March 2, 2006

EDITORIAL

Gay adoption ban is no joke

State Senator Bob Hagan has received a lot of ink this week for his witty, albeit fictitious, proposal to ban registered Republicans from adopting children or serving as foster parents.

As Stephen Colbert would say on his brilliant satirical TV show, “The Colbert Report,” Senator Hagan’s proposed bill has a sense of “truthiness.” It’s not based on facts, but instead, emotions.

The senator, a Democrat from Youngstown, said he had “credible evidence” that kids in Republican households are “more at risk for developing emotional problems, social stigmas, inflated egos [and] an alarming lack of tolerance for others they deem different than themselves….” Plus, he said that many children of Republicans admit that life at home is “just plain boring most of the time.”

Of course, there’s no real evidence for these claims, though that’s Senator Hagan’s point. Like most of the content of “The Colbert Report,” the senator’s bill was a spoof.

Senator Hagan asked Democratic lawmakers to sponsor the legislation in an effort to poke fun at, and expose, a real — and discriminatory — proposal that would ban same-sex couples from adopting children or being foster parents. The prohibition would even apply to any household in which a gay, bisexual or transgender person lives.

The proposal, House Bill 515, is no joke. Sponsored by Representative Ron Wood, an Ashville Republican, the bill is lacking in credible reasoning and evidence that straight people make better parents than gays and lesbians. Representative Wood told the Associated Press, “Studies have shown that the optimal setting to raise children is in a traditional setting with a mom and a dad.” The problem with that argument is his bill would not apply to single parents wishing to adopt.

Ohio has about 22,000 children in foster care and approximately 3,000 kids are waiting adoption. Children need stable homes headed by loving, caring parents, regardless of their sexual orientation.

HB 515, which has received plenty of ink itself, is a wedge issue aimed at stirring up the far right for the 2006 election. This is the approach social conservatives took two years ago when Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Like the 2004 marriage ban, the gay adoption proposal promotes intolerance and tells homosexuals that they are second-class citizens.

But the bill appears to have no chance of passing. The chief of staff of House Speaker Jon Husted, a Kettering Republican, has called the proposal divisive and has said lawmakers have more important work to do.

If legislators want to do something about adoption, they should improve the state’s foster care and adoption system and make it easier for Ohioans to adopt.

—Robert Mihalek