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Opinion
The Battalion
Page 9 • Tuesday, October 1, 2002
For the children’s welfare
Same-sex parents should not adopt I Good families should not be turned away
MARK WOOD
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A doption is a noble and courageous
act which requires a loving and
healthy environment for a child. It
is important to place children in the best
possible environment because many of
these children have already led an emotion
al and difficult life. For that reason, gay
and lesbian couples should not be able to adopt and raise children.
Certain norms and traits exist that children need to learn so they
can grow up and be able to function in society. These aspects of
life are learned from both a female and male role model. Same
sex couples raising children deprives them of this luxury.
The natural order of life is learned through both a mother
and father figure. A young person needs to experience the
motherly instinct that only a woman holds, as well as a
father’s paternal characteristics. It is a God-given trait
that women possess to bear and nurture children, to
teach them love, sensitivity and self worth, just as it is
an instinct for men to protect and provide for their chil
dren and family. These qualities work together, are
intertwined and complement each other to give the
child a well-balanced childhood.
Raising children in a gay or lesbian relationship
results in emotional and verbal abuse from their
peers. Whether people like it or not, a majority of
our society does not tolerate gays. This attitude is
passed down through generations of heterosexual
families. Adopted kids are put through enough
stress and turmoil from not being wanted without
the added challenge of having same-sex parents.
Allowing a child to be adopted by a homosexu
al couple w ill do nothing but add to the stress
of having to deal with ridicule from their peers.
Placing an innocent child in this unhealthy and
stressful situation is selfish.
Rosie O'Donnell, one of the most notable
faces in the debate of homosexual couples adopt
ing children and a lesbian with adopted children,
said in an interview with ABC News' Diane
Sawyer, “1 don’t think America knows what a gay
parent looks like. 1 am the gay parent.” She is
the gay parent, true, and she may be the nicest,
most caring person in the world, but even
O'Donnell can’t escape the truth. Later in the
interview O'Donnell herself said, “I do think the
kids will get teased.”
In the interview with Sawyer, O’Donnell dis
missed claims that children adopted by homosex
ual couples would be more likely to be gay, but
when speaking about her own kids she said she
hopes they are straight. “I think life is easier if you're
straight. I hope that they are genuinely happy, whatever they
are. That if they're gay, they know they’re gay and they live a
happy life. But if I were to pick, would I rather have my children have to go
through the struggles of being gay in America, or being heterosexual? I would
say heterosexual.”
Along with being frowned upon by a majority of the population, homosexual
ity is considered detestable by God in Leviticus 20:13 in the New International
Version of the Bible. Leviticus 20:13 states, “If a man lies with a man as one
lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable.” The Bible again
addresses homosexuality in the New Testament in the book of 1 Corinthians 6:9.
If the word of God so plainly speaks out against same sex marriages, then how
ean an adoption by a gay or lesbian couple be condoned? Proverbs 22:6 states,
Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from
't- According to the Bible, “the way” is not homosexuality.
Some might say homosexual couples should have the right to adopt a child
as long as they provide love, care and basic needs the child deserves. However,
children should not be subjected to this objectionable behavior and should have
th e right to grow up in a healthy situation and to an enjoyable life. Adoption by
a homosexual couple is unnatural, a transgression and egocentric. Rep. Randy
summed it up in an interview with ABC News when he said, "‘Homosexual
couples do not provide the kind of stable, wholesome environment that would
justify the state having a law that allows them to adopt children.”
Mark Wood is a senior
journalism major.
JENELLE WILSON
c
ill O’Reilly, host of Fox
News’ “The O'Reilly
Factor,” has alienated some
of his old “friends” by coming
out in favor of gay and lesbian
adoptions. CNN reports that on
Sept. 3, O’Reilly
called Stephen Bennet, a minister who regu
larly speaks out against homosexuality, a
“religious fanatic” during an interview about
homosexual adoptions. Organizations such as
Concerned Women for America (CWA) and
the American Family Association (AFA)
have criticized O'Reilly’s strong anti-dis
crimination stance and asked their members
to protest.
In the interview with Bennet, O'Reilly
pointed out that adoption is much better
for children than the chaotic nature of
foster care. It's not a sudden ideological
change for him — he has been advocat
ing this position for some time. In
March, he wrote: “It is flat-out preju
dicial to deprive responsible homo
sexuals of the right to save kids
from transient foster care.”
He is absolutely right.
For organizations such as CWA
or AFA to imply that children are
better off in the foster care system
than with loving, caring families is des
picable, and it is religious fanaticism.
They are seeking to deny homosexuals
basic rights guaranteed by the Constitution
in a secular world due to their interpretation
of biblical passages. These groups are letting
their irrational and illogical homophobia cloud
what is truly best for these children: a stable
home that they emotionally and legally belong to.
According to the Administration for Children
and Family Services, more than 500,000 kids are in
out-of-home care. Of those, more than 100,000 are
ready to be adopted, but the American Public Welfare
Association reports that only 25,000 children are adopt
ed each year. Meanwhile, the number of children in foster
care keeps increasing, and state agencies are struggling to
keep track of where children are living.
The National Center on Youth Law reports as many as 1 6
percent of the children waiting to be adopted “age out” every
year because nobody wanted them. Once they reach the age of
18, they are kicked out of the system. Sixty-six percent leave with
out earning a high school diploma, 34 percent end up on welfare and 25 percent
end up homeless.
Limiting the definition of a family and restricting who can adopt only makes
the future bleaker for these children. Any family that can provide a loving, stable
home, no matter what sexual orientation, should be encouraged to do what it can to
help. If gay and lesbian couples are willing to take in and provide for children that
nobody else wants, they should be able to do so.
Groups such as CWA stress that only “traditional” two-parent heterosexual fam
ilies should adopt. The only problem is that there are not more than 100,000 “tra
ditional” families waiting to adopt these children.
Babies given up for adoption rarely wait long for families. According to the
National Council for Adoption, there are between one and two million infertile
couples who want infants. Older children, however, can wait for eight months to
eight years, if they are adopted at all, and most have lived with many different
foster families.
Many children in the system have physical, mental or emotional problems.
Many have learning disabilities, Down syndrome or HIV/AIDS, and bouncing
from one foster placement to the next does not help them. Whatever can be done
to save children from what O’Reilly calls the “merry go-round of foster care,”
should be done.
Children in the foster care system desperately want and need families. Gay
and lesbian families will not be able to provide a home for all of these
waiting children, but they can provide homes for some.
LEIGH RICHARDSON •THE BATTALION
Jenelle Wilson is a junior
political science major.
Power plants should not cross the border
Power companies to take advantage of fewer environmental regulations in Mexico
MELISSA FRIED
T he air we
breathe is
dirty, and
h s about to get
dirtier.
After rolling
lackouts left much of California without
Power this past summer, it became evident that
a hornia either needed more power or a
smaller population. Power companies such as
nterGen and Sempra could have easily built
P ants in Southern California to serve the com
munities of San Diego and Los Angeles.
owever, they would have been required to
j neet I* 16 strict U.S. air quality standards,
ustead of shelling out the extra bucks to meet
environmental regulations, the companies
C d to move south of the border.
^ Mexicali, Mexico is the latest target for
ngry U.S. power companies in search of a
J g § er backyard to do their dirty work. The
y 'U'stic and egotistical outlook is that the
n| ted States is helping to generate jobs for
Mexicans, and if jobs are created in Mexico,
there will be no need for them to cross over
into the United States. In truth, the United
States is simply transforming the already exis
tent institution of the maquiladora - the
assembly-line factories that provide cheap
Mexican labor for American and multinational
corporations under the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The workers will
be underpaid, overworked and face terrible
conditions. Some call them power plants — I
call them “energy maquiladoras.”
The New York Times quoted an anonymous
official of the power company InterGen as
saying that this is “what free trade is all
about.” Free trade is about the passage of
goods between countries without the crazy,
exorbitant custom and duty fees that otherwise
accompany them. Free trade is about dialogue
between countries in order to achieve econom
ic prosperity. Free trade is about benefiting
both parties involved. Free trade is not about
conquering land in Mexico to provide power
for the United States.
This truly represents a shift in regard to
economic and political relations between the
United States and Mexico. Mexico is allowing
itself to be bought by American capital, which
could have long-lasting implications. If
Mexico should disagree with some future U.S.
policy, there will be nothing to stop it from
simply cutting off the power. Also, with a total
disregard for the environmental damage that
will occur with the opening of a series of
power plants, Mexico locks itself into a cor
ner: jobs for few, pollution for many.
Californians are partly guilty for this.
Years before the lack of power became the
problem it is today, U.S. companies were will
ing to build power plants in California in
accordance with regulations. Now they des
perately need the energy and are being selfish
and greedy in allowing the state to carry out
its plans to flood the Mexican border with
unregulated plants that will choke out enough
pollutants to harm both those north and south
of the border.
The pollution problem really is as bad as
the experts say it is. A Greenpeace report
from May concluded that just one of Sempra's
many new energy plants is exepected to add
35 percent more carbon dioxide to the atmos
phere than what is already produced in
California. It appears that global warming will
get much worse before it gets any better.
If California needs the energy so badly, the
plants should have been built in California
according to U.S. environmental regulation.
With the United States issuing special presi
dential permits to allow such construction in
Mexico, the companies should have been held
accountable to meet U.S. air quality standards,
regardless of their physical location.
Californians need to wise up and realize that
the byproducts of the power they enjoy today
will be what kills them tomorrow.
Melissa Fried is a sophomore
international studies major.