Do You Know Where Your Children Are?

In the World. There are many many abandoned, neglected parentless children. They roam garbage dumps in Guatemala City, they are warehoused in orphanages in the Dominican Republic, they are war orphans, traumatized in Palestinian territory, they are desolutely existing in Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Latvia and every eastern european eastern block country in conditions you wouldn't put a dog in some cases, understaffed, underfinanced orphanges. They are in China-there are pregnant women in China running from the one child policy. They are in India scraping off the streets. They are in orphanages and foster care in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They are AIDS orphans from every African country on the continent. If you want to adopt a child. Faire un effort. Find one. They are everywhere. The debate over whether gay people can legally adopt is colored by the perspectives of the advocates on how hard it is to adopt. A french gentleman lamented that it was really hard to adopt in France because the child is not considered abandoned if a parent writes one letter in a year defeating any adopting procedure. Some laws can be tricky with regard to international adoption. If you believe there is a shortage of adoptable people and you are a heterosexual couple you want to make sure you and those like you have first bid in a limited supply. Fine. You want preference because you believe children should have male and female role models both and both gender parenting. Fine. But a child in an adoptive situation is already not in a best case scenario and there are far far more children in the world needing parents than there are heterosexual couples willing to adopt them. The fact of the matter is that heterosexual couples are not all lining up to go to Africa to get AIDS orphans, willing to battle the guatemalan government for the garbage dump children who are traumatized victims of violence in some cases. They are not lining up to wait in line in China for abandoned chineese girls (the disfavored gender there) and they are not visiting the eastern european orphanages at a rate that is emptying them. However, there is a population of people who are and will go to any length in the universe to find an unwanted child and make them wanted and loved-and those people are willing to do that because they cannot have their own naturally as they are gay. Or they are Angelina Jolie. If there is one child left sitting in an orphanage anywhere in the world every effort legally should be made to place that child in a stable home with loving parents- of any gender- And who are you to say that the child should not get the best care and attention because you don't like what the parents' sexual orientation is? How is that in the 'best interest' of the children of the world? And unless you are willing to adopt children what gives you the right to say someone else cannot have that child? Further, what gives totally childless clerics any right to say other people cannot care for children and take them in their loving homes? Something about this argument, and marching and manifestations and demonstrations strikes me as obscene. Have any of you visited an orphanage lately? Have any of you taken those children home?