News
By John Spragens
When John and Linda Dollar were arrested a few weeks ago on charges of torturing five of their eight adopted children—locking them in the closet, pulling out their toenails with pliers, shocking them with a cattle prod and starving them to the point that their twin 14-year-old boys weighed 36 and 38 pounds—no one suggested that maybe straight people weren't fit to be adoptive parents. No one in Florida, where the Dollars served as foster parents and eventually adopted children from the state's Department of Children and Families, suggested that it was time to prevent evangelical millenarian Christians like the Dollars from adopting.
But some folks in Tennessee—where the Dollars once lived, ran a school and presumably abused their children, and where nearly 10,000 kids currently sit in state custody waiting for homes—say gays and lesbians shouldn't be allowed to adopt kids or serve as foster parents. Many of those folks happen to be state legislators, who have rushed to file a stack of bills restricting homosexuals' ability to adopt.
There's Chattanooga Rep. Chris Clem and Williamson County Sen. Jim Bryson, same-sex Republicans with a lurid interest in "current, voluntary sexual contact involving another person of the same gender." People who engage in such behavior—how the two legislators define "current" sexual contact is anybody's guess—would be banned from adopting under legislation proposed by this pair of men. What's more, their bills would prevent parents from surrendering their children to homosexuals anywhere in the country, a provision several observers say is unconstitutional.
Then there's Hendersonville Sen. Diane Black and Cleveland Rep. Dewayne Bunch, whose companion bills are identical to Clem and Bryson's, save that last, far-reaching section.
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And there's Dowelltown Rep. Frank Buck and Dickson Sen. Doug Jackson—Democrats, mind you, who have sponsored gay adoption bans in the name of "wholesome home environment[s] with traditional values that reflect the values of Tennessee." Those are Jackson's words, and he knows something about values: in 2001, he was charged with child abuse for assaulting his then-16-year-old daughter, reportedly for dating a fellow Dickson County High School student who was half black. The case was eventually settled, and Jackson was ordered to go to family counseling. And you might remember Buck's name because he twice referred to Mexican immigrants as "wetbacks" last year and stood by his statement that "They like the firewater on a Saturday night."
Some values might be too traditional. At least that's what a handful of Nashville religious leaders say. "I can still remember a time—and there are still some people who say it—that you ought not have interracial adoptions or cross-racial adoptions," says Rev. Sonnye Dixon, pastor of Hobson United Methodist Church and former president of the local NAACP chapter. Discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people—like racism—is a tradition Dixon says the state could do without.
Besides, he notes, the state's Department of Children's Services has plenty to worry about already. "We've got to take a look at a lot of issues in this state that affect kids," he says. "We've got 900 kids in Davidson County that need adopting. That's not going to be resolved by banning a group of people and refusing to let them adopt in our state."
Even Gov. Phil Bredesen, who has so far refused to oppose a gay adoption ban, understands that DCS is, in his words, "a really messed-up organization." Does he actually think a ban on adoption by gays would help solve the embattled agency's problems? All he's saying is that he'll take a look at the ban should it reach his desk—refusing to take a position unless forced.
Rev. Lisa Hunt, rector of St. Ann's Episcopal Church and a member of the Metro Board of Education, is not waiting to take a position on the issue. "I think it would be a tragic loss for the state of Tennessee if gays and lesbians are excluded from adopting," she says. "There are families of all shapes—including gay and lesbian—who will take in children that nobody else would take. They provide them with warm, stable homes in which those children have flourished." Hunt also notes that there's a drastic shortage of foster parents in Tennessee and that there's no religious litmus test as far as she knows for foster parents. "Embedded in any ban is the assumption that gay and lesbian people aren't moral," she says, adding that experience teaches her otherwise.
Meanwhile, gays and lesbians, their allies, civil libertarians and supporters of the separation of church and state are organizing to oppose legislation that prohibits gay adoption. In various forms, such bills will come before legislative committees starting next week, and groups like the Tennessee Equality Project and the Human Rights Campaign, which on Tuesday held "Advancing Equality Day" on Capitol Hill, will try to stop them. They might take hope from a similar Virginia bill that failed last week in committee.
But in a state where a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is expected to win overwhelming support, and in a country where the president claims—falsely—that "studies have shown" children are better off when raised in households headed by a male and female, gay rights advocates may be fighting an uphill battle.
Rabbi Ken Kanter of Congregation Micah notes that gays and lesbians who want to adopt are used to uphill battles—which might make them better parents than straight couples. "They have much more difficult hoops to jump through to get children or have children than more societally normative couples," he says. "If they can pass the rules and regulations that a society sets up to care for its children, they can be, and have been, wonderful and loving parents."
Rev. Stacy Rector, associate pastor of Nashville's Second Presbyterian Church, agrees. "That we would generalize about whole groups of people who would make wonderful homes for children is very troubling for me, particularly with the number of children needing homes," she says. "It's unfair to both the parents and the children."
Moral values, it seems, aren't as universal as some legislators would suggest. And according to some religious leaders, Tennessee legislators may indeed be acting immorally if they move to ban gay adoption, crafting a rare "lose-lose situation" that hurts needy children and loving parents alike.
Now that's equality.