It’s an easy enough question. Say you only have one sibling and he is gay. He’s been with his partner for fifteen years. Your kids love them both, adore them. They are your only family in the world.
If you and your spouse die, would your kids be better off being adopted by them or placed up for adoption by strangers?
If McWherter had his way, your wishes wouldn’t matter. He’s opposed to letting gay people adopt.
Do you support a proposed ban on unmarried (including gay) couples adopting children?
McWherter does support the ban, and feels that having parents of the opposite sex is better for a child. He says that the Department of Children’s Services reports to the governor, so as governor, he would be responsible for children in need of this service. I followed up by asking if he felt that foster care by an opposite-sex couple was better than adoption by a same-sex couple, and he said that he did.
Yep. McWherter knows what’s better for your kids than you do. And he’s willing to tear your children away from the only family they know in order to impose his political agenda on the state.
It’s bad enough to see a Democrat being such a balls out bigot towards gay people, but damn, that he’s willing to hurt children in order to advance his anti-gay bigotry?
What can you even say in the face of that?
Tiny Cat Pants 
What can you even say in the face of that?
PAY TO THE ORDER OF: Ward Cammack for Governor
Amen, brethren and sistren. Although it’s a bummer Cammack’s out working for Ty Cobb with nary a peep about the odious tactics of late, he appears to be on the right side of various other issues.
Pains me to vote against Kim McMillan, but unfortunately not all the good ol’ boys hereabouts are male.
Wow, I’m watching the documentary, “Outrage,” on HBO as we speak. It is about the plethora of Republican leaders who are closeted gays and, yet, vote consistently anti-gay. Nothing new, but still they kill me.
I taught the American Revolution today in class and a walked out of class sad thinking, “I want to live in a free country.”
Casey, I consoled myself this week (American Revolution week all over the US, apparently) by thinking how much ordinary people have been central in pressing for changes toward a more just society. Hell, given our backgrounds, neither one of us would have had a prayer in hell of teaching at the collegiate level even forty years ago. So things do change and change rather rapidly and it’s people who make those changes.
Right now, it feels like we’re collectively stuck on a sandbar. If we want off the sandbar, we can either push or wait for the tide. Me, I think pushing works better, but I also think that there are times when the tide of human liberation rises up and sweeps folks along places they’d not willingly go on their own. It happens. While I’m pushing, I’ve also got my eye on the moon.
I may understand the law incorrectly, but that seems like a straw man argument to me. I think there’s a distinction between adoption and being someone’s legal guardian.
My brother wouldn’t have to adopt my kids to become their guardian. At least I don’t think so.
Anyone here know more about it?
Is there really a legal distinction between adoption and legal guardianship? I don’t think there is. Adoption is one means of becoming the legal guardian of a child, being assigned it in a will is another.
Bridgit,
Well said. Forty years ago, I would have still been a hillbilly working a subsistence farm and selling shine.
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Joe Kirkpatrick, GOP candidate for Governor, supports adoption by qualified, gay households. Love for a child by parents who believe in working for a living is superior in every way to the foster home/orphanage option.
Prior to having triplets, my wife and I were active residents in the Historic Edgefield community for about seven years having served as the GOP Committeeman and Committeewoman for the 19th district as well.
As many as half of our neighbors were gay. They are still great friends, and we miss having them as neighbors. Neither Democrat pandering nor Republican intolerance are acceptable where this issue is concerned.
I’m voting for you, Joe.
But you may want to steer clear of ‘some of my best friends are gay’ cliches. (even tho I know it’s true)
I have a sibling who is straight. She and her husband have adopted three children and are trying for a fourth. They are married and they are church-going Christians.
I have another sibling who is gay. He and his partner do not have children. I don’t know if they want them or not.
But the gay sibling and his partner both work in management for a credit union. They own their own home. They’re also Christians.
The married sibling and her husband don’t have health insurance. They work for a Christian camp that believes all children should be homeschooled and that all women should stay home and raise babies. They live at this camp and have to feed the children with food stamps.
If I were running the world I would NEVER let that heterosexual sibling adopt. But the gay one? Sure.
Cat: Thanks a million for your support! I intend to remain worthy.
As I use the “I have gay friends…” argument in support of my argument, you capably use the “I have extremist, hetero relatives…” argument to argue against the conventional logic.
With that said, I do need to be careful how I frame my arguments.
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Adoption is one means of becoming the legal guardian of a child, being assigned it in a will is another.
Yeah, that’s my point exactly. They aren’t the same thing. And adoption is a lot easier to control. It would be problematic to tell people they don’t get to decide who to will their kids to.
Has anyone bothered to ask where the other Democratic candidates stand on this issue? Oh wait……they are right in line with McWherter, and some have even more stringent views on the subject, except for Ward Cammack.
However I doubt you will be able to convince him to stop yammering on about how the future of Tennessee relies on us carting our empty Diet Coke bottles to the recycling center on Sundays long enough to make his point on the gay adoption issue.
Why don’t you guys go pose the same question to the other candidates? I eagerly await their responses!
Well, rest assured, when they air them in public, I’ll be pissed at them, too. Meanwhile, if the reason McWherter’s position is especially painful isn’t obvious, believe me, it should be.
The only reason I mentioned the ‘some of my best friends’ thing is bcz that’s often taken as a bigoted argument. Even if you’re well intentioned–and I know you are bcz I know you–it can sound ‘off’.
And yes, my anecdata is worthless. It just stymies me how a random bit of info about a person’s sex life is deemed important enough to bar them from adopting a child.
W, I dunno. It seems to me that if the state can stop a parent from selling a child the state can step in and interfere with a parent bequeathing a child. :-)
Anyway, I did some googling and it looks like the state of TN recognizes legal guardianship as distinct from adoption. So I don’t know whether McWherter would try to end legal guardianship for homosexuals, but it is a legally distinct question from his willingness to end adoption.