ANTI-GAY ADOPTION BILL DIED IN THE KENTUCKY SENATE

According to courier-journal.com, a publication that covers news from the Louisville, KY and Southern IN areas, a controversial bill intended to ban unmarried couples (i.e., gay couples) from becoming foster or adoptive parents died in the Kentucky senate.

Even though Senate Bill 68 was voted out of committee last week, it was never called to the floor for a vote. The bill's sponsor, Senator Gary Tapp, R-Shelbyville, acknowledged yesterday that the bill was dead.

Sen. Tapp said, "It's too late. It didn't go anywhere this session." He said he didn't know why the Senate's Republican leadership didn't schedule a vote.

Majority party leaders could not be reached for comment and seemed to be trying to distance themselves from the bill. Probably for a number of very good reasons. Aside from the fact that the latest nationwide poles show the republican party with the lowest approval rating (only 26) in recent memory, lezgetreal.com reported that:

Insiders at Kentucky’s State House are saying that Senator’s were flooded with calls and e-mail from angry citizens, most saying that they would think that a bill that takes away potential homes and adds costs to states taxpayers for the care of children in state custody “was just plain dumb”. Our sources are saying the states Republican leadership is now viewing SB 68 as divisive and pure political poison. They want nothing to do with it.

But even if the bill were to win Senate approval, it would still need to be passed by the overwhelmingly Democratic House. And there is little chance of that happening with only three scheduled days for passing bills remaining in this year’s session.

Chris Hartman, Director of Kentucky’s Fairness Campaign, one of the groups that opposed the bill, said…

We are encouraged the thousands of statements, letters, and phone calls from fair-minded Kentuckians opposing Senate Bill 68 (SB 68) has driven home the message that hate legislation should never be passed in the commonwealth. It is in the best interest of our children and our state’s economy that this bill not reappear in the future, though if it does, we will gather and build upon the countless allies that have come forward with Fairness to oppose this legislation, and we will mobilize them against it with even greater fervor.

I really do feel very, very hopeful that we are moving into one of the most exciting and most productive periods in the history of the GLBT rights movement.

That being said, and for ironically that very same reason, now IS NOT the time to relax and just wait for it to happen. The door is being opened wider than it's ever been opened before BUT WE HAVE TO STAND UP AND WALK THROUGH IT. None of these emerging possibilities will ever happen if we just sit and wait!

Keep fighting -- we CAN and we WILL WIN!

THE GENIUS, TYRANNY AND TRAGIC STUPIDITY OF MAJORITY RULE

There has been much written about the tyranny of majority rule when it is applied to the rights of a minority. That potential tyranny is exactly what the founding fathers intended to counter balance with the creation of the justice branch of government. And, in particular, the Supreme Courts structure that encompasses state to federal levels of ultimate recourse in matters of conflict between the legislative processes and the tenets and intents of our constitution.

The genius of that structure is held in awe by us and by most of the world. And this is the heart and very foundation of the question of same-sex marriages. On one hand you have the constitutional guarantee of equal treatment under the law and on the other you have discriminatory legislation that was passed by majority votes. This is clearly the epitome of that conflict and I fully expect that this is a matter that can only be eradicated at that supreme court level.

But what about the tragic stupidity of the Arkansas adoption measure? This is something that was written to prevent gay couples from adopting children. But, the proponents realized that they probably couldn't get it passed if it only targeted gay couples so, in an act of sheer, desperate stupidity, they wrote it to ban ALL people who are “cohabitating outside a valid marriage.” It passed by a whopping majority of 57%!

According to an Op-Ed piece written by Dan Savage for the New York Times,

Right now, there are 3,700 other children across Arkansas in state custody; 1,000 of them are available for adoption. The overwhelming majority of these children have been abused, neglected or abandoned by their heterosexual parents.

Even before the law passed, the state estimated that it had only about a quarter of the foster parents it needed. Beginning on Jan. 1, a grandmother in Arkansas cohabitating with her opposite-sex partner because marrying might reduce their pension benefits is barred from taking in her own grandchild; a gay man living with his male partner cannot adopt his deceased sister’s children.

It's thoroughly disgraceful that qualified, loving and stable gay partners are barred from adopting. But now, thanks to the extraordinary blind-sighted actions of, again, religious zealots, hundreds more children in Arkansas will likely be forced to grow up in an understaffed and underfunded institution totally void of the loving care of parents and family. What could possibly be considered Christian about that?

Clearly, true Christianity has been almost completely overrun by fanatics whose zealotry and single-mindedness can only be compared to the early Puritans or, worse, the infamously cruel and murderous Spanish Inquisitions.

Is this what we want for our country? Is this the legacy we want to leave future generations?

I think not!