VA: Gay adoption ban KILLED, Cameron savaged.
Thu Feb 17, 2005 at 09:10:34 AM PDT
This is really good news. Several
wingnuts in the VA house wanted a ban on gay adoption and foster care that went even further than Florida's laws. After a key house committee balked at the wide scope of the ban, the bill was amended to "merely" state that social workers should check to see whether or not a foster or adoptive parent is gay before allowing them to have a child.
The state senate's Courts of Justice Committee was
not pleased at this legislation.
"This thing comes awfully close to being pretty bigoted, so I can't support it," said Sen. Richard Saslaw (D-Fairfax).
Hardly had Black started his presentation during a Courts of Justice Committee hearing when Sen. Kenneth Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, demanded to know why the bill was needed. State law, he noted, already requires an investigation and evaluation of the "moral suitability" of a prospective parent, which includes sexual orientation.
Black listed a string of reasons why he thinks gays and lesbians are unfit to adopt children, including a supposed high rate of suicide, drug use, child abuse and depression.
"It is my belief that homosexuality presents a degree of risk. We want an adoptive child in the place where they have the best chance to flourish," Black said.
Sen. Janet Howell, D-Fairfax, pounced.
Are you saying depressed people shouldn't be allowed to adopt? she asked.
"Yes," Black responded.
Do you know how many straight people are clinically depressed?
"I would imagine lots," he responded.
The fundies also seem to have [http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/dp-68121sy0feb17,0,662035.story?coll=dp-news-local-final erred] with their choice of "Dr."
Paul Cameron as the chief speaker for this legislation. Cameron goes around all over the country bashing gays (even though rumor has it he spends his free time trolling gay bars) and his "research" is used by many anti-gay organizations, even though it has been
debunked countless times. Apparently this time his bag of tricks was dumped on his big fat repressed head.
The author of that study, Paul Cameron, who bills himself as a sociologist, also told the committee that gays and lesbians are more likely to die younger, most around age 50, and that's not good for any children they adopt.
On questioning, Cameron admitted his life-span analysis was based on reading the obituary pages of the Washington Blade, a gay and lesbian newspaper, and that his molestation statistics had been dismissed by some sociologists as scientifically suspect, based on numerous errors.
He also admitted, under harsh questioning by Howell, that he was kicked out of the American Psychological Association on ethics charges in 1983, and that in 1986 the American Sociological Association passed a resolution denying that Cameron was a sociologist and condemning his "consistent misrepresentation of sociological research."
"We're suspicious," Saslaw told Cameron. "Some of this stuff we've never heard of before today and if it was true it would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country, even the (conservative) Washington Times."
"This is by a guy we suspect goes around the country trying to stop gay adoption. Mr. Cameron doesn't have a whole lot of credibility," Saslaw added.
A few minutes later, the measure was defeated on a voice vote, with most senators loudly voting against it.
They
killed the bill. The reason why this is good news is, aside from the obvious reasons, the media and the hate groups have claimed that the recent Supreme Court decision to avoid discussing Florida's gay adoption ban meant that tons of other states would feel free to push for bans (of course if the court HAD heard arguments, and eventually struck the ban down, the fundies would have said they needed to ban gay adoption because of "judicial tyranny"). That this ban failed in Virginia, which has one of the more right-wing legislatures, means it may be more likely to fail elsewhere, and will embolden moderate members of both parties to speak up.
For once, people from Virginia can be proud of their elected officials.
Do you think that most of the people who voted against this will survive their primaries, or general elections?
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