Imagine that you are a 10-year-old child, and you have AIDS. Born HIV-positive to an unfit mother, you were immediately given up for adoption and placed in the state's care. Life, you quickly discover, is hard.
You are somewhat lucky, however: Steven Lofton is your dad.
A registered pediatric nurse, he chose to provide a home to you and two other children infected with HIV. From infancy, he has raised you and your two siblings with the utmost care. He administers your complicated medical treatments. He stays by your bedside when you are sick, which is very often. He has been an unbelievable father.
In 1994, when you were three, he applied to adopt the three of you and remove the "foster-care" label from your family. Life may be tough, you decided, but it's not completely unfair.
You were wrong, though. Life is unfair.
For seven years, the state of Florida has refused to allow Steven Lofton to adopt the three children he has raised since birth. Despite presenting him with an "Outstanding Foster Parenting" award, the state feels that Lofton is not fit to be a parent. It is adamantly opposed to allowing him to adopt the three HIV-positive children in his care for one reason, and one reason only: Lofton is gay.
On Aug. 30, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence King dealt the latest blow to Lofton and the many other gay Floridians denied the right to adopt: He rejected the legal challenge of Lofton and several other plaintiffs and upheld a 1977 statute that bans gay or lesbian adults from adopting children.
When I read King's 20-page ruling against Lofton et. al, what shocked me most was the judge's description of the state's two arguments for dismissal.
The first reads as follows: "According to [the state], homosexuality has been long disfavored in the law based on beliefs firmly rooted in Judeo-Christian moral and ethical standards for a millennia."
Am I the only one that finds this request to perpetuate discrimination appalling? Are those the same "Judeo-Christian moral and ethical standards" that for millennia justified slavery and the secondary social status of women?
Thankfully, the judge categorically rejected such a clearly prejudicial argument.
The state's second assertion "is that the homosexual adoption provision serves the best interest of Florida's children... [because] a child's best interest is to be raised in a home stabilized by marriage, in a family consisting of both a mother and a father."
It is certainly debatable whether a married couple intrinsically provides more stability to child than a single parent. However, all state adoption laws grant primary consideration to established married couples, and I think, with good reason.
That being said, it is not as if there is a limited number of children eligible for adoption, and married couples are left childless because of single adults who want to adopt. Unfortunately, the amount of abandoned children is staggering. Any adults, married or not, willing to provide a loving home to an unwanted child, should be considered eligible for adoption.
As part of its second argument, the state of Florida contended, "married heterosexual family units provide adopted children with proper gender role modeling and minimize social stigmatization."
For a state government to take into account "social stigmatization" when examining a potential parent is flat-out ridiculous. Would a state deny a married couple the right to adopt because one member is wheelchair-bound?
I, myself, have a speech impediment. Would the state of Florida want to deny me the right to adopt because I stutter?
What is far more troubling in the statement is the state's concern with "proper gender role modeling." The phrase reflects a thinly-vailed homophobia. In my opinion, this is the only driving force behind the statute.
The intense fear of those who applauded the court's decision is easily discernible.
"Homosexuals are attempting to redefine the family and what constitutes marriage," declared Rev. Louis Sheldon, chair of the Traditional Values Coalition. "Because they cannot reproduce, they must recruit children into their movement."
That statement might appear extremist, but consider the Vatican's conference last November, in which the Pope denounced homosexual attempts to marry, and condemned gay adoption as "a great danger."
In light of such fierce religious opposition to a homosexual's opportunity to adopt, I suppose I would like to ask one question: How can it be anything but an act of cruelty to separate Steven Lofton from the three children he has raised for the past 10 years?
Is that not a rhetorical question? How else can you describe such a desire but as completely and utterly deplorable?
For that decade, Mr. Lofton has provided an unbelievably wonderful world to his three children. Afflicted with a deadly disease since the moment of their birth, they have known one father: Lofton. He has held them, he has cried with them, and he has helped them survive.
What religion can be against someone like Lofton? He has provided a future to three children who had none. Who among us can claim any moral superiority to him?
Imagine that you one of those children. How unfair is life?
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