Comments

1
Very, very heartbreaking. I hope Victor and his siblings are safe now and get the help they deserve.
2
I just don't understand why they care about this. These are kids who, presumably, will just be "sucking up State money" while in the foster system...wouldn't it behoove these fiscally anal teabaggers to have as many adoptions as possible? What, do they think the gays are starting a child army, or something?

(This is the same governor who just rejected federal matching funds to build a high speed rail, putting thousands out of work?)
3
Jesus Christ, reading about this kid's condition really fucked me up. Those poor children. I'm pretty sure I don't even want to know how the girl died.
4
Canuck, in his mind, he's protecting the children. All facts aside, he knows these vulnerable children might catch the gay disease from their new gay parents. Or possibly he knows that the more gay adoptions happen, the more happy kids raised by gay couples in his state there will be, the harder it will become to shame all the gays back into the closet (something I imagine he still thinks is possible).

To him and his backers, it doesn't matter that his plans end up costing the state more money, because they're yelling about "protecting the children" right now. I’ll wager you can check back in an hour when they'll be yelling about fiscal responsibility and listen to them rationalize cutting free school lunches. Cognitive dissonance, baby, humanity’s greatest curse imnsho.
5
Canuck,
It's because the teabaggers WANT everyone to be miserable. They want the children to be miserable and unadopted.
They want the gays and lesbians to be miserable and without equal rights.
They secretly WANT the state to keep paying for it so that everyone else is miserable, especially themselves, so that they can constantly complain to everyone about how miserable everyone's lives are because of the government.

It's the same reason they are against abortion. They just want everyone involved to be unhappy. They're sadists.
7
what the fuck is wrong with florida? it seems every horror story comes straight from that state.
8
@7 that's why Florida has its own Fark category. There are currently (I just checked) 5 Florida stories on the front page. Including this one: "Police called to school after student tries to pay for lunch with a $1,000,000 bill. Good thing he didn't try to pay with a $2"
9
BTW, the chemicals that boy was doused in were so toxic that they made hospital workers sick, and the poor kid has respiratory damage (but I don't remember if it's permanent).

Florida aside (nods to 7 and 8), what the fuck is wrong with our foster care system? Why do our country's worst psychos and perverts get their hands on kids so easily?
10
Can a major news organization please hire a reporter to ask for comment from public officials that decide what is best in hypothetical situations that they themselves could rectify.

Scott: "Adoption should be by a married couple."

Reporter: "As a sucessful businessman and half of a married couple, you seem completely viable to adopt a child from Florida's child welfare system. If you feel so strongly that these children should be in the homes of married couples like the one you created, why didn't you adopt? Do you think it is in the best interest of a child to remain a ward of the state when unmarried couples or individuals want to adopt them?"

The quotes that would be generated would be endlessly useable if the reporter could push hard enough for an actual answer.
11
I have to agree with Urgutha @5. There's simply no other reasonable explanation for all this shit.
12
There's no reasonable explanation for any of this shit. Crazy comes in LOTS of flavors . . .
13
I wonder what they do about kids placed in foster homes, or/and then adopted, and then the foster/adoptive parents get divorced. Do they take the kids away from them because they aren't married any longer?
14
OuterCow & Urgutha, there's too much stupid in the world. I have so much trouble believing that people could be that comprehensively unevolved, let alone electable to public office, but there it is. I wish democrats were nasty enough to seize every one of these examples, "they hate babies!" "they hate working people!" but of course, that'll never happen.

I kind of wish there were a gay army, they could travel around with their kids, handing out cookies and doing meet-n-greets with the hoi polloi, "winning hearts and minds"....
15
What this article doesn't mention is that there was a call to Social Services days before the children were discovered. When SS went to the home, THE WIFE said that THE HUSBAND was out at the time. THE WIFE is being investigated as an accomplice to the abuse of their children. I'm shocked. A Hetro couple abusing their kids... together? Unheard of! Shame on the state of Florida. Any couple can get married in the great state of New Hampshire!
16
@9 well now, that's a story of chronic underfunding, very few foster and adoptive homes, and way too many ppl who want perfect just born white babies so older children are out of luck and way too many predators who recognize this and take advantage of the whole thing.

The whole foster concept is utterly overwhelmed and broken. i don't know what the solution is -- but it seems like ideas besides fostering and orphanages need to be considered.
17
I also wholeheartedly agree that Florida is a steaming pile of horseshit.

I'm still fighting them (after more than a year) for unemployment compensation they owe me. At this point, they must have spent more in legal fees fighting me than it would cost for them to just fucking pay me what they owe me.

Florida sucks ass.
18
*Maybe* they're right and every child does "deserve" a mother and a father or whatever. But no one ever gets everything that they deserve--such is government. The point is, gay parents are much better than no parents, and just as good as hetero parents. I would have chosen gay and together dudes to raise me over my hetero and divorced parents.
(http://inpoortaste.tumblr.com)
19
Sick. So these sorry humps of humanity can adopt, but a gay couple can't. Rhetorical, I know, but I just can't wrap my imagination around it sometimes. Florida is a first class shithole, with a shiny facade. I can't think of a worse state to live in, unless you're a strait, white, male billionaire, or the governor, or a close personal friend of the governor.
20
I loved Florida but the politics there are getting worse and worse. I can't believe they elected the new guy - apparently he was caught embezzling and they STILL elected him???
21
Dan is obviously just trying to fat-shame Florida into submission, picking on it for its high obesity rate. Classic bullying behavior.

"Panhandle"? More like "love handles".
22
@9, what #16 said. People want white or Asian kids so they'll spend a year's salary to go to another country and adopt or pay a surrogate or go through exhaustive IVF treatments rather than adopt a child FOR FREE in their home state with little to no red tape.

I don't necessarily think it's overt/recognized racism. I think it's like those people who aren't homophobic but yet they don't want a gay child simply because they'd have to explain things to outsiders or homophobic Uncle Harry and they'd rather just not deal with that so it's simply "easier" to have a child that looks like the rest of the fam.

If someone has another theory, please enlighten me because I'd really like to think there's more to it than so many couples being covertly racist. The obvious exception being gays who can't adopt in their state would likely go to another country or through a surrogate.

And FYI, you aren't forced to take an older child in foster care or foster-to-adopt, you can specify the age. Also, if we adopted more kids in the system while they were still babies, we wouldn't have as many older children in the system.
23
This is why my fiance and I want to foster older children. We have too many friends who were "too old" to adopt out and were bounced from sexually/physically abusive home to home. Granted, we're "legally" a gay couple so we'll see how far we'll be able to get in this fucked up system.

I won't hold my breath.
24
This isn't just discriminatory toward homosexual couples. He's also suggesting that single parent adoption be disallowed.

Even fewer homes for children, and it further limits the definition of "family."

25
Sigh. This is SO fucked up. I have a single female relative who lives in a red state who, over the last 20 years, as both fostered and adopted several extremely troubled boys (kids who wet their bed at age 11 because of all the abuse they've been subjected to) and succeeded at really turning things around for most (sadly, not all) of them.

I'm also 99% convinced that she's a lesbian, but far too conservative and religious (a typical outlet for people who want to surpress their own homosexuality) to act on it, and possibly even to admit it to herself (although I wonder if the reason all the kids she's helped have been boys is that she fears she might be tempted by a girl).

But the undeniable fact is that every one of these boys has done FAR better under a single (possibly lesbian) parent than they did when living with their original mother and father.
26
The really tragic part of the Florida case is the number of people who tried to intervene for the kids but the court decided there was a "significant bond" at the home so the kids stayed with these fucking animals.
27
At any time there are 500,000 children in foster care, with over 100,000 of them available for adoption.

Why don't these so-called Christianists adopt 'em instead of putting halts against gay adoption, unmarried couples adopting, as well as putting up obstacles to contraception and abortion?

That's the question.
28
@21 Zing!

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