Should Republicans have a right to adopt?

[Pure]

Assuming this idea duly becomes a bill, in Ohio, what do you think?
Or is it too high a price to pay for causing children a bit of boredom?



http://www.gay.com/content/tools/print.html?sernum=2006/02/24/3&navpath=channels/news

Ohio senator's retort:
Ban GOP adoptions
Jen Christensen,
published Friday, February 24, 2006

One Ohio lawmaker has come up with a … way to protest the introduction of an anti-gay adoption bill -- but Log Cabin Republicans might not appreciate it.

In a … memo sent to his fellow Ohio Senate members Wednesday, outspoken liberal Sen. Robert Hagan seeks sponsors for a bill that would ban households with one or more Republican voters from adopting children or acting as their foster parents.

The memo suggests that "policymakers in Columbus have ignored this growing threat to our communities for far too long," and bases its solution on the Republican-backed legislation to ban LGBT parents from adopting or raising foster children
.
"Credible research exists that strongly suggests that adopted children raised in Republican households, though significantly wealthier than their Democrat-raised counterparts, are more at risk for developing emotional problems, social stigmas, inflated egos, an alarming lack of tolerance for others they deem different than themselves, and an air of overconfidence to mask their insecurities, " Hagan wrote.

"In addition, I have spoken to many adopted children raised in Republican households who have admitted that 'Well, it's just plain boring most of the time,' " he wrote.

Rep. Ron Hood, the Asheville Republican who initiated the anti-gay adoption bill, had no comment.
Hood's anti-gay legislation is not actually expected to make it through this year.

House Speaker Jon Husted, a Republican from Kettering and former adoptee, has said he won't bring it up for a vote.
Husted responded to Hagan's memo, saying that he was in fact raised by Democrats, but "I got to go to the secret meetings when I was growing up. That's how I knew they were going to tax me and take away my Second Amendment rights. That's why I became a Republican."

 

[cantdog]

Good idea. No sense allowing people to raise more of Them.

 

[Guest]

.....

 

[cantdog]

Dear me.

 

[cantdog]

Dranoel, if I may call you that?, if a Republican can in all seriousness introduce a bill disallowing gay and lesbian and transgendered adoption, then what is the problem with a bill to prevent Republican adoption?

Clearly, the intent of the first bill was to make gays and lesbians and transgendered people more miserable as a result of their 'choices.' Sauce for the goose, I say. The Republican party is the party of mercury in the rivers, the party of tainted meat, and the party of anti-gay discrimination. Why support the spread of these causes?

 

[lucky-E-leven]

Clever.
Equating homosexuality to being republican.
Odd but clever.

 

[cantdog]

There has to be a way to stop this endless legislative harassment of gays and lesbians. This kind of approach might work. It's unconstitutional, but in my view, so is the other. Bigots can eat shit from tin plates with a rusty fuckin spoon, in my jaundiced view.

 

[lucky-E-leven]

There has to be a way to stop this endless legislative harassment of gays and lesbians. This kind of approach might work. It's unconstitutional, but in my view, so is the other. Bigots can eat shit from tin plates with a rusty fuckin spoon, in my jaundiced view.

I agree. What else will make them stand up and take notice of the absurdity but drawing a parallel between that which they despise and themself?

 

[Guest]

I love it.

It almost sounds like something from The Onion.

Is real life that unbelievable these days?

 

[rgraham666]

I don't see how introducing one stupid bill will help stop another.

As Dran showed all it's done is increase an already high rancour level.

Sigh. I have this awful feeling that story I'm working on set during and after The Second Civil war isn't going to be fiction after all.

 

[lucky-E-leven]

Sorry if I have very little sympathy for Republicans getting their feathers ruffled because another bill mocks and illustrates the senselessness of the one they're pushing.

 

[Huckleman2000]

As long as ignorant fuckwads like you are allowed to breed I'd say let the republicans have their fun.

And since you are abusing your moderator status to post this stupid shit, I can't put you on ignore for it. So let me instead just say,

GO FUCK YOURSELF!!​

ROFL
Pretty extreme reaction to posting a legitimate news story. Here's a response from the Toledo Blade to "this stupid shit":

Parenting prejudice?

SOME politicians will stoop to anything in election years. But a represhensible tactic by a group of conservative Columbus legislators to energize core supporters is pretty low.

It's true that a related move to ban gay marriage in Ohio was largely credited with getting out the vote for the GOP presidential ticket. But sustained bigotry gets old fast.

That hasn't stopped 10 Republican lawmakers from trying to pass the nation's most restrictive law to ban gays, bisexuals, or transgender Ohioans from adopting or serving as foster parents.

Primary sponsor of the measure, Rep. Ron Hood of Ashville, calls the packaged prejudice a "child-protection act." He says kids raised in homosexual households are at "increased risk" of physical and emotional problems and are more likely to question their own sexuality.

Evidently we are to assume that such dilemmas or abusive situations would never occur in straight homes or in traditional settings with a mom and dad, or in a single-parent environment. By the way, the bill banning gay parenting would not apply to adoption or foster parenting by single men and women.

It would just eliminate a whole category of potential parents based on their sexual preference.

It would deny about 20,000 Ohio children - now in state or county custody because of abuse or neglect issues - temporary or permanent homes with loving parents who happen to be homosexuals.

Roughly 3,000 youngsters in the state are available for adoption because their parents' rights to them have been severed.

Yet parenting prohibitions against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, or transgender people who want to open their homes and hearts to such children are being proposed as preferable to no family.

Some "family values" proponents supporting the Hood bill argue it is in the best interest of children and the state is obligated to protect them from circumstances that could be harmful. Ohio, like other states, already prohibits same-sex couples from jointly adopting, and now there is an attempt to further single out the minority constituency as unfit parents.

House Bill 515 would make Ohio even more intolerant of nontraditional families than Florida. The only state to ban gay adoptions at least allows gay people to be foster parents.

We'd like to think the mean-spirited measure will go nowhere fast in the House, where more pressing priorities like the economy and education await.

But those who want to stop homosexuals from adopting children also helped the gay marriage ban become a reality in the state with 62 percent of the vote. Their political cheap shots during an election year are not to be underestimated.

And this from Madison, WI Capital Times:

John Nichols: Bill to ban GOP adoptions opens eyes
By John Nichols

Ohio state Sen. Bob Hagan has for decades been one of the nation's most progressive-minded and intellectually adventurous state legislators. Imagine Madison Democratic state Rep. Mark Pocan with a Senate seat and two more decades of legislative experience.

So it comes as no surprise that Hagan, a Democrat from Youngstown, would blaze a new policymaking trail with a plan to reform adoption laws.

Hagan's proposal: Ban Republicans from adopting children.
John Nichols: Bill to ban GOP adoptions opens eyes
File photo
Sen. Bob Hagen

In an e-mail dispatched to fellow legislators last week, the senator announced his plan to "introduce legislation in the near future that would ban households with one or more Republican voters from adopting children or acting as foster parents."

Explaining that "policymakers in (Ohio) have ignored this growing threat to our communities for far too long," Hagan wrote: "Credible research exists that strongly suggests that adopted children raised in Republican households, though significantly wealthier than their Democrat-raised counterparts, are more at risk for developing emotional problems, social stigmas, inflated egos, an alarming lack of tolerance for others they deem different than themselves, and an air of overconfidence to mask their insecurities.

"In addition," the Democrat noted, "I have spoken to many adopted children raised in Republican households who have admitted that 'well, it's just plain boring most of the time.'"

Hagan acknowledges that the "credible research" to which he refers cannot be quantified. But that should not be a problem, he explains, as a bill proposed by Republican state Rep. Ron Hood, R-Ashville, which would prohibit adoptions of children by gay and lesbian couples, suffers from a similar deficiency.

Since Hood's homophobic legislation is not backed by evidence that gay and lesbian parents are in any way detrimental to children, Hagan argues, why should his Republican-phobic legislation have to be grounded in anything more than emotions or ideology?

Hood's proposal, one of many similar measures being pushed around the country in a move by Republicans to stir up their voter base in advance of the 2006 and 2008 elections, would bar children from being placed for adoption or foster care in homes where the prospective parent or anyone else living in the house is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered.

Hagan has no co-sponsors for his bill at this point, a circumstance that may have something to do with the fact that the legislation has been proposed, as he says, with "tongue planted firmly in cheek."

But Hagan does have a point for legislators in Ohio and other states who are wrestling with questions of whether to discriminate against upstanding and responsible citizens whose sexuality does not meet with the approval of the homophobic wing of the Republican Party.

"We need to see what we are doing," explained Hagan, who notes that, while Republicans seek to score cheap political points, there are close to 3,000 Ohio children awaiting adoption and close to 20,000 in foster care.

The conservative Cincinnati Enquirer agreed.

Noting that "Hood's offensive and discriminatory bill would hurt, not help, children," the usually pro-Republican newspaper observed in an editorial that "perhaps Hagan's modest proposal gave some folks a taste, however fleeting, of what it would be like to be labeled as a class somehow incapable, unworthy or unacceptable."

But Hagan has the best counter of all to the repeated attempts by Republican legislators to fake up issues involving gays and lesbians from constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage like the one Wisconsin legislators were debating this week, to their new nationwide push on the adoption front. Speaking of Hood's proposal, Hagan says, "It flies in the face of reason when we need to reform our education system and address health care and environmental issues that we put energy and wasted time (into) legislation like this."

John Nichols is associate editor of The Capital Times. E-mail: jnichols@madison.com

 

[mack_the_knife]

Pure - your abuse of your moderator status to further your own personal political agenda is reprehensible. Please enable our ability to ignore your bigoted ass.

Since when was that insulting poll a valid news story?

 

[elsol]

Oh... i guess by everyone's reaction the guy was serious.

I thought he was mocking Republicans, I guess satire is a lost art.

Sincerely,
elSol

 

[mack_the_knife]

Oh... i guess by everyone's reaction the guy was serious.

I thought he was mocking Republicans, I guess satire is a lost art.

Sincerely,
elSol

I could care less if some dippy politician in Podunk proposes stupid law, I just think there might could be some moderate in moderator. Pure doesn't moderate, he/she/it (I don't really care which), is about as moderate as cantdog or amicus. I don't feel that the insulting person there has my best interests at heart in having some control over the forums.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Pure - your abuse of your moderator status to further your own personal political agenda is reprehensible. Please enable our ability to ignore your bigoted ass.

Since when was that insulting poll a valid news story?

Well, the poll was a joke, but the news story is valid.

 

[elsol]

IPure doesn't moderate, he/she/it (I don't really care which), is about as moderate as cantdog or amicus.

Ah... I see... you want your moderators to be moderate.

is there actually a moderate-moderate on this forum?

I mean I'm an extremist moderate...

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[mack_the_knife]

Ah... I see... you want your moderators to be moderate.

Sincerely,
ElSol

More to the point. I simply do not have the option of ignoring Pure's feeble attempt at satire. Not that I necessarily would, but the option isn't even there like it is for us mere mortals to one another.

 

[mack_the_knife]

is there actually a moderate-moderate on this forum?

I mean I'm an extremist moderate...

I'm just glad my car doesn't pull left as hard as this forum does.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Dranoel, if I may call you that?, if a Republican can in all seriousness introduce a bill disallowing gay and lesbian and transgendered adoption, then what is the problem with a bill to prevent Republican adoption?

Clearly, the intent of the first bill was to make gays and lesbians and transgendered people more miserable as a result of their 'choices.' Sauce for the goose, I say. The Republican party is the party of mercury in the rivers, the party of tainted meat, and the party of anti-gay discrimination. Why support the spread of these causes?

I'm a registered republican. It's no reflective of my voting currently, but if you want to be able to vote in primaries here, you have to be either dem or Gop.

So I'll take a good deal of offense at this piece of shit's bill and I'll take a good deal more hurt from you, someone I expect to act with restraint and consideration of people's feelings endorsing it.

A big thanks to the rest of you who think it's funny. Specially considering I'm getting it from both sides being a les to start with.

 

[mack_the_knife]

The only emotions allowed to Republicans, according to the Democrats are hate and greed. (Is greed an emotion?)

 

[Stella_Omega]

The only emotions allowed to Republicans, according to the Democrats are hate and greed. (Is greed an emotion?)

And self-righteousness- but both sides share that trait.

 

[mack_the_knife]

And self-righteousness- but both sides share that trait.

Point.

 

[elsol]

And self-righteousness- but both sides share that trait.

Stella it's time for you and I to back out of this thread slowly... you look right and I'll look left.

It looks like the Democrats and Republicans are about to throw fists.

I'll pop the popcorn if you pour the soda.

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[mack_the_knife]

Stella it's time for you and I to back out of this thread slowly... you look right and I'll look left.

It looks like the Democrats and Republicans are about to throw fists.

I'll pop the popcorn if you pour the soda.

Sincerely,
ElSol

Once, I slipped while sitting on the fence - It gets you where it hurts you fall off.