Hopeful Huckabee

Last Thursday, I mentioned it looked like Republican Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee was gearing up for a presidential run, and, sure enough, he spent his weekend in Iowa hatin’ on the gays to shore up GOP support. Bragging about his state’s plan to ban gay foster parenting and adoption, he made quite the spectacular claim: “What I feared was going on was that the plaintiffs in this case were not as interested in foster children as they were in making the political point of homosexual activism… That's troubling that we would use children as apolitical tool to enact something that has nothing to do with the best interest of a foster child.”

Wow. Didja get that? It’s the members of the LGBT community who want to become foster parents that are turning this into a political issue and ignoring what’s best for foster children in need of homes.

I’ve said it before, but I guess I’ll have to say it again. Have a look at the thousands of American kids who need good homes, but had the audacity to become orphans after they weren’t cute wee babies anymore, or the impudence to have physical or psychological disabilities, or the scandalous impertinence to be not white. Older children, children of color, and/or children with special needs are more likely to be adopted by gays and lesbians. Not straight married couples. Not even straight singles. No matter how devout or how pro-life or how pro-family. Gays and lesbians adopt these kids in higher numbers than anyone else. All these kids want is a place to call home—someone to adopt them and love them and reassure them that they’re wanted. Do you think they give a rat’s ass whether they get a mom or a dad or two moms or two dads, or is it more likely that having two people to wrap loving arms around them and make them feel safe and adored would just be about the best thing they could ever imagine?

Huckabee and his ridiculous “conservative” cohorts have abandoned all pretense of the advocacy of privacy in favor of forcing on all of us their twisted version of morality that demonizes the people most likely to open their homes to the most unwanted children. They’re not “pro-family.” In actual fact, they’re anti-family, actively trying to prevent families from being formed—and, in the process, projecting their own despicable motivations onto the people who only want the opportunity to create a family that doesn’t meet the definition as laid out by good Christians like the Reverend Huckabee.