Tuesday, November 15, 2011

What does the Sandusky case say about gays and lesbians adopting? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

Unless it says that more gays and lesbians should be allowed to adopt so that kids in foster care are not vulnerable to pedophiles like Jerry Sandusky. . . .

Not that you would have concluded that from NPR's To the Point, as reported at Gawker:
On Friday, Gawker broke the story of a horrifically ill-conceived installment of Warren Olney's current affairs show on public radio, To The Point. Using the Jerry Sandusky child rape scandal as its jumping-off point, the show somehow drew a dotted line to the topic of gays and lesbians' suitability as foster and adoptive parents. The thinking behind it (and there wasn't much) was that Sandusky was ostensibly a heterosexually married man who had access to foster and adoptive children he could prey on. "With 500,000 children desperate for loving homes," Olney's intro went, "we'll look at efforts to widen the pool of available parents. Should gays and lesbians qualify?" I don't know, Warren. Should they?

* * *

[One of the invited speakers on the show was]  Jerry Cox, whose Arkansas Family Council unsuccessfully petitioned the state to ban foster children from entering same-sex-parent homes. (The state Supreme Court unanimously shot down the measure as unconstitutional.) Cox was given a generous platform to preach his particular brand of hate, referring repeatedly to "studies" that proved the "gold standard" for any child was a household headed by "one man and one woman." He also deftly used Olney's lead-in of the Sandusky case — if not to outwardly accuse gay parents of being predisposed to pedophilia, to at least align the two topics snugly: "In both cases," he said, "the children's rights get put in second place." And why not? This was how Olney chose to frame this discussion, after all. But never did Olney challenge Cox's falsehoods or bigotry, or even attempt to establish a delineation between gay parents and pedophilia. In his wildest dreams, Cox couldn't have asked for a more generous platform — not here of all places, in the supposedly liberal bastion of public radio.

* * *
Today, at the end of the To The Point broadcast, Olney issued this, far more contrite announcement. It read, in part:
"With hundreds and thousands of troubled children in need, we thought it was a good time to point out that gay and lesbian couples are often prohibited from both fostering and adopting, even though they can provide loving homes. we failed to point out explicitly that pedophilia and homosexuality are not connected, and that led some listeners to think we were buying into an infamous falsehood. Over the weekend, we received a lot of critical comments from people that by discussing both topics in one show, we had equated the two. We respect our listeners, and we want to respond. There is no connection between pedophilia and homosexuality, and we never intended to say or imply there is. But our failure to make that crucial distinction explicit was a serious oversight. We regret it, and we apologize." [Empasis added, link added]
Apology accepted?  Or does the show need to do more?  Maybe a whole show to emphasize that there is no connection between pedophilia and homosexuality?!  How's that for a starting point?!

5 comments:

Real Daughter said...

I was waiting for that. It makes me sick. It would be equally ridiculous had they made the connection between coaching and pedophilia. It's pure ignorance and homophobic.

LilySea said...

You know, the vast majority of pedophiles are men who assault little girls. Perhaps we need to point out the link between heterosexuality and pedophilia. Perhaps we should ban heterosexuals from fostering and adopting.

Amyadoptee said...

I knew that this was going to come out. However if you compare a gay/lesbian couple to Sandusky and his family. You are comparing apples to oranges. The gay couple is not molesting children. Sandusky did molest children and he was married to a woman. Straight up heterosexual relationship. Geez one could almost say that heterosexual relationships cause pedophilia. We all know that to be wrong too

Anonymous said...

There are instances of pedophilia within the homosexual ranks as well, but of course no rational person would presume then that all or even most gays will abuse.

This strikes me of the similiar parallels drawn between adoptive families and abuse you recently posted about....only where was your moral outrage then? Then it was posed as a thoughtful query; not so much for this thread.

Reena said...

Statistically speaking, aren't most pedophiles heterosexual white men? It seems like I read that somewhere credible.

I'm going to have to go look.

This is soooo absurd.