Salt to the wound

As if the release of Jerry Sandusky’s jury report, which detailed his sexual violation of eight boys during the course of his 15 years at Penn State University, wasn’t bad enough, a right-wing family association swooped in for the opportunity to pin this one on the gays.

“It’s a simple, stubborn fact that homosexuals molest children at much higher rates than the heterosexual population,” Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association said. “This is one of the reasons the Boy Scouts have every right to keep homosexuals from becoming Boy Scout leaders.” 

Now, this one made me laugh. Dismissing the fact that attributing pedophilia and sexual abuse to the behavior of homosexuals and our uncontrollable promiscuity is a classic example of conservative bigotry and clichéd, outdated prejudice, it’s hysterical that Boy Scouts found its way into the issue.

I winced at the unfocused and irresponsible nature of Fischer’s argument. Following his rationalization, if pedophilic behavior is amuck in any field that could potentially host a gay-identifying leader, why not exclude gays from everything? Keep them away from the children at all costs. Gather them all on one half of each nation and put the younglings on the other. We just can’t keep our hands off them.

The fear-mongering, tactless “journalism” was reinforced by Jerry Cox of the Family Research Council, who echoed sentiments on an NPR program, this time speaking of same-sex parenting and adoption.

“If those are the only two choices — a child be institutionalized or in a same-sex home — I would like to challenge this and say, maybe the state can do better than that.”

This is where laughing ceases. I feel I don’t even have to say that a homeless child deserves a loving family just as much as a same-sex couple deserves to have a family. In a world of parent-less children and childless adults, putting families together makes sense if stability is present and love is in copious amounts.

I feel I don’t even have to say that gay and straight adoption is hard enough in the states without the AFA scandalizing entire social groups. If we’re to base legal conceptions entirely on stereotypes and statistics, orphanages will overflow.

I feel I don’t even have to say that feeding homophobia like this could only place gay individuals further down on a waitlist for adopting a child.

That’s all right. I didn’t want a kid, anyway.

­— ftirado@indiana.edu