Stardate 20010830.1215 (On Screen): This whole business is decidedly strange. Why is it that in Florida a pair of gay men are considered acceptable to be foster parents but not to be adoptive parents? This seems a contradictory policy by the state. The court decision is equally strange: it claims that the state has an overriding interest in making sure that children are adopted into heterosexual marriages. Does that mean that single heterosexuals are also not permitted to adopt in Florida? I know that single people adopt in other places and I bet they're permitted to in Florida, too. In that case, this court's justification for its decision would be nonsense.
Of course, it's all rank bigotry. There's no reason whatever to believe that gays are any less capable of being good parents than anyone else is. The real reason is that this court (and the state legislature) is afraid that the adoptive children might be infected with gayness -- but I don't believe that. While any parent will hope that their children turn out the way they do, any loving parent really only wants their children to be happy. I don't think, deep down, that gay parents would try to force their adoptive kids (or even naturally-born kids, which does happen) to be gay, and it's not clear that it would work anyway given that there's reasonable evidence now that most people's sexual persuasion is innate and not learned. (After all, how else could heterosexual parents have gay children?) (discuss)
Update 20010831: Good stuff! The ACLU has stepped in to represent the gay men in this case and will take the case to Federal Court. I think we're going to see this decision overturned. I just hope that in the mean time the two men don't get administratively punished by having the kids in question taken away from them by the bureaucrats who administer the foster parents program in Florida.
