‘Every Child Deserves a Family Act’ Introduced

Congressman Pete Stark of California has proposed a federal bill, which if enacted into law, would deny funding to states that pass bills banning adoption by gay, transgender, or unmarried heterosexual parents. The bill, H.R. 3827, is called the ‘Every Child Deserves a Family Act’.

According to Stark’s website:

Chairman of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, today introduced H.R. 3827, the “Every Child Deserves a Family Act.” In the same manner that we ended race discrimination in adoption, this legislation would prohibit states and child welfare agencies from denying or delaying adoption or foster care placements solely based on the sexual orientation or marital status of the potential parents.

“It is unacceptable that states are denying children healthy, loving homes simply because of a potential parent’s sexual orientation or marital status,” said Rep. Stark. “The Every Child Deserves a Family Act ensures that the best interests of children are the only criteria for finding adoptive and foster parents.”

Over 129,000 children are awaiting an adoptive home or permanent placement, and there is a shortage of adoptive and foster parents. Those who never find a permanent family – about 25,000 a year who “age out” of the system – are more likely than nearly any other group to become homeless, incarcerated, or suffer with mental illness or substance abuse. Despite this shortage of adoptive and foster parents and the terrible consequences of long stays in the child welfare system, some states have enacted discriminatory bans prohibiting children from being placed with qualified parents due to the parent’s marital status or sexual orientation.

Nearly all mainstream organizations that advocate for children, including the Child Welfare League of America, the American Psychological Association, and the American Bar Association all support adoption and foster parenting by qualified unmarried and gay and lesbian parents.

This makes me especially happy as it will not only help provide loving homes and better futures for the over one-million homeless children living in the U.S., but it also will help redefine the line which separates church and state, as those states with bans on adoption by gays or lesbians have laws that were put into place by those who are members of the religious right.

To find out which states ban, or allow adoption by gay and lesbian adults, click here to visit Ramon Johnson’s About.com – gay life blog!

Gay Former Mayor Finds Acceptance in Texas

From GayPolitics.com:

In politics, love can be problematic. (Just ask South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.) Add being openly gay to the mix and problems can become scandals. But something odd happened when the mayor of San Angelo, Texas followed his gay heart.

J. W. Lown absconded to Mexico to be with his same-sex lover, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. But where one would have expected to find fiery outrage, there was a surprising calm, according to Texas Monthly.

Read the entire story by clicking here.

Portland’s Sam Adams Cleared in Breedlove Case

From KTVZ.com where you can read the entire post:

Oregon’s attorney general, John Kroger, has finished months of investigation into the sex scandal around Portland’s mayor and finds no credible evidence Adams had sex with a teenager in 2005.

Beau Breedlove

Homophobic Hysteria in Poland

In the West Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform is often described as liberal and pro-European. Few realize how homophobic the ruling party is. The following article was published on gejowo.pl the leading gay portal in Poland.

Our beloved Civic Platform

by Dawid Szejnborn

If you are a member of sexual minorities and you vote for the Civic Platform then it is likely for you to be HIV positive, a pedophile or a pesticide poisoned deviant. It is yet the picture that emerges from the statements of politicians of that party, collected by users of the forum gejowo.pl, in the time span 2003-2009. It is worth looking at them prior to the forthcoming elections.

The Civic Platform in relation to gay people, ie what the politicians of the party in power speak of us:

At best the Civic Platform (PO) refuses to conduct any debate on gay and lesbian rights, at worst they heat up homophobic attitudes in the society, they deepen presumptions, nurture hatred and are supportive of those who approve of penalizing homosexuality.

Those attitudes are practice not that extreme.

The present legal stance that excludes same gender relationships from being legal subjects is so repressive that it being further retained is not less cruel than imposing new penalties and persecutions for homosexuality.

We are namely in the situation, in which the state, as pictured by Sergiusz Wroblewski “turns into a bandit who by imposing tax burdens, a baseball hooligan alike, robs gay people”. The remaining state institutions and civil servants, including the judiciary, the police, the magistrates and the the social insurance participate in that robbery.

In Europe PO efficiently acts as to harm homosexuals in that the party opposes European Integration. The first decision made by the PO government was to include Poland into the British protocol, which ruled out the application of the Chart of Basic Rights, in fear of introducing civil partnerships in the Vistula country, through the back door.PO is also against the Union directive that prohibits discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation as far as the
access to services is concerned.

The PO adverses legalizing same gender relationships.

From the outset of its existence the Civic Platform has advertized civil partnerships. During the presidential debate in 2005 Donald Tusk stated :”In my opinion homosexuals are entitled to have a full spectrum of civil rights, any form of discriminating homosexuals is out of question. However, this does not mean legalizing gay marriages. I will never ever approve of that.”

This was confirmed in 2007 by Janusz Palikot who said that “PO will not give its approval to gay marriages”. “We will not follow the path of liberal Spain.

The Platform is a conservative-liberal party”– he stressed. The same is the stance of the parliamentary PO-club, a stance put forward by its president Z.

Chlebowski in March 2008: “The Civic Platform is not in favor of gay marriages, PO regards a family as a relationship between a man and a woman.”

Being deprived of serious arguments against a legal from of civil partnerships, partnerships that most of the society approves of, the party calls such partnerships marriages and fights a crusade against them. “I will not give my approval to homosexual marriages” says minister Elzbieta Radziszewska, even though there is no single gay organization that would demand them.

Stefan Niesiolowski says:”To postulate any legal form of lesbian marriages, legal brothels or a legal use of drugs or the taxation of prostitution would make us look ridiculous.” What is it that the prime minister Tusk offers gay & lesbian people? The same as the Catholic Church and the Law and Justice does.”Respect and tolerance for the person, but a lack of approval gay marriages and child adoption by gays.”

The denial of LGBT people discrimination In the homophobic discourse of PO it is pivotal to deny the phenomenon of discrimination of homosexuals. According to Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz there is no need for a legal regulation of the status of homosexual couples. “It seems to me such relationships can be protected in Poland in its civil form and the rights for this purpose are quite strong.” The present president of Warsaw dislikes possible offenses & misuses that gay people could be perform: “There are cases when civil partnerships after being legalized prey on the state in order to take advantage of financial subsidies, for example by accepting social benefits without even dwelling in the same household.”

Minister Radziszewska supports her: “Everyone can establish a civil contract with someone else, such a contract can entitle any person to everything possible; any person can grant its fortune to anybody else.”

In the same interview Radziszewska says, civil partnerships are not what homosexuals are really interested in. In March 2007 PO voted in the European Parliament against an initiative for a expertise on investigating civil rights in Poland in the context of respecting gay rights. The PO member of European Parliament Barbara Kudrycka protested at that time against “the expenditure of European money in order to investigate a situation that we only know from press releases “.

Niesiolowski would write in May that year “In Poland we are not faced with discriminating of homosexuals or anybody else whatsoever. Homosexuals lie to to the society and instead they claim privileges, and for that there is no approval at all.”

PO opposes marches of LGBT people

In November 2005 Poznan’s president Ryszard Grobelny, linked to the PO, forbade a Gay Equality March. The illegal demonstration has been dispersed by the police.According to one of the founders of PO, a political banite at present, “Such demonstrations serve one purpose only, namely to show that we are people who satisfy their sexual needs in one particular way only. Demonstrating that creates the whole problem.”

The Civil Platform too did not support the presence of gay & lesbian people at their own rally against the government of Jaroslaw Kaczynski in 2006, and their politicians didn’t spare bitter words to gay people in May 2007 prior to another Warsaw parade. Joanna Pitera put it in the most mild way:”She wouldn’t see the ground to demonstrating sexual diversity.”

The Civic Platform on gay people: Pedophiles, suffering from AIDS, pesticide deviants.

Who are homosexuals according to the PO? According to the now deceased Wisla Surazka, a PO candidate to the European Parliament in 2005 there is a connection between homosexuality and pedophilia: “Certain gay people when cruising next to public toilets perform a couple through to have sexual intercourse several times a day. They prey on victims such as young homeless boys, who earn their living in such a way.The connection between homosexuality and underage prostitution and pedophilia is shamefully silenced by progressive press media and academic circles.However this connection truly exists and it is well known in police, judiciary and medical circles.”

What does the PO still associate gay people with? Of course with AIDS.

The government rights equality watchdog Elzbieta Radziszewska included, at her website, into her professional duties, a pledge to help homosexual job-applicants who are required to present a certificate that they are HIV-negative!

First of all, however, according to PO politicians homosexuality is a deviance. “Without doubt homosexuality is a kind of deviation from the norm, a norm being regarded commonly as a tradition celebrated and biologically justified marriage. It does not matter that this deviation is genetically conditioned, since pedophilia is also subject to such a condition.” wrote Niesiolowski in 2007.

This top class Civic Platform politician has also discovered the reasons for homosexuality. The reasons is supposed to be…. chemical pollution. His article titled “Provocation” reads:”Recent research publications point out that the phenomenon of homosexuality in birds is first of all due to a high concentration of pollution and pesticides…The authors of both this and other publications in this subject matter suggest that findings in animals, in particular in mammals, can be also related to human beings.”

The Civic Platform and restrictions against LGBT people.

In the Civic Platform there is an abundance of people who would like to translate Niesiolowski’s opinions into firm laws. In 2005 the present Member of Parliament Wojciech Saluga required: “preventing or at least hampering activities of organizations that promote homosexual attitudes”. He was also in favor of a ban on gay parades which he regarded as “harmful for the development of the nation”(18). It is also to the Senate that PO has introduced people who argue favorably for a prohibition of “the homosexual propaganda”.

One of them is Rafal Muchacki who in May 2007 during the debate of the parliamentary family commission stated as follows: “Pedophilia, masochism, sadism and bisexuality are (mental) illnesses too. It should be imposed the the promotion of unnatural sexual attitudes is against the law”.

We are grateful to the Civic Platform that being busy with PR and with quarrels with the Law and Justice it does not lock up gay people in re-education institutions, even though obviously in most of its members opinion this is the place where we belong.

We wish to make a wise choice on the election day on the 7th of June.

Civil Marriage About Equal Protection of All Under the Law

Thirty-two years ago, on March 31, 1977, I introduced the first legislation to address how we treat gays and lesbians in Maine.

The bill, co-sponsored by my dear late friend, Democratic Rep. Larry Connolly, sought to end discrimination in credit, education, employment and housing against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals.

Just 10 years before that, I had fought as a citizen for my own rights as an African American. Sadly enough, the fight for equal rights continues to this day.

Read the rest of this post by Gerald E. Talbot at Morning Sentinel!