Eagle Forum of Sacramento

Also schools should watch for new We Are Family video. (A notice on this has been sent out on this email list. ) Videos are scheduled to arrive in schools this week. I plan to contact my state school supt to find out AL’s policy on this, if any. It could be very divisive for our public schools if they start showing it. Betty http://www.cwfa.org/printerfriendly.asp?id=7633&department=cfi&categoryid=family ‘Buster’ Flap Raises the Issue: Why Not ‘Gay’ Parenting? 3/8/2005 When it’s all about the kids, the answers are not that difficult. By Robert Knight After the PBS program Postcards from Buster was "outed" for presenting homosexuality as normal to children, homosexual activists and their liberal allies began peppering the media with the question, "What’s so wrong with children seeing homosexual households?" The main argument used to justify homosexual parenting is that "these families exist." Well, of course they do. All kinds of households exist, but we are careful about what we show children because kids are extremely impressionable. A neutral portrayal of lesbian couples is not neutral; it tells children that this is normal and expected. It creates confusion in their minds over sex differences and what family life is about. "All children, whatever family composition they have, should see the full, diverse range of families," Nancy Carlsson-Page, an education professor at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, told Associated Press. "Otherwise, when they encounter a different kind of family, they’ll think that family is lesser, that it doesn’t count." By that logic, children should be exposed to every form of deviance imaginable, just in case the kids run into it. Why not show polygamous parents, or alcoholic parents, or promiscuous parents for example? Surely, some kids are raised in such households. The AP also quoted Joan Garry, a lesbian raising three children, and who heads the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, which lobbies Hollywood and the media to show only positive portrayals of homosexuality. "There are millions of kids living in households with two moms or two dads, and millions of other kids who know those kids,” she said. "?. What would be the respectful, Christian thing to say to them?” Well, here’s a suggestion. I’d say: "All of you kids are created in the image of God and are precious to Him. And we respect you as we do everyone else. You need a Savior, and God loves you enough to have sent Jesus to die for your sins, just as he did so for our sins. Jesus loves you more than you can imagine. You’ll always have a friend and Savior in Jesus. And, by the way, that was a nice double you hit last inning. Way to go." To the homosexuals raising the kids: "You, too, are created in the image of God, and He loves you as much as anyone else and wants the best for you. Since we are all sinners, you’re no different in this important regard: Like us, you need Jesus as your Savior. "We understand that you share the universal human desire to be a mom or a dad. But not everyone is situated to be an adoptive parent. By your choice of a same-sex partner, you’re deliberately robbing children of growing up in a normal home with a mother and a father. "This is not about your parenting abilities or even about love. Adoption and custody policy should be about what’s best for the children, not what the adults want, however well-intentioned they are." Anyway, Garry’s claim is not credible. The 2000 U.S. Census found 594,391 households with same-sex partners, out of more than 100 million households. Of the same-sex households, only a third of the lesbian households had children, and about a fifth of the male homosexual households had children. So we’re talking about probably fewer than 150,000 children living in such an arrangement, out of 80 million U.S. children under the age of 18. That’s far, far less than 1 percent. Over the past few years, advocates for "gay parenting" such as the ACLU have floated the absurd idea that "6 to 14 million children are being raised by gay parents." That number appears to have been based on the discredited notion that 10 percent of the population is homosexual. A Washington Post article in 2000 noted, "The census is not a count of the gay population, because it includes only those in couples, which other studies show is about a third of gay men and lesbians." If the homosexual couples constitute a third of the homosexual population, that would mean there are fewer than 2 million homosexuals in the United States. Even if we generously estimate that homosexuals comprise 1 to 2 percent of the population, as many surveys indicate, the ACLU’s estimate would require that virtually every homosexual, from the gay bars of West Hollywood to the beaches of Key West, must each be raising three to seven kids. But numbers are not what’s really at stake. Mothers and fathers provide different, crucial things for children. It’s hard enough for children in a single-parent household, where a father or mother is missing. This is not to disparage the commitments or accomplishments of single parents, or even of homosexuals. But homosexual couples compound adopted children’s distress by denying them a parent of one of the sexes and then exposing them on a daily basis to a homosexual relationship (or relationships, given the higher degree of promiscuity documented). Many children who are adopted have already endured stressful or even abusive situations. They don’t need to carry another burden just because adults have a yen to be parents. The National Council on Adoption estimates that between 1 and 2 million mother-father, married couples are on lists waiting to adopt children. They are having such difficulty in the U.S. that they are seeking children, at great expense in Russia, China, Romania and other nations. There is no excuse for deliberately placing a child in a motherless or fatherless household by design, except under unusual circumstances. But what about all those "unadoptable" orphans? An estimated 600,000 children are in the foster care system at any given time, sometimes shuttling from home to home. Many of the homes are run by loving, dedicated parents. Others have taken cruel advantage of the children. At least half of these children are caught up in custody disputes. Other children become trapped in the system because of red tape and because of a built-in incentive: Every child garners a subsidy. The answer is not to put children into homosexual households but to reform the foster care system to enable more married couples to adopt. As for "hard-to-place" children such as older sibling groups and orphans with AIDS, more effort should be taken to place them in married homes. One group, Adopt America Network, specializes in placing these kids. Let’s put children first. Public policy on adoption and custody should favor married households so more children can have a mom and a dad. Educators should gently but firmly steer schoolchildren away from homosexuality, with its many documented health and emotional risks, not make them "comfortable" with it. And "Buster" – and PBS – should be more careful about where he takes his young viewers. Robert Knight is director of the Culture & Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America, the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization