Like a mechanic’s air pressure gauge or a doctor’s stethoscope, the caseworker’s constant companion was an instant-read thermometer. “Be ready.” She waved the device in my direction. “Next time I’m here and every time after that I’ll be testing the temperature of your water.”
I have to admit that it rankled me quite seriously. Not, perhaps, so seriously as I was rankled by the measurements they took of every bedroom, the fire escape plan we were made to diagram, the fingerprints they inked for criminal background checks, the medical and psychological reports they commissioned, the dozens of days we dedicated to classes or the hundreds of deeply personal questions they asked about every aspect of our lives from financial to religious to sexual.
It was hard not to be just the tiniest bit salty about all the intrusion when I imagined hurried fumblings in dimly lit bar bathrooms or science-only-knows what other careless, thoughtless, examinationless ways other people fell into parenting. Good reproductive luck meant that no one would ever question those couples’ ability to parent. No one would measure their bedrooms or ask about the state of their bank accounts. No one would take the temperature of their water.
Logically I knew why the adoption process was so grueling. My exhaustively competent agency had a reason behind every rule; each regulation served its function so well that I never heard of an issue in the thousands of placements they made over their hundred-year history. Good agencies’ policies are designed to remove the uneducated, the unconvinced, the insincere and the downright incompetent who will fade out (and still save face with pressuring families or spouses) or fall out by their inability to comply with the myriad rules.
The process is not infallible (what ever is?) but it is sufficient to ensure that potential parents are at least as likely to succeed as are their more reproductively-gifted counterparts. If they’ve made it through the temperature-taking and the classes and the plans and the hundreds upon hundreds of questions, that is enough. It’s more than enough.
And so Mike Huckabee I say this: Prove it. Show me your concern for children being used as “experiments” by their parents. Show it to me by instituting plans to vet all parents, not just the ones whose lives don’t line up with your interpretation of the Bible. Show me how you’re making laws to keep unfit straight parents from raising children.
Prove to me that every het-couple capable of arranging a meeting between sperm and egg is more qualified to raise children than the gay couples who manage to get through the adoption process. Show me statistics. Show me results. Show me science. Prove. It.
Then maybe I’ll take your hand-wringing concern about gay parents seriously.
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Amen.
Amen. I couldn’t agree with you more. Thank you for addressing this outrageous stupidity/ignorance so eloquently and directly. Huckabee makes my skin crawl.
Ah, but you see, science isn’t trustworthy to people like him. He wraps himself in circular fallacies and beds every closed mind he can. gr.
Wasn’t there some research a while back which concluded that straight people were more likely to abuse children than gay ones were?
Also, one theory as to why homosexuality evolved is (roughly) that by not having children of their own, gay relatives become more available for child care, thereby giving the child’s related genes an evolutionary advantage. Which hints at the possibility that gay couples might be precisely the people who should be adopting children.
I’m gald I don’t live in the US.(I’m straight, but I hate all the bigotry I see over there, and the perversion of “Christianity” which is used to justify it. It bears no relation to the values of Christ whatever.)
Oh, I agree, and have thought so for a while, ever since my two close friends (straight married couple) adopted a little girl and had absolutely every nook and cranny of their house, their finances, their personalities and their psyches scrutinised for over a year. If people like him were that bothered about unfit parents raising children they’d advocate for every set of parents to go through that procedure before they had children whether they were adopting or not. (I’m not advocating it myself, mind. I just think it’s inconsistent not to if you’re going to make sweeping statements about who you do and do not deem suitable to bring up a child.)
To the original anecdote, all I can say is I had to install several thermostatic mixers. State agencies look like they are failing at their job if they don’t find SOMEthing wrong during an inspection ~sigh~
There have been several instances of infants scalded to death by over-hot water turned on inadvertently. I totally understand why they check it.
As the movie says, “…you need a license to buy a dog, to drive a car – hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they’ll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father.” As long as they can do it naturally, of course.
Wow, that really says it all. Thanks for that. And, on the flip side…gay/lesbian parents who *have* had their children via previous hetero relationships are suffering more scrutiny, too. A lesbian acquaintance of mine can only see her 6-year old son once every other week (and her partner cannot be around at the time) because some well-meaning (but highly ignorant) state advisor was persuaded that the Society for Creative Anachronism was actually a homosexual S&M organization.