be shed over secession. Like Chesnut, bin Laden has discovered that though Americans are a peaceable folk, their forbearance has limits.
At the same time, Americans have refused to let their fear override their principles. Free speech is alive and well. Though dissenters may be disregarded, they haven’t been persecuted. Civil liberties advocates are justified in asking why the government has detained hundreds of non-citizens without showing they pose a danger. But compared to what happened in past wars, that’s a small matter. The gross overreactions that some people feared haven’t emerged.
The most striking fact about our response to this crisis is not how badly suspect groups (such as Muslims, Arabs and other dusky-complexioned individuals) have fared but how well. One poll found that American attitudes about Muslims improved after the attacks. In March, 45
percent of those surveyed expressed a positive view of Muslims. By November, 59 percent had a favorable opinion of them.
Not long ago, Muslims and other Americans wondered if normality could survive the Sept. 11 attacks. Today, it certainly looks that way.
Gay adoption: In a child’s best interest
A law allowing gay parents to adopt children is not “depriving” children of the benefits of a mom and dad if they don’t have them to begin with
Sunday, February 10, 2002
When the American Academy of Pediatrics published a new policy statement in favor of letting gays and lesbians adopt children, it drew the expected response from hard-line conservatives who, upon hearing the word “homosexual,” have the urge to run screaming from the room.
“There is an abundance of research that children do best when raised by a mother and a father who are committed to one another in marriage,” asserted Ken Connor, president of the Family Research Council. “To support a policy that would intentionally deprive a child of such benefits is unconscionable.” Sandy Rios, head of Concerned Women for America, said, “As the single mother of a son, I can see quite clearly that having a mother and a father together would be far better for my son.”
This reaction was an exercise in missing the point. Maybe a child living with his biological mother and her lesbian partner would be better off living with a heterosexual married couple. Maybe he would be better off living with the queen of England.
But the fact is, the child is not living with a heterosexual married couple. A law allowing custodial gay parents to adopt their children is not “depriving” a child of the benefits of a mother and father if the child doesn’t have them to begin with. A woman or man may be widowed after having a child and later move in with someone of the same sex. Or a woman may choose to bear a child on her own and then enter a long-term lesbian relationship. Or two women may decide together that one should be artificially inseminated to conceive a baby that they will raise together. None of these arrangements is illegal or uncommon. In any of them, the result is a child being brought up by a same-sex couple.
Though it may distress some conservatives to hear it, there is nothing to prevent homosexuals from falling in love and setting up housekeeping. We are pretty much past the stage of persecuting people for their sexual orientation. And if gays and lesbians are allowed to have stable homosexual relationships, some of those are bound to involve children.
Estimates are that anywhere from 1 million to 9 million children have at least one homosexual parent, and many of these live with same-sex couples. The pediatric group’s statement acknowledges that the evidence on how these children fare is based on “small and nonrepresentative samples,” but says the available information suggests “there is no systematic difference between gay and nongay parents” and no “risk to children as a result of growing up in a family with one or more gay parents.”
Experts may argue about the data, but it’s irrelevant to the issue addressed by the academy: whether the law should allow “second-parent” adoption by one member of a gay couple. Some states ban such adoptions, and many others leave the matter to the whim of judges. Such adoptions are clearly sanctioned in only seven states (including Illinois).
But many children are already living with same-sex couples — most often, a biological parent and his or her partner. No one, even at the FRC and CWA, is proposing that these kids be removed from these homes and placed with the Osmond family. Like it or not, they will be raised by gays.
The question is how to protect the kids in these homes. What the critics insist on ignoring is that the debate is not about the rights of homosexuals. It’s about the welfare of children.
Children gain nothing from laws that prevent adoption by second parents. Just the opposite. If Heather has two mommies but Mommy No. 2 can’t adopt her, she’s worse off than a child with two legally recognized parents.
As the Human Rights Campaign Foundation notes, if she gets sick, Mommy No. 2’s health insurance policy may not cover her. If her second mother dies, she won’t be eligible for Social Security survivor benefits, as other children are, and she may inherit nothing. If her biological mother dies, she may be removed from the only home she’s known and placed somewhere else.
Gay couples, like other couples, sometimes split up, and in that case, Heather may not be able to get child support. Or her second mom may not get visitation rights, depriving the child of contact with a loved parent. A lot of things can happen if second-parent adoptions are not allowed, and all of them are bad.
The effect of such laws is to say that homosexual parents may not adopt the children they raise even if adoption would be the best thing for the children. Anti-gay conservatives say they want to protect kids. Their policies say something else.
Silencing dissent near ground zero
Sunday, February 24, 2002
William Harvey has a publicist’s uncanny knack for knowing how and where to place a message to make sure it gets the maximum response from an interested audience. But Harvey is not a publicist. He’s an opinionated New Yorker whose talent for communication has earned him a criminal indictment.
On Oct. 4, just a few weeks after the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., he showed up in military fatigues on a corner not far from ground zero. He was carrying a sign with Osama bin Laden superimposed over the World Trade Center buildings and handing out leaflets setting forth his belief that “America is getting paid back for what it’s doing to Islamic countries.”
A crowd quickly gathered on the sidewalk around him, and it didn’t consist of well-wishers. With memories of the collapsing towers still painfully vivid, passersby screamed obscenities, demanded that he be locked up, and even threatened to kill him. A police officer surveyed the scene and placed him under arrest.
Harvey was charged with disorderly conduct. Why? Because in the view of the officer, he deliberately “obstructed vehicular and pedestrian traffic.” The Manhattan district attorney’s office decided to pursue the case, and earlier this month, a county judge rejected Harvey’s claim that he was fully within his constitutional rights. He’s scheduled to go on trial in April.
The defendant says he is being punished merely for expressing unpopular views in a public place. The judge, however, insists that his views are not at issue. “It is the reaction which speech engenders, not the content of the speech, that is the heart of disorderly conduct,” he declared. It’s reasonable to assume, said the judge, that he knew he was going to create “public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm.” By his thinking, if someone becomes disorderly
