Paradise Preoccupied

I had an interesting email in response to the post of the other day, “Gay backlash and presidential candidates” that included these questions:

In your years of writing for adoption dot com, did the company’s anti-gay stance rub off on you?

Were you censored?

To answer the second question first: yes, I was censored. One post early on was removed completely, and I was told that if I did cover anything to do with the subject I was to keep within the confines of reporting news about gay adoptions without ever taking a position … and to go light on even that sort of thing. Or else. (I did slide in as much news as I could on gay adoption and linked to EBD Institute reports on research, however.)

As for the first question, let me begin by saying that there is no way I could care less about what consenting adults do within the privacy of their private places with their private parts … that all being PRIVATE … and that I find it more than a little perverse when others focus on such things.

I am less interested in the sex lives of others than I am in their toilet habits … and that would be not at all … and will never understand where anyone gets off (pardon the expression) letting their mind wander into such territory, then spend any time or energy forming opinions, much less spreading those opinions around. As I said, this strikes me as a strange, though common in every sense of the word, perversion.

I am educated enough to understand that a percentage of most any mammal population could be classified as “gay”, and having had a “gay” dog when I was a kid, that information didn’t come as a surprise. I’ve seen “gay” monkeys and “gay” goats, and whole populations of “gay” chimps … Bonobos, pygmy chimps, our closest relatives, are notorious for their homosexual activities … and know of “gay” couples of penguins and flamingos raising families.

(An exhibit at a Norwegian gallery a couple of years ago displayed photos of “gay” sex between everything from giraffes to whales.)

Since homosexuality is a part of the natural course of life for many, it presents no more barriers than shoe size or skin color, other than those resulting from basic biology, and that’s were adoption comes into the picture.

Obviously, although any two can tango, reproduction takes some more difficult steps that can’t be accomplished without some extra dipping that requires two genders. Unless or until cloning becomes a way to make new people, a gay couple will not be able to combine bits of DNA and come up with chips off the old block. Biology does not, however, make a parent.

Parent is as much a verb as it is a noun, and many people who have the nounish bit cornered are crap at the verby part. From the other angle, some who don’t noun verb beautifully.

Perhaps in a perfect world every child would have a loving mommy and daddy in a cozy house with a three car garage, two Volvos and an Irish Setter, but we don’t live in that world. (And I, for one, am happy about that! How bloody BORING!) The world is full of children who either have no family or family that is worse than no family at all and in desperate need of someone to love and care for them.

That being the case … and, really, that IS the case, and there’s no use arguing about it … I am fully in favor of loving people caring for children in a safe climate of compassion and nutrition.

Is gay parenting any different? Well, DUH. It’s different in the same way that older parenting is different and transracial parenting is different, and adoptive parenting is different, and parenting five kids is different than parenting one, and city parenting is different from country parenting, and Buddhist parenting is different from Catholic parenting, and my parenting is different from your parenting.

Are there some homosexuals that shouldn’t be allowed to adopt? There’s another DUH for you that I’ll place alongside any list of people of every persuasion that should never get within ten miles of a child … most of those having made the poor kids themselves. (See yesterday’s post.)

So, those questions answered, I’ll share this article from Time about the European Court of Human Rights overturning a French law preventing adoption by gays.

Franck Tanguy, spokesman for France’s Association of Gay and Lesbian Parents, says “this ruling is a step in the right direction” in that it “requires countries that, like France, allow singles to adopt children to treat unmarried homosexual and heterosexual applicants in exactly the same manner.” Failure to do so in any country with such legislation, Tanguy says, means they’d “find themselves condemned again and again for discrimination by the many single homosexuals who’d use this precedent to base a legal defense on”. However, Tanguy regrets the ruling “won’t change anything in countries that don’t allow any singles to adopt, nor force nations that don’t allow homosexual couples to adopt to change their laws”.

Seeing the pertinent detail is that the law allowed adoption by unmarried straight folks, this bill introduced in Utah recently would permit singles to adopt, straight or gay. People might want to weigh in on this.