Every Kid Deserves A Family
Kids are different from grown-ups: they don’t know everything, they can’t take care of themselves, and they have much to learn. That’s why they need parents and caregivers — to teach them what they don’t know, take care of them, and keep real world distractions at bay so that they can concentrate on learning, growing, and maturing. Unfortunately, for a myriad of reasons, not all kids have families.
Whether their parents have passed on or their parents simply can’t care for them, there are a lot of kids who need to find some grown-ups to make them a part of their family. Luckily, there are a lot of grown-ups who, for a similarly varied number of reasons, are looking for a child to care for. If only we could somehow get these two groups together! It happens, occasionally — my neighbors adopted a darling little boy and you’d be hard pressed to find a set of parents who cared more for their son than they do.
The thing is, there are those in our society who would deny that little boy and those parents the joy of becoming a family just because the parents are two dads. That would indeed be a tragedy, as it would be in so many cases where wonderful gays and lesbians have adopted or become foster parents to children who needed them. It is also a tragedy that there are many more potential parents eager to open their home to children who need one but have been denied.
From now on, though, that will hopefully no longer be the case. Representative Pete Stark (D-CA) introduced a bill called the Every Child Deserves a Family Act (HR 3827) which would prohibit discrimination in foster care and adoption based on the sexual orientation, gender identification, or marital status of the potential parent. All I can say is it’s about damn time. There are a lot of kids out there that need families and prejudice is no reason to deny them the opportunity to have one.
Photo: bowlingranny
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Tags: adoption, children, equality, families, family, foster care, gay, glbt, lesbian, lgbt, orphan
6 Comments
Ri-chan commented on Oct 22 09 at 2:30 pmI would love to become a foster parent (and maybe adopt if I could afford it) but unfortunatly, I am 19. I am married, have a 14 month old, and have been living independently with my husband (who is 21) for 2 years. My husband has a pretty good job where he makes anywhere from 45,000-75,000 depending on how much overtime he works (he can take up to 6 overtimes a week) and great health insurance that extends to his entire family including any foster or adopted children. I have a job as a preschool teacher working 6 hours 4 days a week. We rent a 3 bedroom house in a nice neighborhood so we have plenty of room and we’ve never been late on our rent.We have been together for over 4 years. We don’t drink, smoke or do drugs. All in all we are doing much better than our parents (we both grew up in poverty, in small broken down houses, with parents who were divorced, when they did work, spent all their money on beer and ciggarettes and routinley beat the crap out of us) but we still have to wait 2 more years to become foster parents because I am 19, and you have to be able to drink away your problems if you want to help a child.
(sorry, I’m a bit bitter I think)
jenny tries too hard commented on Oct 22 09 at 2:54 pmThat’s too bad, ri-chan…in my state you can be a foster parent if you are at least 10 years older than the child you are fostering, which seems like a decent rule to me.
Ali commented on Oct 22 09 at 3:03 pmI hope this bill passes.
NC Mom commented on Oct 22 09 at 3:38 pmWhat an excellent name for a bill…I hope it passes!
Knitty commented on Oct 22 09 at 7:36 pm“Kids are different from grown-ups: they don’t know everything, they can’t take care of themselves, and they have much to learn.”
This makes them different from most adults… how?
But I also hope it passes.
Manjari commented on Oct 23 09 at 4:51 pmI hope it passes!!
