Editorial

Skye is a 15-year-old foster child being cared for by a lesbian who wishes to adopt the boy. Skye describes himself as “transgender.”

The homosexual lobby in Florida is putting forward Skye as a poster child, literally, for its dangerous agenda seeking to repeal a ban preventing homosexuals to adopt. Skye, tragically however, is an example of what is terribly wrong with the foster system.

Skye and his foster parent were featured speakers at a Feb. 28 Florida Atlantic University forum held for the purpose of advocating legislation seeking to remove Florida’s ban preventing homosexuals from adopting children.

The FAU meeting, sponsored by Lambda United, drew only 30 participants, but that didn’t prevent fawning, sympathetic coverage by two major newspapers in South Florida. The forum is part of a well-orchestrated, media-savvy campaign to pressure the legislature to remove Florida’s ban on homosexual adoptions.

In the supposedly conservative, pro-family Florida legislature, such legislation – as in past sessions – would presumably have no chance of success. Not so this year.

Sponsored by Sen. Nan Rich, D-Sunrise, and Rep. Sheri McInvale, R-Orlando, the legislation is gaining traction, with a repeal of the ban now getting serious consideration in the legislature.

To further promote the legislation, homosexual lobbyists plan to hold rallies at the Capitol March 9 and 10 to coincide with the opening week of the legislative session.

Galvano is ‘open-minded’

Although SB 172 was temporarily postponed Feb. 14 in the Senate Children and Families Committee when Sen. Rich saw that she would not have enough votes to pass it, the House counterpart, HB 123, was recently given hope when Rep. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, chairman of the Future of Florida’s Families Committee, said that he would consider scheduling a vote on the bill.

“There are probably some inconsistencies (in existing law) that will ultimately have to be addressed. I remain open-minded,” said Galvano, according to a Feb. 28 report in The Tallahassee Democrat.

The Democrat reported that Galvano is “beginning to have second thoughts” about the adoption ban after “listening to impassioned advocates hammer away at the state’s contradictory policy.”

The homosexual lobby’s bills before the Florida legislature come after years of failure in the courts.

In 2001, Miami federal judge Lawrence King upheld Florida’s ban, noting that the state also prevents adoption by heterosexual unmarried couples.

“Given that there is no fundamental right to adopt or to be adopted, there can be no fundamental right to apply for adoption. The Supreme Court has warned against expanding fundamental rights because once a fundamental right is identified, the matter is placed ‘outside the arena of public debate and legislative action,” King said.

In 2004, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals narrowly (6-6) upheld King’s ruling, noting, “[W]e have found nothing in the Constitution that forbids this policy judgment. Thus, any argument that the Florida legislature was misguided in its decision is one of legislative policy, not constitutional law. The legislature is the proper forum for this debate, and we do not sit as a super-legislature to aware by judicial decree what was not achievable by political consensus.”

Thus, the homosexual lobby has turned its attention again on the legislature.

Repealing bans on adoption has long been a major plank in the homosexual lobby’s platform – along with repeal of laws setting age of sexual consent. These planks in the homosexual platform should always be viewed together – especially by legislators considering appeals from the homosexual lobby.

Further, the disturbing prevalence of pedophilia in the social and political sub-culture of the homosexual movement should give legislators great pause at expanding homosexual parenting rights. (To read more about the growing normalization of pedophilia, see Mary Eberstadt’s important essays, “Pedophilia Chic” [June 17, 1996] and “‘Pedophilia Chic,’ Reconsidered” [Jan. 2, 2001], in The Weekly Standard, www.weeklystandard.com.)

Empirical evidence

In order to advance its legislative agenda seeking normalization of homosexual parenting and to remove all legal barriers to such, advocates in medicine and other sciences have trotted out various studies to make the case that there is no consequential difference in the outcomes of children parented by heterosexuals and homosexuals.

A 2002 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics argued for adoption rights for homosexuals, noting that a “considerable body of professional literature provides evidence that children with parents who are homosexual have the same advantages and the same expectations for health, adjustment, and development as can children whose parents are heterosexual.”

What about that “considerable body of professional literature”?

Two experts in the field of quantitative analysis evaluated 49 empirical studies on same-sex parenting that seem to prove that there is no difference in children raised by homosexuals. In No Basis: What The Studies Don’t Tell Us About Same-Sex Parenting, Althea Nagai and Robert Lerner found that every study contained at least one fatal flaw in the research methodology. Nagai and Lerner argue that “no generalizations can reliably be made based on any of these studies. For these reasons, the studies are no basis for good science or good public policy” (www.marriagewatch.org/publications/nobasis.htm).

In fact, in contrast to these self-serving studies, there is overwhelming scientific evidence that children parented by homosexuals are harmed in such households.

In Getting it Straight: What the Research Shows about Homosexuality Family Research Council (www.frc.org) analysts Peter Sprigg and Timothy J. Dailey compile a mountain of scholarly studies which conclusively demonstrate that children are put at grave risk by homosexual parenting.

“[T]here is an abundance of evidence to demonstrate the dangerous consequences of homosexual behavior and the unstable nature of homosexual relationships,” write Sprigg and Dailey. Even among the pro-homosexual parenting research tainted by poor methodology and political agendas, the FRC analysts note, “there is significant evidence that their children suffer, particularly in the area of sexual adjustment” (95).

A few of the findings of Sprigg and Dailey include:

• Studies indicate that the average male homosexual has hundreds of sex partners in his lifetime (103).

• Most homosexuals in “committed” relationships understand sexual relations outside that relationship to be the norm, and view as oppressive adopting monogamous standards (104).

• Homosexual and lesbian relationships are far more violent than traditional married households (105).

• There is growing evidence that children raised in homosexual households are more likely to engage in sexual experimentation and in homosexual behavior (110).

Further, in contrast to the dangers of homosexual parents, Sprigg and Dailey note, “The importance of the traditional family has been increasingly verified by research showing that children from married two-parent households do better academically, financially, emotionally, and behaviorally. Meanwhile, they also experience much lower rates of many social pathologies,” including: premarital childbearing, illicit drug use, arrest, poverty and school failure or expulsion (118).

Against such compelling data, it’s incredible that Rep. Galvano would be “open-minded” to repealing Florida’s ban on homosexual adoptions.

Resolving the ‘inconsistencies’

Indeed, Florida does have contradictory policies – permitting homosexuals to serve as foster parents, but preventing them from being adoptive parents. But the solution to this inconsistency is not to remove the ban on adoption, but to also ban homosexuals from taking foster children.

That Rep. Galvano and other legislators are toying with the idea of supporting a repeal of the ban should be disturbing to all citizens, especially Florida Baptists. It’s disappointing that Rep. Galvano would reflexively lean toward repealing the adoption ban, rather than reconsider the allowance of homosexuals to be foster parents.

The tragic consequences of Florida’s contradictory policy are seen in the life of Skye.

No 15-year-old boy should be paraded before a political forum to gain further rights for homosexuals. More tragically, Skye should not be exposed the harmful lifestyle of his lesbian foster parent. It’s no wonder the boy is now confused about his own sexuality, causing him to believe he is “transgender.”

Put simply, this is state-sanctioned child abuse. Whatever the severe need for foster parents, permitting homosexuals to serve in such a pivotal, life-altering capacity is astonishingly bad public policy.

Rather than repealing the ban on homosexual adoption, Rep. Galvano should be leading his committee to immediately turn its attention to reforming Florida’s foster parent laws so that Skye and other vulnerable children are not harmed by homosexual foster parents.