Jon's Blog: Gay Adoption = 9/11 Orphans

ThinkProgress shared a clip today of Renewing American Leadership's chairman Jim Garlow's assertion that allowing gay couples to adopt is like children losing their parents during the 9/11 terrorist attacks:

Our President gave a speech a few days ago in which he said, ?the tragedy of 9/11 was that it robbed so many children of having a mommy or a daddy. Well, you know something Mr. President, your failure to defend marriage and to redefine marriage means that everybody who is under that redefined marriage will lack either a mommy or a daddy and that is morally wrong.

I'm a gay man and an adoptive parent.? It's true that children who have been adopted experience loss.? They lose their birth parents.? There might be a good reason for that loss or a tragic-but-necessary reason for that loss, but it's still loss.? That loss exists whether their adoptive parents are gay or married heterosexuals or single or whatever.? Most adoptive parents are aware of this loss and the wiser among us never forget that there are other parents connected to our children.

That said, it is extremely nasty of Garlow to compare the circumstances that led to my boys entering foster care and bonding with my family to the act of terrorism that led to the deaths of thousands of American citizens.

The ideal parenting situation might indeed be one where kids are raised by their married biological parents.? But adoption does not embrace the ideal.? It embraces the atypical.? Kids become available for adoption because their parents aren't in a place in their lives to adequately care for their kids.? Or because their parents abuse them.? Or because they are being neglected by their parents.? Sometimes those adoptions are open adoptions and those kids maintain some sort of formalized connection with their birth parents and/or other birth family members.? Sometimes those adoptions are closed.? And sometimes they're officially closed, but unofficially cracked open a bit.? My family falls in the third category.

My youngest son will gladly tell you that he has three dads and a mom.? He has a relationship with his birth family.? It's not perfect, but he has the ability to speak with them and learn about them and his birth family.? I can't erase them, nor do I want to try.? They are his past and they are significant to his past.? For all I know, they will be active parts of his future when he grows up.

But our son coming to our home and eventually getting adopted by me and Mark is nothing like the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America.? It is extremely insulting to even suggest any sort of connection between the two events.? Such arguments are crass and boorish and essentially lack any sense of compassion or understanding of the complexities of adoptive families, much less gay adoptive families.

I argue that it is morally wrong for groups like Renewing America's Leadership to create false equivalencies and, in the process, to purposely insult, defame, and hurt its fellow citizens.? It is morally wrong to use the imagery of America's greatest assault and to use that to attack fellow Americans.

My family exists.? Our children are doing great despite several barriers mapped out before them earlier in their lives.? And we will continue to love and support each other today or tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that.? Nothing that?sad men like Jim Garlow utter will ever change those facts.

Source: http://jontrouten.blogspot.com/2011/06/gay-adoption-911-orphans.html

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