Dan Savage, a Seattle alt weekly editor perhaps best known for a nationally syndicated sex column, called me this week about the state’s passage of Act 1. He’s gay and an adoptive parent. He was working on an op-ed for the New York Times about Act 1. It’s been the subject of some tough criticism in the blogosphere, some of it inaccurate. (It won’t prohibit adoption by single people, as some have written, for example.)
The result of his work is in the Times today. He sees the act as leading edge of an ominous trend. And I think he’s right. This is the one place where the Republican base showed solidarity with a significant number of other voters in Tuesday’s election — gay bashing.
Social conservatives are threatening to roll out Arkansas-style adoption bans in other states. And the timing couldn’t be worse: in tough economic times, the numbers of abused and neglected children in need of foster care rises. But good times or bad, no movement that would turn away qualified parents and condemn children to a broken foster care system should be considered “pro-family.”
Most ominous, once “pro-family” groups start arguing that gay couples are unfit to raise children we might adopt, how long before they argue that we’re unfit to raise those we’ve already adopted? If lesbian couples are unfit to care for foster children, are they fit to care for their own biological children?
The loss in California last week was heartbreaking. But what may be coming next is terrifying.
On a happier note, gay people have begun marrying in Connecticut. Times and the country will change. It was not so long ago that interracial marriage was illegal.