I’m ranting again. If you aren’t ready to listen to a total and complete rant, brought on by middle of the night television, tune out now. It’s going to get ugly, people.
So I am up at the crack of dawn, flipping through the infomercials, when I tune in to the ever reliable with a real show Discovery Health Channel. About to start is the television program “Adoption Stories”. If you have not seen this show, they go through the story of a family who is adopting a child – or children in some cases. And almost always, the story is devastating. There has been a struggle with infertility; they are overcoming the loss of a child; or even worse, the child has come from such a terrible background, you are crying minutes into this show.
The story today was on a couple, Noreen and Jill, who had gone the route of artificial insemination, only to discover that both women had issues with infertility. They applied to adopt a child, but because they are lesbians, they knew the private adoption route was probably an uphill battle. They felt that a birth mom would look at them and would no way want a baby to be put in a home like theirs.
They ended up going the foster route, and within hours of being approved and licensed, a newborn baby girl was placed with them. As is the expectation of fostering, the child was returned to her mother just a few short months later, leaving both women in terrible grief.
Of course the story for them has a happy ending. They ended up fostering a baby girl, and 10 months later, her baby brother. When the parental rights were terminated, they went through the adoption process – complicated by the fact that the babies were from an aboriginal home, and they needed to get approval from the Cree Indian nation in order to adopt them. They received the blessing from the Cree elders, and the adoption proceeded.
But here’s the point of my rant. Why is it okay in any state in this country to deny gay or lesbian couples the opportunity to provide good, loving, stable homes for children in need? Why is it better for a kid to stay in foster care or live in a home where there may be abuse or neglect? Who is it that decided a couple has to have one set of boobs and one penis in order to make good parents?
It irks me that couples who have been together for years, have wonderful homes, would give a child everything under the sun a child could want or need, still have to jump through hoops to prove themselves worthy of being parents – and in some places, even that’s not good enough. Where is the rationale in that?