This can't be good...
 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7574640/

Yeah, I'm sure this fine example of heterosexuality is a much better choice for foster care. :rolleyes:

Sure. I think being in a state or county-run facility is MUCH better than having some stability with foster parents. The State of Texas - We raise Children Right!

You know I adore you, GD, but let's not diminish the hatefulness of Robert Talton and his pending legislation.
Moral "values," nazi pope, Texas legislators run amok, I'm feeling like the calendar is being turned back. Just a couple of nights ago, a friend of mine, in the lobby of Glendale Memorial Hospital, was told by the security guard, "You can't do that," when he kissed his friend goodnight. The head of security became involved when my friend stood his ground, and then, hospital administration. Legal action is being taken.

Is stuff like this related to what Prudence was talking about....."Grandma, why didn't you do anything?"

I love you guys!!! :)

One person can make a difference. It's time for positive changes to come. It's time for this country to realize that being gay is not a crime, that being gay is not a choice, that being gay is not contagious. That people who are gay are people first just like people who are straight are people first.

This discrimination and hatred in the name of morality has to stop. Please won't someone think of the children!

Someone at another newsgroup I sometimes read says something about not letting the best be the enemy of the good. We use it as applied to medieval recreation -- as in, don't let your quest to replicate the perfect 1547 Flemish gown paralyze you and leave you doing nothing. Rather, make a good recreation and enjoy that and learn from it and you will at least have something.

I think of this everytime this sort of legislation crops up. You know what? I agree that the ideal environment for kids is where they have a parent of each gender who stay married, don't beat each other, don't get fired from their jobs and lay around on the couch in their underwear for 6 years while the kids eat out of dumpsters, don't send their kids out to play in traffic while they pretend they're still kid/carefree, and can model appropriate intergender and interpersonal relationships, while instilling in the child both a sense of self-worth AND a sense of responsibility.

But requiring all parents to be perfect leaves a lot of kids without homes, or parental love, or any positive role-modeling. My parents don't completely fit that mold above, and I probably won't either. Lots of parents are divorced. Do we take away their kids? What about widowed parents? Are the kids who've had a parent die any less vulnerable? Don't they also deserve the perfect man/woman parenting pair?

But the best becomes the enemy of the good. Because another parenting arrangement *might* be best, they want to throw out the good of giving each kid a bed to sleep in that's theirs, a home where they're a person and not a tick mark on a list. Instead they do nothing.

Don't let the best become the enemy of the good.

Being that I work in the field of foster children, it's appalling to me that things like limiting the field of potential foster parents because of their race, sexual orientation, or gender occurs. In Orange County, CA we have a great need for foster parents! In fact over the last few years, the number of foster parents (especially qualified people) has diminished. For kids that are teens it is even harder to place them since they are "damaged goods". One former foster youth said to me that living in a group home was just one step up from living on the street or a homeless shelter. So to hear such statements that because of someone's sexual preference makes them ineligible to foster a child when so many NEED a home sickens me.

Statistics: The Orangewood Children's Home, located in Orange CA, admits 2700 children a year. That is just one emergency shelter in one city that serves all of Orange County.

That is an awesome philosophy.

It's just asinine. I agree with Gn2, the clock is going backwards and won't stop until we reach that exalted mythical land of 1955, when shows like 'Leave it to Beaver' and 'Ozzie and Harriet' ruled the airwaves. The only problem is that real life was never that simple, real problems and horrific crimes existed (remember 'In Cold Blood"?) and society was every bit as sick as it is now. We can't go back- there was never anything to go back to- and we won't go forward.

I have three people listed in my will to take care of our daughter if anything should happen to us. Second place on the list is occupied by a gay couple who would be in first, except they live so far away.