EDITORIALS : This Just In . . .
Posted on Sunday, October 12, 2008
WE WERE all set to run a hot
editorial about Mike Beebe’s
latest Hamlet act. It was practically in type. This time we were fed up with the governor’s backing-and-forthing about whether the state’s Department of Human Services should stick to its policy barring unmarried couples who live together from becoming foster parents. We wanted a little gubernatorial clarity and even leadership, please. Then the news came. It wasn’t so good for our editorial in the hopper, but it was good for Mike Beebe and great for children in Arkansas who need a home. That’s a deal we’ll take every day. Even on deadline.
Here’s the flash from the AP:
“Arkansas plans to no longer bar unmarried couples living together from taking on foster children, the state’s Department of Human Services says....”
And the kicker:
“Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said Beebe supports the proposed change and said the governor changed his mind on the prohibition primarily because of a lack of foster care.”
Attaway, Gov.
Now about this initiated act. We note that Spokesman DeCample didn’t mention that little detail, which would ban unmarried couples living together from adopting kids or becoming foster parents. That’s the fashionable way to avoid coming right out and saying it: Homosexual adults should not be allowed to adopt or foster kids. And if a few unmarried heterosexual couples get discriminated against in the process, well, the price is worth it.
Why not address both issues in one allencompassing gubernatorial statement and get it over with ? Maybe because the governor doesn’t want his stand on this hot topic noised about too much. We’re told by his spokesman that he’s been against the initiated act from the beginning. Okay. That’s nice to know. We must have missed that press release.
At times like this we really miss Mike Huckabee. You didn’t have to do an archives search and call his PR guy to know where he stood on a controversial issue. Mike Huckabee let you know—loudly and often.
But at least Mike Beebe is part way there. We have an idea he’ll come around eventually, like the rest of the state. It just may take time for it to dawn on a lot of us that kids’ need for a good home should come before our own ideological hangups.
THE STATE does have some
leaders. The other day a whole gaggle
of retired jurists came out foursquare agin the initiated act. The jurists were clear, direct, and they put the welfare of the children first. Their take on Proposed Initiated Act 1: Leave this decision to the professionals whose job it is to place these kids in the best possible homes—and to the judges who then consider their recommendation. That’s the best way to go for the kids, if not for the ideologues on one side or the other of this all-too-controversial issue. Here’s the statement from Their Honors, among them three former chief justices: “The choices available to neglected and abused children and to the judges who must find homes for them are already tragically limited by the children’s circumstances. Instead of imposing a blanket rule that would apply to every case, the needs of these children and the best means of satisfying their needs
should be left to elected judges to decide case-by-case.”
Well said.
THIS ISSUE really is
simple. Or it would be
if all the overheated parties would simmer down. Which is highly unlikely in an election year, which has a way of bringing out the worst in our leaders, especially those afraid of having to actually lead.
There’s just one question a responsible leader needs to consider:
What is best for each child ?
That’s it. Answer it and the rest will take care of itself. There is no one-sizefits-all answer to this question any more than there is one and only one good way to raise a child. Because every kid is different, and every prospective parent is different. So you might get a different answer to that question every time. But that’s the beauty of putting the child first: case-by-case flexibility.
How many same-sex couples will end up as foster parents this way ? Heck if we know. We’re pretty certain some will, having known some great parents who are homosexual. But the proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot seems to assume that there’s some perfect formula for a good, loving home—much the way some folks seem to think there’s a perfect formula for the ideal school, with all the different and very real children proportioned according to some purely abstract ratio of race, sex, ability, talent....
But the world—and the people in itare too complicated to fit into all those little pigeon holes.
This much we do know when it comes to choosing foster parents: Limit the pool of good, responsible, loving people to draw from, and the result will just be more of what we’ve got now—which is a shortage of foster homes.
At last count, there are only about 1, 100 foster homes for every 3, 700 foster children who need parenting in Arkansas, and need it now.
There’s something else we know. We know some folks who’d make great parents but, under the now former policy of the state’s Department of Human Services, which is the same straitjacket policy this initiated act would make inflexible law, they’d never be given the chance.
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