Twins Reunited after 70 Years Apart

For a long time now, it has seemed hard to find things to blog about. All of a sudden, many stories and videos seem to be popping up for my attention. Why, I don't know. This one is particularly moving.  From the BBC in 2015:

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"I'm Their Mother . . . and Their Father"

Perhaps today it's appropriate to give a little shout out to all the gay parents who are doing such a great job raising kids - many of whom would never have had father or mother otherwise.  A quick peek at one amazing family in Arizona:



Read more about how this family grew - and grew - and grew - in this article from their hometown newspaper: 2 Gay Dads, 12 Happy Kids.

BREAKING: Your Parents Made You Gay!

Yup, it's all the fault of dear old Mom and Dad for not teaching you how to behave.  So says Tony Perkins, who gets promptly bitch-slapped by Chris Matthews - and Barney Frank rips him a new one.  You'll love this, guys:

Honk to Rob Tisinai.

Florida's Anti-gay Adoption Law is Dead

The Florida law forbidding homosexuals in that state to adopt children, adopted in the wake of Anita Bryant's infamous anti-gay campaign in 1977, was overturned last month by a state appeals court. Governor Charlie Crist suspended enforcement of the law, and the Department of Children and Families declined to appeal. But Attorney General Bill McCollum had the right to file an appeal within thirty days of the ruling; yesterday, he issued a written statement saying he would not do so, marking the end of this bullshit law.

Suck it, Anita.

Mike Thomas, writing in the Orlando Sentinel, details the story of foster parents Mike Gill and his partner from the moment two sick, dirty, extremely neglected kids were thrust into their hands by the State of Florida at Christmas, 2004. Will break your heart and make you furious, but it's good reading.

Video report on the family from the ACLU:



In The Life Media gives further background on the political history of Florida's homophobic adoption ban from Anita Bryant's campaign up till now. Part I:



Part II:



Dan Savage goes straight to the heart of the matter with a brilliant explanation of the truth about gay adoption:



What I say:  Your Head Trucker thinks Florida has come a long way just in my lifetime. Here's a clip of a police officer from the Miami vice squad threatening to make life "a living hell" for an auditorium full of middle-school kids in 1966 - and your Head Trucker was exactly that age at the time. Thank God I never was subjected to a speech like this, which would have scared the bejeezus out of me; it was bad enough picking up the generalized homophobia from the culture, without a direct threat from an arrogant police bull. 

This isn't a put-on.  He wasn't some weirdo spouting strange ideas:  he was the norm at that time, before Stonewall, when nobody was out.  How could they be?  Imagine being a young person as I was then, and the horror of your true sexuality dawning on you - making you not a fully human person, but a hideous, monstrous thing in the eyes of everyone, if they only knew.  Including your best friends.  Including your own parents.  Including God Himself.

Watch this and realize the overwhelming hatred and fear of the era - which your Head Trucker has never forgotten:

Sunday Drive: Race Relations

Having grown up in the segregated South, with its Bible-drenched horror at the thought of mixing the races (God says no!) or any deviation from heterosexuality (God says no!), this article sure does seem to come from a whole new world. I'm not saying I agree or disagree with all that the writer says, but it's food for thought.

Here's "Race Relations" by Roberta Munroe from The Advocate, August 28, 2007:

We've all seen them: good-looking, 30-something men with six-figure salaries, a Lexus hybrid, expensive shoes, and an even more expensive 2-year-old African-American toddler. I saw them one afternoon at a chicken restaurant in West Hollywood--two gay white men and one black boy. Immediately, the arguments against interracial adoption came to mind: How will the black child learn about his culture from white parents? How will other black boys treat him? Will he know how to adequately deal with racism? Will he become less black?

Two things are certain: Racism exists, and an underfunded foster care system is bulging at the seams with children in need of loving parents. More than 550,000 children are now in foster care in the United States, and many of them are African-American, Studies show that black boys are the least likely to be adopted and often "age out" of foster care at 18.

When white gay men adopt black boys, it's the beginning of a solution to both problems. What's more, sexual stereotypes are challenged. In the future, being a gay parent should be as normal as being a single mother, which parenting purists railed against 30 years ago. I looked again at the table and pinpointed one of the boy's fathers. Was he teaching his son to say please and thank you? Check. Was he showing him how to use his fork? Check. Was he looking at the little boy with love and care? Check. And did the boy look back with love and adoration? Check.

Having lived the life of a black adoptee in a white family, I can tell you that for a child, there is nothing better than being loved. At age 5, I was adopted by a white Polish woman who had survived the Holocaust and emigrated to Canada. She and my two sisters (her biological children) were blond and blue-eyed. I was not, which made for interesting family photos and group outings. When strangers would look a little too long or seem startled to hear me call a white woman "mom," my mother would flippantly tell them she'd had an affair with a black man.

For all the hand-wringing, I was not excluded from "my culture" (such an ambiguous phrase); in fact, I learned a significant amount about black culture during my childhood. At what point is blackness defined by how other blacks see you and not by how you see yourself?

With gay interracial adoption, white men are honored with the experience of being called "Dad." And black children, who otherwise may never leave foster care, are blessed with a spectacular vantage point--to be raised in a household where tolerance is paramount and respect for difference is crucial.

How about we look at an actual example? Here's the trailer from the documentary Daddy & Papa (2002):

Thoughts on raising a jock:

In Today's News

* The United Kingdom has banned fag-hating Fred Phelps and his daughter from entering that country to protest a college production of The Laramie Project, a play about Matthew Shepherd.

* Indiana legislators have effectively 86'd an anti-gay-marriage amendment in that state. A tiny bit of good news.

* But in Utah, where the Mormon Church said it's not against gay people, just the misuse of the word marriage, legislators have axed every single one of the Common Ground bills, even including the simple right to visit your partner in the hospital.

* A straight married woman is appalled that the state of Florida makes her and her husband check off their sexual orientation status on an adoption application form.

* While a Georgia man is fighting a custody order than forbids him to expose his children to any of his gay partners or friends.

* And finally, Sally Kern's soul sistah in the Georgia legislature wants to fire all faculty and staff at Georgia universities who teach queer studies or the like, which is such a waste of taxpayers' money in these troubled economic times, you know. Here's Rep. Charlice Byrd's priceless video on the subject:

Fla. Judge: Gay Adoption OK

Frank Gill and one of his adopted sons.

This just in from the Miami Herald:

A Miami-Dade circuit judge Tuesday declared Florida's 30-year-old ban on gay adoption unconstitutional, allowing a North Miami man to adopt two foster kids he has raised since 2004.

In a 53-page order that sets the stage for what could become a constitutional showdown, Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman permitted 47-year-old Frank Gill to adopt the 4- and 8-year-old boys he and his partner have raised since just before Christmas four years ago. A child abuse investigator had asked Gill to care for the boys temporarily; they were never able to return to their birth parents.

''This is the forum where we try to heal children, find permanent families for them so they can get another chance at what every child should know and feel from birth, and go on to lead productive lives,'' Lederman said in court before releasing the order. ``We pray for them to thrive, but that is a word we rarely hear in dependency court.''

''These children are thriving; it is uncontroverted,'' the judge added. . . .

In a ruling that, at times, reads more like a social science research paper, Lederman dissected 30 years worth of psychological and sociological research, concluding that studies overwhelmingly have shown that gay people can parent every bit as effectively as straight people and do no harm to their children.

''Based on the evidence presented from experts from all over this country and abroad,'' Lederman wrote, ``it is clear that sexual orientation is not a predictor of a person's ability to parent. Sexual orientation no more leads to psychiatric disorders, alcohol and substance abuse, relationship instability, a lower life expectancy or sexual disorders than race, gender, socioeconomic class or any other demographic characteristic.

''The most important factor in ensuring a well-adjusted child is the quality of parenting,'' Lederman wrote.

Attorneys for the State of Florida are appealing today's order to a higher court.

Florida is the only state in the union with statutory language explicitly banning all "homosexuals," individuals or couples, from adopting children. (Other states, like Utah and Mississippi, achieve the same result by forbidding same-sex couples or anyone not legally married to adopt.)

The Florida law was enacted in 1977 after a strident campaign against all gay-rights laws by Anita Bryant, former Miss Oklahoma and TV pitchwoman for the citrus industry.

Since then the Florida Department of Children and Families, whose attorneys argued in favor of upholding the anti-gay ban, has used many gay men and women as foster parents or permanent guardians to relieve its bulging caseload . . . but not as adoptive parents.

Which is why the DCF attorneys' argument fell flat on its face when they tried to claim that gay people are inherently unfit parents. More stupid-shit bald-faced-lie hypocrisy based ultimately on a narrow-minded religious belief. The state's star expert witness was a psychologist who is also a Southern Baptist minister; the judge found his testimony to be warped by his theological convictions.

Suck it, Anita.