A lose-lose situation

A lose-lose situation
Statewide ban on gay foster parents would deprive children of the
chance for stable, loving homes


The choices for foster and adoptive parents in Georgia don't come down
to either Ozzie and Harriet or Will and Grace.

The gays and lesbians volunteering to care for Georgia's abused and
neglected children are not snatching them from the arms of
conventional married couples. With about 15,000 children in state
custody and 4,000 foster homes, Georgia faces a critical shortage of
loving adults willing to open their homes and their hearts to troubled
kids.

"There is a need for more foster homes, not fewer," says Jack H.
Senterfitt, former chief legal officer for the state Department of
Human Resources and now an attorney for the Lambda Legal Defense &
Education Fund. "I don't know where we put these children if we banned
gays and lesbians from serving as foster and adoptive parents."

Given the desperate plight of DHR, it would be destructive and
senseless to forbid gay and lesbian foster homes and adoptions by gays
and lesbians. The folks urging the Georgia Legislature to consider
such a ban contend they are doing so to protect children from the
harmful influence of homosexuality.

"It is not conducive to a healthy upbringing," says Sadie Fields,
chairman of the Christian Coalition of Georgia. "I don't think it is a
natural lifestyle," says Sen. Nancy Schaefer (R-Turnerville).

Is it "healthy" for an abused child to sleep on a couch of a county
welfare office? Is it "natural" for a child to bounce from one
overcrowded foster placement to the next? That's what will happen if
Fields and Schaefer succeed in turning their ideology into law.

No one at DHR knows how many gays and lesbians are foster or adoptive
parents, although estimates are that such placements number in the
hundreds, if not thousands. Gays and lesbians also have a reputation
for taking in the hard-luck kids, the medically fragile and
psychologically scarred.

Research does not support the charge that gays and lesbians — because
of their sexual orientation — are unfit parents. Most studies have
found no psychological disadvantages for children raised in gay
households. Nor does having a gay parent mean that a child will grow
up gay. Among the mainstream groups that oppose prohibiting adoptions
or fostering on the basis of sexual orientation are the American
Medical Association, the Child Welfare League of America, the American
Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association.

Last year, in striking down an Arkansas ban on placing foster children
in any household with a gay member, Circuit Court Judge Timothy Fox
cited the overwhelming body of research: "The testimony and evidence
showed that there was no rational relationship between the . . .
blanket exclusion [of gays] and the health, safety and welfare of the
foster children."

Fox also added a personal note to his ruling that Georgia legislators
should keep in mind before they introduce such a divisive and hateful
ban here. The judge urged people to remember that "some of the
cherished societal mores of our present may very well one day become
the regretted bigotry of our past."
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/o...5/21edgay.html

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