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Governor, thanks for stopping by the Nashville Scene last week to talk with us about TennCare and other important issues facing the state. We appreciate your accessibility, your cerebral approach, even your sense of humor. Talking with you is always stimulating and informative. But—and this is a big but—we found your response to the question about whether you would sign a bill banning gays from adopting to be both unsatisfying and, frankly, outrageous.
Asked if you would sign such legislation should it reach your desk, you said you'd have to look at it before you made a decision. Asked again, you said you'd only heard this proposal was making its way through the General Assembly three days ago and that you didn't know what was in the bill. Told that the bill quite simply would disqualify gay people from adopting children in state custody, you still wouldn't budge. "I'd have to see it," you said.
This kind of bad public policy is predictable coming from the legislature, but we expect more from you. So it's in that context that we say your posture is both morally cowardly and politically overthought. You probably see Tennessee's conservative trending and the fact that the unnecessary gay marriage amendment is sailing through the legislature as signs that you should keep your more liberal convictions to yourself. But one of your best qualities throughout your political life has been and continues to be that you're generally willing to say what you think and act on principle. For God's sake, you have friends who have adopted, friends who are gay, political allies who are utterly disillusioned by your silence on this issue. We are absolutely unconvinced that you truly believe homosexuals should be denied the right to adopt—and that children in desperate need of loving homes should be denied every possible option to find them. But that's cold comfort. What really counts is whether you're willing to say so—and use your significant political capital to keep the unjust from happening.
Right now, you're trying to convince the state, the legislature and even a federal judge that you are acting with moral and fiscal integrity on TennCare, that cutting the health care of 323,000 people in Tennessee weighs on your heart. You have, time and time again, invoked your "deep personal and religious values." And now you're unwilling to stand up for, at a minimum, the notion that the some 10,000 children living in often-volatile foster situations and group homes across Tennessee have a right to be happy with loving parents of any sexual orientation?
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What's worse, your namby-pamby response to the gay adoption question followed—by just minutes—your candid and somewhat frightening assessment of the Department of Children's Services, whose significant shortcomings are well documented. This is a department, you said, whose culture is troubling and needs change. Adoption lawyers have had to go to court to keep caseworkers from transferring foster kids who are living happily in good homes, because some DCS employees are so controlling that they want to keep the kids under their thumb and ineligible for adoption by a longstanding host family. This kind of mean-spirited and counterintuitive management runs rampant throughout DCS.
Beyond the fact that DCS is a disaster (and perhaps more compellingly), it's not just the usual suspects of legal advocacy groups that support the rights of gay parents. Even the very staid American Academy of Pediatrics champions the rights of gays and lesbians to adopt, not because it's good for gays, but because it's good for kids. The organization doesn't concern itself with gay issues in any other context. What's more, the adoption process for children in state custody is incredibly rigorous. Prospective adoptive parents have to submit financial and medical records, complete 30 hours of parenting classes, provide letters of recommendation supporting their application, and open their home to multiple visits by a social worker before they're cleared. It's not as if the state is handing out kids to anyone who asks for one; the only thing the state doesn't investigate is a prospective parent's sexual orientation.
Maybe you won't lose any sleep at night for us to say so, but we're deeply disappointed in you and hope that you find the fortitude to call a bad bill just that.