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thedarksiren2The following is the last paper I wrote for my English 308J class. It is a stance paper, specifically against Ohio House Bill 515, which was put before legislators on February 9th of this year. It's a little oddly-formatted, only because I am not entirely fluent with HTML, so I couldn't indent.
I'll let you all comment/ form your own opinions as you may. Please feel free to comment/ talk amongst each other as you feel. This is a very important and powerful subject, and I want people to discuss it.
Without further stallings, here it is:
~*~*~*~*~*~
Sometime around my twenty-first birthday, my mother began to struggle with an itch. It was not something a doctor could treat, and even the best of creams could not ease its call to be scratched. So she did just that, and thus the nudging and prodding into my life as a young woman began; when was I going to make her a grandmother? Of course, I was not entirely keen on the idea at the time. I had far too much to do with my life, not the least of which included traveling, going to college, and discovering myself in adulthood. Thankfully, my younger sister had a daughter about a year later, and I was off the hook.
Over the years, the issue of conception pressed on in my life, my mother’s itch aside. I went through tests and painful exams, fighting off ovarian cysts, my abilities to have a child seeming to diminish with each new ultrasound. At times it felt as though my insides were dying from the medications, and my yet undiscovered maternal instincts cowered in the shadow of such fears.
As a result, I have always considered the idea of adoption, should my body choose not to cooperate when I decide to utilize it in such a manner. Unfortunately, there are barriers beyond my own possible infertility, disguised as protective shields for children. Consequently, I, along with a large portion of my friends and family, are the ones considered most dangerous.
Ohio House Bill (H.B.) 515, the so-called “Adoptive and Foster Children’s Protection Act,” was introduced on February 9 of this year. The bill proposes to forbid adoption or foster parenting by people who identify as homosexual, bisexual, or transgender. It would also prohibit such parenting options to households wherein someone “who the court determines is a homosexual, bisexual, or transgender individual” resides. To drive the knife even deeper, the bill assumes to keep job and family services from allowing certification to daycare providers who fall under these same guidelines.
Interestingly, the bill itself does not list any valid reasoning to its case when viewed solely at face value. What it does insinuate, however, is that a child will be endangered when exposed to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Within section 5103.03 J, 1, it mentions that an “institution or association” may lose its license if “the department has evidence that the life, health, or safety of one or more children […] is at imminent risk.” The very next part, K, 1 -3, goes on to “define” bisexuality, homosexuality, and transgender, a subtle yet distinct message, particularly when considering these “definitions” appeared earlier in the bill.
There are absolutely no statistics, nor is there any other realm of definitive documentation upon which to base the assumption that anyone in the LGBT community is more dangerous than anyone else walking the streets. If Ohio legislators look more closely at what incredibly little information is available, they will find that the greater percentage of child predators not only identify as heterosexual in their adult relationships, but that they are, more frequently than not, a member of the child’s immediate family (Witt 359). During a one year study at Denver, Colorado’s Children's hospital, only “one of 387 cases of suspected child molestation there” occurred at the hands of a gay predator (Witt 359).
Many religious-based organizations, such as the American Family Association, speak of a “homosexual agenda” (Bennet), often implying in their articles that, in seeking to adopt and/ or raise children, the LGBT community is trying to “infect” these children with their “sinful” lifestyle. That simply just is not the case. It is an assumption, a very subjective opinion based in hatred and ignorance.
Sexual preference is not a disease, nor is it a choice. Who would choose to live a lifestyle wherein a person is despised for loving someone in the only way they know or understand?
You too can be a member of a despised minority. Join us and your parents will reject you,
your boss will fire you, and absolute strangers will call you names or hit you over the head with
a baseball bat for holding hands with your boyfriend or girlfriend in public.(Witt 358)
A person of homosexual orientation can no more control attractions to someone of the same gender than a heterosexual person can to the opposite sex (Marcus 11). Besides recent research into the biology of sexual orientation, much of which indicates that it is a matter of genetics rather than conscious decision (Marcus12-13), most people who identify as LGBT notice something different about themselves, something atypical, as teenagers, if not as very young children. Of course, at such a young age, these kids did not believe that their feelings and/ or curiosities were wrong so much as not acceptable.
I remember peeking into my father’s night stand when I was around four years old, just out of curiosity. I came upon his collection of Playboy magazines, and for the next several years I looked through these magazines, admiring the women in them. It was not until I was around twelve that I came to understand that this was not typical, not only because of my age, but also because I was a girl. I heard my brothers talk about women, about doing what I did and sneaking into my father’s drawers to look at the very same magazines. My sisters, on the other hand, never spoke of other women. They talked about boys, about doing their hair and shopping. I enjoyed all of these things, boys included, but felt I was unable to express my attraction and interest in other girls and the female body without being banished and/ or ridiculed by my family. I kept this secret locked away until I moved out, and did not have my first bisexual encounter until I was almost 23.
Similarly, two of my closest friends, Jay and K., told me they had “signs” of their preferences at a young age, but did not recognize them for what they were until they were teenagers. J. explored his preferences at a relatively early age, having his first sexual encounter with another girl at age fourteen (Jay is female-to-male transgender, and was still female as a teen). K., on the other hand, did not have a lesbian relationship until she was in college.
It is important to note here that none of the three of us were raised in homes with LGBT parents, or where LGBT issues were approached. Jay was raised in a southern, devoutly Nazarene home. His parents were both extremely conservative and heterosexual. He had two brothers growing up, one heterosexual, and the other gay. K.’s family is Catholic, and she attended Catholic school growing up. Her older sister is married with a child, and identifies as heterosexual, as do K.’s parents. Neither Jay nor K. had an easy time coming out to their heterosexual families, and although K.’s family accepts her for the most part in her adult life, Jay’s mother continues to struggle with not only his sexual preference, but also with Jay’s transition from female to male.
As for my family, my parents were neither conservative nor religious. My five siblings and I were all taught very basic moral principles, some from the Bible, others elsewhere. Our parents had marital problems, as many marriages do, but for the most part our childhood was filled with love and support, and all of us kids were encouraged to think freely and openly. All but my older sister and I identify as strictly heterosexual, and they are all either married, have children, or both. My mother, oldest brother, and two sisters know of my preferences, but my father and other brothers do not, if for no other reason than my sex life and preferences have never been discussed with them.
In Gillespie’s book, Love Makes a Family: Portraits of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Parents and Their Families, the Dyton and Grogan family, much like the rest of the families in the book, discuss their lives in conjunction with touching family portraits of children and their parents. Regina Dyton, a “Human Services Consultant at a Teen Prevention Program” (77), tells of her own life as a lesbian as well as the lives of her kids’ father, a gay man, and her partner, Kim. More importantly, she discusses her life as a mother to her two children, Rayna and Edward, both of whom she birthed and raised. Aside from her very loving, nurturing, and supportive words as their mother, she discusses how intelligent her children are. Both children are heterosexual, attend conservative schools, and do very well in them respectively. Rayna writes, “When straight people know the kids before they know me and Kim, they make a lot of assumptions about what wonderful parents the kids must have. And it’s true” (78). She goes on to write about how people’s opinions differ upon finding out about the nature of their family and, more specifically, about her and Kim’s relationship: “they either try to ignore that I’m a lesbian, or they start looking for big psychological defects in the kids.”
Upon reading further into their story, one finds that the kids are anything but psychologically defective. Twelve year-old Edward has won awards for writing a book about AIDS awareness (78), and Rayna exemplifies a strong-willed, intelligent and well-adjusted teenager at sixteen:
Growing up in this family, I’ve learned how to stand up for myself and to express my opinions.
I think I’m more open-minded than many of my friends, and I have the power to change people’s thinking.
If my friends realize that gay families get up in the morning, get dressed, go to work, do chores, and
have bills and responsibilities like everyone else, then I’ve changed some people’s minds. (80)
All of the examples above show distinctly that a child’s environment has nothing to do with his or her sexual orientation. What the environment does impact, however, is a child’s well-being and social adjustment. Being raised in a stable, loving, honest, and supportive family is crucial to a child’s psychology, regardless of whether that family consists of a mother and a father, a single parent, two mothers or two fathers. Although the children of same-sex households face challenges when dealing with peers (what child does not?), this is no more trying than any other social group dealing with discrimination in society (Marcus 65). Much like those other social groups, these difficulties can also lead to educating society overall, creating community and empowering those children to make a difference in their worlds, much as Rayna and her brother illustrated above.
H.B. 515 is anything but empowering. If anything, it is stifling. If passed, H.B.515 would create a domino effect throughout Ohio, negatively impacting families, children, and society as a whole. Aside from the obvious discrimination against and alienation of LGBT people and their families, what about those children being “protected?” There are “more than 22,000 children […] in foster care and over 6,000 children are without a loving, permanent home” in Ohio (Bowman). According to Ohio Job and Family Services, at the end of the 2005 fiscal year, 2,612 children were waiting to be adopted, 27% of which were fourteen to seventeen years old (jfs.ohio). Additionally, 7% were children with one or more special needs, a rough estimate which crosses over several other factors, including but not limited to, medical needs (1%), emotional needs (2.5 %), physical (.3%), ethnicity (1.3%), and age (4%). These children obviously are not the ideal, perfect babies most couples look to adopt. They are, however, children, looking for a place to call home with people to call their family, and deserve to be placed as much as any healthy, newborn baby.
If LGBT families, who are considerably more likely to adopt children with special needs (Hunt), were taken out of the equation of those families able to adopt in Ohio, that would remove approximately 1,145,900 people from the adoptive pool, based on the 2004 census. Over one million homes, almost five times more than what is needed to provide a home to every child waiting to be adopted in Ohio, that will no longer be available.
And what about those homes where children are already placed? Do those in support of H.B. 515 plan on not only spending the money, time, and putting forth the effort to “weed out” the parents of children who are LGBT, but also remove those placed children from these homes, their homes? Do they plan on breaking up those families, causing an unmistakable rift in each child’s emotional and psychological stability? And what of the cost to Ohio? Where will the funding come from to search and sift through each and every Ohio household wherein a child resides? Better yet, how much money will be available to the service providers who will be suddenly overrun by children re-placed in their care, never mind the cost of the health care that will be necessary to treat those children as a result of their suddenly disrupted lives?
A proposal such as H.B. 515 is preposterous on many levels. Aside from the monetary implications, it is, more importantly, blatantly discriminatory, unwarranted, destructive, and absolutely unacceptable. It is a prime example of homophobia and heterosexism, and if passed, it would be the most aggressively discriminating restriction against LGBT parenting in the United States (Resnick), legally sanctioning bigotry. To say that such a bill is in the best interest of the children is ludicrous. Their “best interest” is obviously the lowest priority. H.B. 515 is a red flag waving above each child’s head, exploiting each and every one of his or her needs and dreams in the guise of something wholesome and good. That flag is, instead, overwrought with hatred and cruelty, neither of which are considered strong, moral family values.
I look forward to having a family of my own one day. My boyfriend Thomas and I have discussed having children, keeping my possible infertility in the back of our minds. We are still a few years from making such a decision reality, but I am sure we will take all possibilities into consideration, up to and including adoption. The optimist in me looks to the future without such hindrances as H.B. 515; it is difficult to believe the future, our future, holds such ugliness in its hands when everything we know and love in the present is so beautiful. That beauty is encouraging, and with it comes the vision of Jay and K., as well as Thomas’s and my families, actively involved in our children’s lives. We know that our family will flourish, surrounded with the love and encouragement of our friends and loved ones. I see us looking back on these times, battles overcome, and imagine H.B. 515 will not only exist as a memory, but will also help us to appreciate what we have all the more. It will not cause a rift in our lives, but will instead create an even stronger bond between us, helping us to stand up against all odds, and setting an undeniable example for generations to come.
~*~*~*~*~
Works Cited
126th Ohio General Assembly 2005-2006. “The Adoptive and Foster Children's Protection Act.” H.B. No. 515 20 Feb. 2006 <http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/bills.cfm?id=126_hb_515>
“About Adopt Ohio.” Adopt Ohio. Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, Bureau
of Family Services. 4 Mar. 2006 <http://www.jfs.ohio.gov/oapl/adoptohi.htm>
Bennet, Stephen. “Homosexual Agenda.” American Family Association. Feb. 2006. 26
Feb. 2006 < http://www.afa.net/homosexual_agenda>
Bowman, Lynn. “‘Divisive’ Adoption and Foster Care Bill Harms LGBT Families,
Children, State.” Equality Ohio 13 Feb. 2006. 1 Mar. 2006 <http://www.equalityohio.org/pr02132006.htm>
Gillespie, Peggy, ed. Love Makes a Family: Portraits of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and
Transgender Parents and Their Families. Hong Kong: University of Massachusetts, 1999. 77-80.
Hunt, Albert. “Blocking Gay Adoptions Hurts Kids.” The Wall Street Journal 2 Mar.
2002: A 23.
Marcus, Eric. Is It a Choice?: Answers to 300 of the Most Frequently Asked Questions
About Gay and Lesbian People. 2nd ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1999. 11-13, 65.
Resnick, Eric. “The Nation’s Most Hostile Adoption Ban.” Gay People’s Chronicle, Vol.
21, Issue 34 17 Feb. 2006: 1+
Witt, Lynn, Sherry Thomas and Eric Marcus, eds. Out in all directions: the almanac of
gay and lesbian America. New York: Warner Books, 1995. 358-59.
I'll let you all comment/ form your own opinions as you may. Please feel free to comment/ talk amongst each other as you feel. This is a very important and powerful subject, and I want people to discuss it.
Without further stallings, here it is:
Sometime around my twenty-first birthday, my mother began to struggle with an itch. It was not something a doctor could treat, and even the best of creams could not ease its call to be scratched. So she did just that, and thus the nudging and prodding into my life as a young woman began; when was I going to make her a grandmother? Of course, I was not entirely keen on the idea at the time. I had far too much to do with my life, not the least of which included traveling, going to college, and discovering myself in adulthood. Thankfully, my younger sister had a daughter about a year later, and I was off the hook.
Over the years, the issue of conception pressed on in my life, my mother’s itch aside. I went through tests and painful exams, fighting off ovarian cysts, my abilities to have a child seeming to diminish with each new ultrasound. At times it felt as though my insides were dying from the medications, and my yet undiscovered maternal instincts cowered in the shadow of such fears.
As a result, I have always considered the idea of adoption, should my body choose not to cooperate when I decide to utilize it in such a manner. Unfortunately, there are barriers beyond my own possible infertility, disguised as protective shields for children. Consequently, I, along with a large portion of my friends and family, are the ones considered most dangerous.
Ohio House Bill (H.B.) 515, the so-called “Adoptive and Foster Children’s Protection Act,” was introduced on February 9 of this year. The bill proposes to forbid adoption or foster parenting by people who identify as homosexual, bisexual, or transgender. It would also prohibit such parenting options to households wherein someone “who the court determines is a homosexual, bisexual, or transgender individual” resides. To drive the knife even deeper, the bill assumes to keep job and family services from allowing certification to daycare providers who fall under these same guidelines.
Interestingly, the bill itself does not list any valid reasoning to its case when viewed solely at face value. What it does insinuate, however, is that a child will be endangered when exposed to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Within section 5103.03 J, 1, it mentions that an “institution or association” may lose its license if “the department has evidence that the life, health, or safety of one or more children […] is at imminent risk.” The very next part, K, 1 -3, goes on to “define” bisexuality, homosexuality, and transgender, a subtle yet distinct message, particularly when considering these “definitions” appeared earlier in the bill.
There are absolutely no statistics, nor is there any other realm of definitive documentation upon which to base the assumption that anyone in the LGBT community is more dangerous than anyone else walking the streets. If Ohio legislators look more closely at what incredibly little information is available, they will find that the greater percentage of child predators not only identify as heterosexual in their adult relationships, but that they are, more frequently than not, a member of the child’s immediate family (Witt 359). During a one year study at Denver, Colorado’s Children's hospital, only “one of 387 cases of suspected child molestation there” occurred at the hands of a gay predator (Witt 359).
Many religious-based organizations, such as the American Family Association, speak of a “homosexual agenda” (Bennet), often implying in their articles that, in seeking to adopt and/ or raise children, the LGBT community is trying to “infect” these children with their “sinful” lifestyle. That simply just is not the case. It is an assumption, a very subjective opinion based in hatred and ignorance.
Sexual preference is not a disease, nor is it a choice. Who would choose to live a lifestyle wherein a person is despised for loving someone in the only way they know or understand?
your boss will fire you, and absolute strangers will call you names or hit you over the head with
a baseball bat for holding hands with your boyfriend or girlfriend in public.(Witt 358)
A person of homosexual orientation can no more control attractions to someone of the same gender than a heterosexual person can to the opposite sex (Marcus 11). Besides recent research into the biology of sexual orientation, much of which indicates that it is a matter of genetics rather than conscious decision (Marcus12-13), most people who identify as LGBT notice something different about themselves, something atypical, as teenagers, if not as very young children. Of course, at such a young age, these kids did not believe that their feelings and/ or curiosities were wrong so much as not acceptable.
I remember peeking into my father’s night stand when I was around four years old, just out of curiosity. I came upon his collection of Playboy magazines, and for the next several years I looked through these magazines, admiring the women in them. It was not until I was around twelve that I came to understand that this was not typical, not only because of my age, but also because I was a girl. I heard my brothers talk about women, about doing what I did and sneaking into my father’s drawers to look at the very same magazines. My sisters, on the other hand, never spoke of other women. They talked about boys, about doing their hair and shopping. I enjoyed all of these things, boys included, but felt I was unable to express my attraction and interest in other girls and the female body without being banished and/ or ridiculed by my family. I kept this secret locked away until I moved out, and did not have my first bisexual encounter until I was almost 23.
Similarly, two of my closest friends, Jay and K., told me they had “signs” of their preferences at a young age, but did not recognize them for what they were until they were teenagers. J. explored his preferences at a relatively early age, having his first sexual encounter with another girl at age fourteen (Jay is female-to-male transgender, and was still female as a teen). K., on the other hand, did not have a lesbian relationship until she was in college.
It is important to note here that none of the three of us were raised in homes with LGBT parents, or where LGBT issues were approached. Jay was raised in a southern, devoutly Nazarene home. His parents were both extremely conservative and heterosexual. He had two brothers growing up, one heterosexual, and the other gay. K.’s family is Catholic, and she attended Catholic school growing up. Her older sister is married with a child, and identifies as heterosexual, as do K.’s parents. Neither Jay nor K. had an easy time coming out to their heterosexual families, and although K.’s family accepts her for the most part in her adult life, Jay’s mother continues to struggle with not only his sexual preference, but also with Jay’s transition from female to male.
As for my family, my parents were neither conservative nor religious. My five siblings and I were all taught very basic moral principles, some from the Bible, others elsewhere. Our parents had marital problems, as many marriages do, but for the most part our childhood was filled with love and support, and all of us kids were encouraged to think freely and openly. All but my older sister and I identify as strictly heterosexual, and they are all either married, have children, or both. My mother, oldest brother, and two sisters know of my preferences, but my father and other brothers do not, if for no other reason than my sex life and preferences have never been discussed with them.
In Gillespie’s book, Love Makes a Family: Portraits of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Parents and Their Families, the Dyton and Grogan family, much like the rest of the families in the book, discuss their lives in conjunction with touching family portraits of children and their parents. Regina Dyton, a “Human Services Consultant at a Teen Prevention Program” (77), tells of her own life as a lesbian as well as the lives of her kids’ father, a gay man, and her partner, Kim. More importantly, she discusses her life as a mother to her two children, Rayna and Edward, both of whom she birthed and raised. Aside from her very loving, nurturing, and supportive words as their mother, she discusses how intelligent her children are. Both children are heterosexual, attend conservative schools, and do very well in them respectively. Rayna writes, “When straight people know the kids before they know me and Kim, they make a lot of assumptions about what wonderful parents the kids must have. And it’s true” (78). She goes on to write about how people’s opinions differ upon finding out about the nature of their family and, more specifically, about her and Kim’s relationship: “they either try to ignore that I’m a lesbian, or they start looking for big psychological defects in the kids.”
Upon reading further into their story, one finds that the kids are anything but psychologically defective. Twelve year-old Edward has won awards for writing a book about AIDS awareness (78), and Rayna exemplifies a strong-willed, intelligent and well-adjusted teenager at sixteen:
I think I’m more open-minded than many of my friends, and I have the power to change people’s thinking.
If my friends realize that gay families get up in the morning, get dressed, go to work, do chores, and
have bills and responsibilities like everyone else, then I’ve changed some people’s minds. (80)
All of the examples above show distinctly that a child’s environment has nothing to do with his or her sexual orientation. What the environment does impact, however, is a child’s well-being and social adjustment. Being raised in a stable, loving, honest, and supportive family is crucial to a child’s psychology, regardless of whether that family consists of a mother and a father, a single parent, two mothers or two fathers. Although the children of same-sex households face challenges when dealing with peers (what child does not?), this is no more trying than any other social group dealing with discrimination in society (Marcus 65). Much like those other social groups, these difficulties can also lead to educating society overall, creating community and empowering those children to make a difference in their worlds, much as Rayna and her brother illustrated above.
H.B. 515 is anything but empowering. If anything, it is stifling. If passed, H.B.515 would create a domino effect throughout Ohio, negatively impacting families, children, and society as a whole. Aside from the obvious discrimination against and alienation of LGBT people and their families, what about those children being “protected?” There are “more than 22,000 children […] in foster care and over 6,000 children are without a loving, permanent home” in Ohio (Bowman). According to Ohio Job and Family Services, at the end of the 2005 fiscal year, 2,612 children were waiting to be adopted, 27% of which were fourteen to seventeen years old (jfs.ohio). Additionally, 7% were children with one or more special needs, a rough estimate which crosses over several other factors, including but not limited to, medical needs (1%), emotional needs (2.5 %), physical (.3%), ethnicity (1.3%), and age (4%). These children obviously are not the ideal, perfect babies most couples look to adopt. They are, however, children, looking for a place to call home with people to call their family, and deserve to be placed as much as any healthy, newborn baby.
If LGBT families, who are considerably more likely to adopt children with special needs (Hunt), were taken out of the equation of those families able to adopt in Ohio, that would remove approximately 1,145,900 people from the adoptive pool, based on the 2004 census. Over one million homes, almost five times more than what is needed to provide a home to every child waiting to be adopted in Ohio, that will no longer be available.
And what about those homes where children are already placed? Do those in support of H.B. 515 plan on not only spending the money, time, and putting forth the effort to “weed out” the parents of children who are LGBT, but also remove those placed children from these homes, their homes? Do they plan on breaking up those families, causing an unmistakable rift in each child’s emotional and psychological stability? And what of the cost to Ohio? Where will the funding come from to search and sift through each and every Ohio household wherein a child resides? Better yet, how much money will be available to the service providers who will be suddenly overrun by children re-placed in their care, never mind the cost of the health care that will be necessary to treat those children as a result of their suddenly disrupted lives?
A proposal such as H.B. 515 is preposterous on many levels. Aside from the monetary implications, it is, more importantly, blatantly discriminatory, unwarranted, destructive, and absolutely unacceptable. It is a prime example of homophobia and heterosexism, and if passed, it would be the most aggressively discriminating restriction against LGBT parenting in the United States (Resnick), legally sanctioning bigotry. To say that such a bill is in the best interest of the children is ludicrous. Their “best interest” is obviously the lowest priority. H.B. 515 is a red flag waving above each child’s head, exploiting each and every one of his or her needs and dreams in the guise of something wholesome and good. That flag is, instead, overwrought with hatred and cruelty, neither of which are considered strong, moral family values.
I look forward to having a family of my own one day. My boyfriend Thomas and I have discussed having children, keeping my possible infertility in the back of our minds. We are still a few years from making such a decision reality, but I am sure we will take all possibilities into consideration, up to and including adoption. The optimist in me looks to the future without such hindrances as H.B. 515; it is difficult to believe the future, our future, holds such ugliness in its hands when everything we know and love in the present is so beautiful. That beauty is encouraging, and with it comes the vision of Jay and K., as well as Thomas’s and my families, actively involved in our children’s lives. We know that our family will flourish, surrounded with the love and encouragement of our friends and loved ones. I see us looking back on these times, battles overcome, and imagine H.B. 515 will not only exist as a memory, but will also help us to appreciate what we have all the more. It will not cause a rift in our lives, but will instead create an even stronger bond between us, helping us to stand up against all odds, and setting an undeniable example for generations to come.
126th Ohio General Assembly 2005-2006. “The Adoptive and Foster Children's Protection Act.” H.B. No. 515 20 Feb. 2006 <http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/bills.cfm?id=126_hb_515>
“About Adopt Ohio.” Adopt Ohio. Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, Bureau
of Family Services. 4 Mar. 2006 <http://www.jfs.ohio.gov/oapl/adoptohi.htm>
Bennet, Stephen. “Homosexual Agenda.” American Family Association. Feb. 2006. 26
Feb. 2006 < http://www.afa.net/homosexual_agenda>
Bowman, Lynn. “‘Divisive’ Adoption and Foster Care Bill Harms LGBT Families,
Children, State.” Equality Ohio 13 Feb. 2006. 1 Mar. 2006 <http://www.equalityohio.org/pr02132006.htm>
Gillespie, Peggy, ed. Love Makes a Family: Portraits of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and
Transgender Parents and Their Families. Hong Kong: University of Massachusetts, 1999. 77-80.
Hunt, Albert. “Blocking Gay Adoptions Hurts Kids.” The Wall Street Journal 2 Mar.
2002: A 23.
Marcus, Eric. Is It a Choice?: Answers to 300 of the Most Frequently Asked Questions
About Gay and Lesbian People. 2nd ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1999. 11-13, 65.
Resnick, Eric. “The Nation’s Most Hostile Adoption Ban.” Gay People’s Chronicle, Vol.
21, Issue 34 17 Feb. 2006: 1+
Witt, Lynn, Sherry Thomas and Eric Marcus, eds. Out in all directions: the almanac of
gay and lesbian America. New York: Warner Books, 1995. 358-59.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-03-22 04:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-22 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-22 05:25 am (UTC)But jezus. That bill is beyond fucked up, I have no words for it.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-22 02:43 pm (UTC)I got really angry/depressed listening to a debate on this issue (adoption) on NPR because that woman from the Family Research Council phrases things so innocuously that I can see how people without strong views could be swayed. It's like how the anti-abortion movement branded themselves 'pro-life' to insinuate that others are pro-death, the people against gay adoption (and in some states the bill is against adoption by any unmarried person) are reframing the issue to say they are "in favor of adoption reform" and insinuating that somehow this will fix all of the problems with foster care, which we know is total bullshit.
Anyway - great essay.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-22 02:58 pm (UTC)One question
Date: 2006-03-22 03:00 pm (UTC)Re: One question
Date: 2006-03-22 05:31 pm (UTC)This is a good part of the reason I wrote the paper. I wanted to get people's attention NOW, and help them to understand. It's also partly the reason I left the post unlocked...in as much as I fear idiots blasting my journal from outside my f-list, I am also hopeful that people will lead others this direction.
But yeah, hasn't even made it past the house yet.