Friday, October 9, 2009
Politics / Woods McWherter Supports Ban on Gay Adoption
Posted by Jeff Woods on Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 8:03 AM
Do you support a proposed ban on unmarried (including gay) couples adopting children?McWherter does support the ban, and feels that having parents of the opposite sex is better for a child. He says that the Department of Children's Services reports to the governor, so as governor, he would be responsible for children in need of this service. I followed up by asking if he felt that foster care by an opposite-sex couple was better than adoption by a same-sex couple, and he said that he did.
I bet he thinks he's playing it safe by saying this. He neutralizes the bigot vote in the general election. What a political genius! But here's a question for the Son of Ned: How will you win your party's primary?
Banning gay adoption screws with children. (Does McWherter really think life in state custody is better than a home with a gay couple?) It discriminates against gay people at the same time. So it's a two-fer for "family values" hypocrites like the departed Sen. Paul Stanley, who was the big proponent of this great idea in the legislature. Rep. Tony Shipley is all for it, too. Remember? He's the Einstein who thinks God might pluck up Tennessee and drop us in the sea for being too lenient with gay people.
Now, McWherter is siding with these guys. If there were a just world, Democrats would march on his campaign headquarters this morning with pitchforks. (His headquarters, by the way, happens to be on Church Street, a center of gay life in Nashville.)
Aunt B's already scratching McWherter off the list of acceptable Democratic candidates. We doubt she's alone.
Comments (31)
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Here's a guy whose personal wealth AND entire candidacy for governor is based SOLELY on his daddy's name ...and he wants to deny children a chance to have loving parents?
Some family values.
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right behind you Aunt B. This was the [outraged] talk of the TIRRC breakfast and awards this morning--all before 8 am! Right before we found out Nashville had been named the friendliest city in the US again! Now this is downright ugly of Mike.
I just think that saying that any group of people is not fit to be in a family (and let's be clear, that's what this kind of legislation is saying--that, if you're not married to a person of another gender, you aren't fit to head a family) is so gross and vile I can't believe a person can say it in polite company.
There's a GOP candidate who supports adoption by qualified, gay applicants. I don't support any government subsidization of it, of course. However, a family that supports working for a living who will love a child is far superior to the foster home/orphanage option.
In fact, it may be that the foster home syndicate and those prosecutors who use their homes for offsite, witness tampering are financing much of the opposition to finding suitable, permanent homes for these children desperately in need of stability and lives free of manipulation.
Gay wedge issue = job security
No Aunt B., it's not "gross and vile" to want to keep perverts away from kids. It's a sacred duty and a proper role of government to protect these children. Many of these kids have real problems, how does sending them to live with deviants improve their lives and their future? When you say "any group" it is clear you are uncomfortable making value judgments. Really, Aunt B.? Any group is fine with you?
Well, you're right, Joe. I would support legislation protecting kids from you, so no, not "any group."
Oh God! At first I thought you meant me, Aunt B.
Promoting the idea that being homosexual makes a person a child molester is sinister indeed.
I think gay people should definitely be barred as adoptive parents. Unless they're hot lesbians, or at least hot bisexual women, in which case it would be OK. Especially if they broadcast their sexual exploits on the Internet or elsewhere for non-perverted heterosexual men to enjoy.
So take him to court. It's a hate crime now, at least according to our enlightened U.S. House of Rep.
That was a weak retort, Aunt B. Is it a struggle to think today? Brain locks up when confronted with reason? Oh well, blame the fluoride in the water. And plus it's Friday. I'll bet a hundred dollars your weekend doesn't involve helping children, Mr./Ms. Scene staffer who pretends to be a "regular person".
Ah, sorry about that, Joe. I meant Joe Carmen, who's probably out kicking kittens as I type this.
Well,I had sent him an email asking if he supports the GLBT community ,never heard a word back. Now I have and its another No,i won't be voting for the son of Ned !
I refuse to vote for BIGOTRY! Bye Bye Son of Ned!
You know, even if you take basic human decency and dignity out of the equation, what still confuses me is why people who believe in and support this kind of crap fail to see that they're on the wrong side of history. The rights of gay people are absolutely comprable to those of women and African-Americans. People who were against suffrage and civil rights are (correctly) considered fools.
Sorry, Joe Carmen, you didn't confront anyone with reason. The equation "homosexual=pervert" is not reasonable or rational. It's an emotional reaction, which is completely OK, of course, but which ought not to be confused with reason. So I don't think you get to claim that you have confronted Aunt B with it.
This should be a deal-breaker for many Democrats even in a conservative state like Tennessee, and it will be interesting to watch the McWherter campaign walk this one back.
Banning gay adoption is not a mainstream cause. As of late 2008, Florida was the only state with an all-out ban on adoption by LGBT individuals and same-sex couples, and that ban was ruled unconstitutional by a state court judge (an appeals court heard the case in late August). A few states, including the likes of Mississippi, Arkansas, and Utah, prohibit adoption by any unmarried couples, which has the effect of barring same-sex couples from adopting. But even those states allow adoption by single LGBT individuals.
There was a fair amount of media attention in 2006 to momentum behind efforts to ban gay adoption -- USA TODAY, for instance, reported in Feb. 2006 that there were drives to ban gay adoption heating up in 16 states. Three years later, although a few states have tinkered with laws, there isn't much to show for those efforts -- LGBT adoption remains legal (and not terribly controversial) most everywhere except in the minds of the religious right. It is astonishing and disappointing that McWherter would play to the far right gallery on this, and I'll be surprised if he doesn't back off.
Homosexual couples that want to adopt tend to be better educated and more affluent than heterosexual couples that want to adopt. In other words, they are in a much better position to be loving parents.
Adoption should be about finding loving, safe homes for children. End of story.
Eh, I don't think more education makes a person more loving. Plenty of well-loved, well-adjusted people grew up without a book in the house. I concede that, given the way adoption works these days, a homosexual person with only a high school diploma is going to have a more difficult time being permitted to adopt, but that ought not to be so.
"So take him to court. It's a hate crime now, at least according to our enlightened U.S. House of Rep."
What's a hate crime? Saying you're against gay adoption. Uh, no it's not. I know the right-wing Christianists (as Andrew Sullivan calls them)are leading their followers around thinking that. I read where one minister is saying that the government can legally arrest him because he speaks out against homosexuality. He's has used this to try to rally support against hate crime legislation. Straw man arguments abound!
OGB -- I'd politely disagree that education and wealth necessarily put one in a position to be more loving parents. Having said that, your final sentence is dead on: Adoption should be about finding loving, safe homes for children. Banning adoption by non-heterosexuals is as wrong as wrong gets.
Why should he support LGBT postions? It's nto like any of you are going to vote republican.
I am an Adoptee.
Why is Gay adoption never about the Adoptee?
THe ONLY people qualified to decide if gays should adopt are Adoptees!
I under any circumstances would not want to have been adopted by a gay couple. NEVER!
Keep your sick Obama/Democrat narcissism-hatred out of my life.
J.
It's actually not "deplorable," if Christians are consistent with the principles in their own holy writings. Follow their logic:
a) If Christians believe that eternal matters are just as important, if not more so, than temporal matters, and
b) If Christians believe homosexuality is morally wrong, and
c) If Christians believe it would be wrong to put a child into an atmosphere that they believe to be morally perilous, then
d) It's perfectly understandable for them to oppose gay adoption, while still supporting the cause of adoption in general.
Essentially, what you're saying is that their religious belief is deplorable because you don't happen to hold it yourself. It's shockingly xenophobic to demand that people with a different value system conform to your value system, and you ought to be ashamed.
If there were a just world, Democrats would march on his campaign headquarters this morning with pitchforks
I see. And you want the rest of us to allow people like you to adopt children?
Pitchforks, indeed. You'd think that the way you embrace victimhood, you'd have a different perspective on attacking people with pitchforks.
Obviously not. So, guess what? We're just going to keep working until we pass a law in all 50 states making adoption by gays illegal.
Does McWherter really think life in state custody is better than a home with a gay couple?
I'd say you've just made the case better than McWherter could. And the answer is "yes". You people don't give a fig about children in state-run homes (note: calling it state custody is bullsh*t and consider yourself busted on your word choice).
Pathetic.
Oh, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH-The sactimonious crap spewed by the anything goes crowd on this site would make Pope Pius proud. Believing that a child does better with opposite sex parents is not bigoted, it's FACT. No doubt some gays make fine parents, but the point is to have less out-of-wedlock births, abandoned and abused children in the first place-not to continually lower the bar until any and all childrearing situations are "equal".
I can only speak for myself. Were I by some tragedy to be deprived of parents as a young boy I would far far prefer being raised in an orphanage to being raised by two same sex parents. And since that would be my preference, how can I subject another's child some kind of cruel social experiment by approving gay adoption?
I saw a link to this on Glenn's site and, even though I'm currently busy in another part of the world, I had to weigh in on this issue back home in Tennessee.
WTF?
We should all be able to agree that the ideal home for a child is the two-parent stable mom and dad. Studies from Moynihan to "Dan Quayle was Right" demonstrate this truism time and again.
That said, there are more children in need of such homes than there are such homes for children.
The history of Tennessee's Department of Children Services is deplorably rife with corruption, mismanagement, and outright neglect. If while other options exist, to consign any young person to adolescence underneath its near-non-existent tutelage is tantamount to child abuse.
Certainly, the state should first attempt to find stable mom-and-dad families for children in its ward. But once it runs out of those, it should welcome non-traditional families from older couples, to single parents, to, yes, gay couples.
It's simply better for a child to be loved by, what are arguably "less than ideal"* parents than to have no parents at all.
*BTW, all of us have less than ideal parents. I know my kids sure do.
