Protecting Kids

Julian Sanchez | February 8, 2005

As I wrote a couple weeks back, this gay couple is ineligible to adopt in Florida. But these exemplary heterosexuals? The Sunshine State was happy to give them seven children, five of whom were beaten, locked in closets, given electric shocks, and had their toenails pulled out with pliers. Given the state's shortage of adoptive parents, I guess they couldn't be troubled to scrutinize the family too closely, so long as they weren't having Unnatural Sex. The kids will probably end up back in the foster care system, but don't worry: Florida won't risk subjecting them to the influence of a caring adoptive home containing gay people.

Comments

|2.8.05 @ 2:41PM|#

Sure they were starved, electrocuted, tortured---but at least they didn't have to wonder why mommy was kissing mommy.

This country really sickens me sometimes.

|2.8.05 @ 2:47PM|#

Dammit Julian, you're POLITICIZING THE SITUATION! This was a completely apolitical situation until you, uh, pointed out that it wasn't.

|2.8.05 @ 2:50PM|#

Florida sounds like it's hitting pretty close to human trafficking. But since it's a State, they have only pure intentions, right? [snort]

|2.8.05 @ 2:51PM|#

its not necessarily that the state "could not be troubled" the state is bounded by law
in that once a child is adopted the state has no legal right to interfere/intervene/follow up on the child
the child is now legally with the adoptive parents

|2.8.05 @ 2:52PM|#

If Jesus suffered for our sins, why can't our children?

|2.8.05 @ 2:56PM|#

I can't think of a single thing I could say to add to Julian's piercing observation.

Well said, Julian.

I can only hope that the liberals who've let down some of the very people they claim to serve by NOT taking a stand on gay issues will be shamed into action...

...And that the conservatives who CONTINUE to let down everyone they claim to serve by turning every complex social issue into a black and white moral one shamed into some passivity...

We can only hope.

|2.8.05 @ 2:57PM|#

This is just another example of the anti-Christian bigotry on the part of Reason (who is in the pocket of the Communist Conspiracy... oops, I mean, the GAY AGENDA). Besides, the Good Book is very clear about what to do with misbehaving children:

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. 21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: Deuteronomy 21:18-21

These parents were just doing God's will. ;)

|2.8.05 @ 3:09PM|#

madpad, hear hear! There were plenty of people arguing the late 50s and early 60s that the Democratic Party needed to stay in the good graces of racists, or they would end up a minority party for a generation. Well, they didn't, and they did. Yet even from a liberal perspective, it was worth a generation of Republican Southern Strategy political domination to achieve the Civil Rights Revolution.

If we have to do it again, then we have to do it again. Them's the breaks. At least in 30 years, we'll have the pleasure of watching Republican apologists insisting that they were there, too.

|2.8.05 @ 3:13PM|#

Kuros,

Come on...all technicalities aside, surely you can appreciate the point being made here.

Nothing about the state's inability to follow up on the children blunts the main point - that Florida specifically prohibits gays from adopting a child for moral reasons while refusing to admit that the system as it exists has allowed two apparent psychopaths - albeit hetero psychos - to adopt not one but seven children...who were then subjected to unumerable 'immoral' acts.

There is an obvious hypocrisy underscored in all this.

|2.8.05 @ 3:14PM|#

"We can only hope."

I wouldn't get your hopes up, Madpad. Human beings are very good at ignoring the things we don't want to hear. The X-ian Right, doesn't want to hear that homosexuals are good folks who just have different tastes in the bedroom than they do. That would through a monkey wrench in to the whole Leviticus 20:13 mandate, and Biblical literalists will never accept that the revealed word of "God" is falable. (He is alledgedly "infalable," after all.)

Therefore, as long was there are a significant people who think that the Old Testement is a source for morality (and they are legion in the GOP who now runs the Southern political machine), gays and lesbians will be treated as second-class citizens at best, "abominations" at worst.

|2.8.05 @ 3:19PM|#

joe,

To whit, I find it always interesting that the conservative Republicans frequently like to trot out their abolitionist roots as proof that they are not racists.

Mention 'southern strategy' and they start getting a little twitchy.

|2.8.05 @ 3:22PM|#

which is NOT to say that I think ALL conservative Republicans are racist...I'm only saying that after the 'southern strategy', the party's abolitionist roots are no guarantee that a conservative republican is not racist.

|2.8.05 @ 3:26PM|#

Akira,

Sadly...you may be right. I was a proud - but moderate - Republican for 12 years until the conservative numbskulls drove me to become independant.

Hopefully, Christine Todd Whitman's movement will gain some traction.

|2.8.05 @ 3:44PM|#

"Sadly...you may be right. I was a proud - but moderate - Republican for 12 years until the conservative numbskulls drove me to become independant."

I was actually a Catholic Republican (anti-abortion, anti-gay)up until my mid-20s when I started to re-evaluate not just my politics, but my view of the universe as well. No longer being able to reconcile my desire for limited government with the conservatives desire to tell everyone what they could do with their private lives, I joined the Libertarians. Sadly, when I realized that the LP was a lost cause, I left to become a decidedly undecided voter.

Nikos A. Leverenz|2.8.05 @ 3:58PM|#

By all accounts, bigotry that is given the self-serving imprimatur of Christian principles is a far more dangerous development than the observations of freethinkers -- just it has been through the ages. It is simply unconscionable that child abuse would be excused by the blithe reference to Talmudic law. "Daring to discipline" is not a license to torture.

Why soil the good name of Jesus with crass, worldly politics? Would he really bemoan loving gay parents or, more importantly, countenance child abuse? Remember that this was a man, who of his own volition, embraced and befriended those found unsavory by the majority (prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers).

What really enrages me about some of the self-described moral avatars of Christian virtue --those who claim to know Christ in their heart and live His Word -- is their wanton refusal to acknowledge their continual commission of the deadly sin of pride.

It is all well and good for some to quote passages from Leviticus, which has a series of prohibitions and admonitions that are otherwise wholly ignored, and Romans, which was written by a political propagandist, in defense of their boundless majoritarian agenda of exclusion.

Instead, I *would* ask a question routinely posed by today's American evangelical Christians: WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?

No one can genuinely claim certitude, but I would humbly argue that He would take issue with those ministers who claim to speak through Him, as they wallow in the avarice and gluttony that He so despised. "My house will be called a house of prayer but you are making it a den of robbers." (Matthew 21:12).

And to those believers who follow them blindly: "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment." (John 7:24)

+++++++++++

"[T]he mere dislike of what is being done by others, or even the knowledge that others harm themselves by what they do, provides no legitimate ground for coercion.... The bare fact that an action is disliked by some of those who learn about it cannot be a sufficient ground for prohibiting it." -- F.A. Hayek, "The Constitution of Liberty," at p. 145.

|2.8.05 @ 4:11PM|#

Kuros says, "its not necessarily that the state "could not be troubled" the state is bounded by law in that once a child is adopted the state has no legal right to interfere/intervene/follow up on the child. the child is now legally with the adoptive parents"

The post-adoption follow-up is not the point. It's that "once a child is adopted" part of your statement that is the sticking point. The real injustice here is that the well-being of the children is not as important as the sexual preference of the potential adopters. This is all pre-adoption. There is a pre-adoption screening process, and this incident just proves that the screeners are more interested in the sex lives of the parents than whether or not they are psychopathic child torturers.

Whether they could be "troubled" to do a follow-up on these parents is a non-issue.

|2.8.05 @ 4:13PM|#

Christian over here. Pro-gay adoption.

And pro-death penalty...

|2.8.05 @ 4:37PM|#

Jeb at February 8, 2005 02:52 PM
If Jesus suffered for our sins, why can't our children?
i hope thats fu@@king sarcasm.

Akira MacKenzie at February 8, 2005 02:57 PM
These parents were just doing God's will. ;)
again, i hope thats fu@@king sarcasm.

joe at February 8, 2005 03:09 PM
...we'll have the pleasure of watching Republican apologists insisting that they were there, too.
they are masters of co-option

Nikos A. Leverenz at February 8, 2005 03:58 PM

it would be a much better world if we all simply practiced what we preach, in all endeavors.

|2.8.05 @ 4:54PM|#

I'm only saying that after the 'southern strategy', the party's abolitionist roots are no guarantee that a conservative republican is not racist.

Of course, by far the most racist people I know are all old school Democrats who have never voted for a Republican in their lives. They are also the most anti-gay people I have ever met.

Party affiliation has no connection whatsoever to your attitudes towards people.

|2.8.05 @ 4:55PM|#

i do spy a f@@cking smiley in there somewhere.

PintofStout|2.8.05 @ 4:58PM|#

A little less preaching is also acceptable!

pococurante|2.8.05 @ 5:00PM|#

Village, there's a lot of sarcasm, facetiousness, and levity here. And you may spell your curse words out in full (goddamnit).

|2.8.05 @ 5:04PM|#

R.C. Dean,

Party affiliation has no connection whatsoever to your attitudes towards people.

None whatsover, eh? Can you prove that? :)

|2.8.05 @ 5:23PM|#

Party affiliation has no connection whatsoever to your attitudes towards people.

That's just not true. Republicans are in favor of the exploitation of one man by another and with Democrats it's the other way around. :)

I'd give credit for that if I could remember who said it. About communism vs capitalism I believe.

Nikos A. Leverenz|2.8.05 @ 5:26PM|#

Missed the smiley in Akira's statement... sorry for sounding off and getting all biblical. LOL.

|2.8.05 @ 6:03PM|#

That's just not true. Republicans are in favor of the exploitation of one man by another and with Democrats it's the other way around. ... I'd give credit for that if I could remember who said it. About communism vs capitalism I believe.

I tried to look up the "communism vs. capitalism" comment. I found attributions to Kenneth Galbraith, "Alexander Kornichuk, a friend of Kruschev's," "a common East German saying during the Soviet era," and somebody named Abba Lerner, and then I gave up.

JLo|2.8.05 @ 6:04PM|#

This is so incredibly odd...my father went to high school with the guy in this story. His take: "He was such a geek, I can't imagine him hurting anyone." I guess still waters run deep...and foul.

|2.8.05 @ 7:40PM|#

Of course, by far the most racist people I know are all old school Democrats who have never voted for a Republican in their lives. They are also the most anti-gay people I have ever met.

Is pointing that out supposed to prove something?

So what if some fringe racist holdouts in one section of the country are so steeped in the "stars and bars" that they're too chickenshit to vote republican. They (most likely) still aren't voting democrat either.

The far, far greater majority of them remain democrats and DO vote republican. And they're still racists AND they have zero voice in the democratic party.

If you think Zingin' Zell has any friends left in the democratic party, well...let's just say that Dean become DNC leader will probably be the nail in THAT coffin. I, for one, hope he publicly calls for Zell to renounce his party membership.

So your point exactly?

|2.8.05 @ 8:37PM|#

If we let gay Floridians adopt, then we have to accept the fact the some of those gay Floridians might be horrible psychos who do horrible things to their children.

But that's not important.

We have systems in place to deal with this.

Underfunded, understaffed, and poorly used systems, but nonetheless we do have a system that assumes not all parents are fit.

|2.9.05 @ 10:49AM|#

Sounds like the fags are destroying families and corrupting young children yet again.

Abiola Lapite|2.9.05 @ 2:11PM|#

If we let gay Floridians adopt, then we have to accept the fact the some of those gay Floridians might be horrible psychos who do horrible things to their children.

Sure, but you have to weigh that against the fact that most won't be nutcases, and those extra potential adopters mean more room for the adoption agencies to be picky about who they put in charge of kids. Any policy that serves to deepen the adopter pool ought to be welcomed.