddies, something her toddler cousins 
take for granted? Did I mention that Ruthie's birth mother chose this 
couple to raise her, picking these two men from all the dossiers at the 
adoption agency?

Ruthie is why I take it personally when the Vatican calls gay adoptions 
''gravely immoral" or says that such adoptions ''mean doing violence to 
these children." Ruthie is why I grimace when Russell Johnson, chairman 
of the Ohio Restoration Project, says, ''experimenting on children 
through gay adoption is a problem." Ruthie and her parents are not an 
experiment. They are a family. Part of my family.

Once again, we are back to the subject of gay adoption. This month, 
Catholic Charities in Boston was called on the Vatican carpet. For years 
the agency had operated a kind of ''don't ask, don't tell" policy. Over 
the course of two decades, Catholic social workers had placed 13 
children with gay parents, saving most from the revolving door of foster 
care.

But Roman Catholic law forbids gay adoption, and Massachusetts state law 
forbids discrimination. Faced with a conflict, the bishops overrode the 
board of Catholic Charities and ended its long and cherished role in 
adoption.

Now this issue is rolling out across the country, all the way to San 
Francisco. There, the new archbishop appears to be on a similar 
collision course with Catholic Charities and secular laws.

In Massachusetts, Governor Mitt Romney, nodding madly to conservatives 
in his bid for a presidential run, has filed a bill to grant a religious 
exemption to discrimination laws. But if you give one church permission 
to discriminate against gays, what's next? Permission to discriminate 
against blacks or Jews who want to adopt? Isn't that where we came from?

It seems that many see gay adoption as another issue to rally the right 
in the culture wars. There are now efforts underway in 16 states for 
laws to ban gay adoptions. These would add to a crazy quilt of state 
laws ranging from Florida, which bans gay adoptions but allows gay 
foster parents, to Mississippi, which bans adoption by gay couples but 
not gay singles, to Utah, which prohibits all unmarried couples from 
adoption.

But let's put my Ruthie bias aside for the moment. Let's even put aside 
the studies that support my bias: A comprehensive review of them coming 
out next week from the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute shows again 
that children of gay parents do fine.

If some still insist that it is ''gravely immoral" to raise children in 
gay households, what exactly do those wedge-drivers propose to do?

We have always had gay parents. Most had children the old-fashioned way, 
hiding their sexuality as long as they could. Now they can also do it 
the new-fashioned way with every reproductive aid from sperm bank to 
surrogate.

A researcher analyzing the 2000 Census estimated 250,000 kids being 
raised by same-sex couples. If gay parenting is harmful, do we take 
children away from their biological gay parents? Do we make it unlawful 
for gays to use fertility technologies? How? If there are states that 
allow gay adoption, would we ban interstate travel for that? And what do 
we say to a birth mother who picks a gay couple? No?

Today 60 percent of agencies accept applications and 40 percent 
knowingly place children with gay parents. Social workers, whether at 
religious, state, or private agencies, want only one thing: to find 
safe, good homes in a country with 500,000 children adrift.

''The effect of all this opposition is not to prevent gay people from 
becoming parents," says Adam Pertman of the Donaldson Adoption 
Institute. ''All it can do is diminish the pool of mothers and fathers 
for children who need homes."

We all talk about ''the best interest of the child." What makes up that 
interest? On my list are attention, love, security, humor, and a 
besotted family racing to keep one step ahead of a toddler. Of course, a 
little bias on that child's behalf never hurts.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/03/24/taking_the_gay_insults_personally/
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