Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 8, 1999
Box 2221,Little Rock,AR,72203
(Fax 501-372-3908 ) (E-MAIL: AROnline@ardemgaz.com )
( http://www.ardemgaz.com/ )

Every day when his partner, Michael, goes to work in Manhattan, Jon Galluccio stays home with the kids in New Jersey. Yes, theirs is an unusual household. Because these days both parents in most families seem to hold down jobs.

Not that Jon doesn't have a full-time job, taking care of a 15-month-old toddler and a 2-year-old who was born drug-addicted and H.I.V. positive. Jon and Michael are foster parents. They're also homosexual. But the reader might have discerned as much by now.

Yes, their one-income household isn't the only thing unusual about Jon and Michael's family. And you can hear the overreaction now: How dare they raise a child! The knee still jerks, promptly, when it comes to almost anything homosexual - adoption, living arrangements, shopping patterns, jobs, eating habits . . . existence.

Pity. Because a lot of kids could be losing out on a good home. "Our children weren't the children people were rushing to adopt," says Mr. Galluccio. He has an interesting point. And it's one that's backed up by New Jersey's director of Youth and Family Services, Tonya Fernandez, who has noticed a new wave of applicants. They're predominantly homosexual, they're more accepting of unwanted children, and they're providing kids with loving, stable homes.

What does all this have to do with Arkansas? Unfortunately, a lot. We're in danger of letting old prejudices get in the way again. It happens. Sometimes in this small, wonderful state, we're slow to let go of even the bad things. In this case, the state's Child Welfare Agency Review Board has voted to make Arkansas only the second state to ban homosexuals from being foster parents.

No, it's not final. The board meets again in a couple of weeks when, in a break with tradition, it will actually hear from the opposition. But we've already taken one step down that slippery slope. At the bottom lies exclusion, discrimination, hate, and, supporting them all below, fear.

Faulkner said the basest of all things is to be afraid. What we fear, we lash out against – whatever our reason or compassion tells us. That's when we sink lowest. And it's not pretty down there. We know. This state was dragged down there before, in 1957, and we're still climbing out of that pit.

With the help – and voices – of enough good men and women, this latest ruling need not stick. It's still grinding through the legislative sausage- making process, starting with that meeting this month.

Already, reason begins to emerge. And the level heads at the state's Department of Human Services are being heard from. In a memo to the Child Welfare Agency Review Board last summer, DHS explained that "a mere assertion that homosexuals are not proper role models for foster children is insufficient . . . ." DHS wanted some evidence.

It's out there, all right. And most of the evidence leads to the same conclusion: Children raised by homosexual parents are as likely to be as healthy and happy as kids raised by heterosexual parents. In short, a happy and loving home is a happy and loving home.

You want to hear some testimony?

From the Child Welfare League of America: "Sexual preference should not be the sole criteria on which the suitability of adoptive applicants is based.
Consideration should be given to other personality and maturity factors and on the ability of the applicant to meet the specific needs of the individual child." Which makes sense. The league has also examined more than 50 studies on adoptions by homosexual parents, and concluded that the research shows "children are not compromised in any way."

From the American Psychological Association, summarizing 43 studies on gay and lesbian parenting: "The results of existing research comparing gay and lesbian parents to heterosexual parents and children of gay or lesbian parents to children of heterosexual parents are quite uniform: common stereotypes are not supported by the data."

From Children in Lesbian and Single-Parent Households: Psychosexual and Psychiatric Appraisal by Susan Golombok, Ann Spencer and Michael Rutter of the University of London: "Just as children's exposure to the fact of heterosexual relationships between their father and mother does not prevent homosexuality, so the exposure to homosexual models seems unlikely to have a decisive impact on sexual orientation."

We could go on. Anybody with a database could. But there comes a point when all the studies, analyses, survey results and research findings just seem like more datablah. There's more to this story than the stats in the Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy. There is the human story of Jon Galluccio and Michael and their two kids. They spent more than a year in court to get the chance to raise these children nobody else wanted.

You wonder why it took so long. Was the alternative any better? Is it really healthier to place children in a series of foster homes, each worse than the last? (Arkansas should know a lot about that by now.) Or not to place them at all? Foster parents are hard enough to come by. Let's not drain the already too shallow pool of people who have the potential to make good, even great, parents.

Diane Woodruff, one of the members of the Child Welfare Board who voted against permitting homosexuals to adopt, may have had one thing right: She said it was in the best interest of a child "to have a mom role model and a dad role model in the foster home."

Yes, but suppose those models are unavailable? Do we just junk the kids, or risk placing them in a really dangerous environment? Reality doesn't always provide the ideal family for any of us. What do we do if the ideal isn't available? That's the challenge.

This whole episode brings to mind a news story long ago about a man who had applied for a job as a cop in Chicago. It seems he had artificial limbs and had asked for a waiver from the usual physical requirements. The story came up at an editorial conference of the late Chicago Daily News. Ridiculous, those sage editorial writers agreed. Nobody with that kind of disability could be a cop, they all assumed.

All except one. It seems this green editorial writer, the youngest on the staff, had grown up with an old family retainer/adviser/handyman/driver who wasn't just part of the small family business, but part of the family. And the editorial writer could remember delivering furniture and installing gas ranges with the man, his mentor in many ways. And he recalled the older man hustling, lifting, driving, directing, getting things done, and facing down some bullies – not slowed down a bit by his two artificial limbs. (The man had lost both legs early in life trying to crawl between the cars of a freight train.) And he would've made one heckuva cop, too. The editorial opposing a waiver for that applicant to the Chicago police force never got written. A little personal experience can offset an awful lot of prejudice.

Many of us know lesbian ladies or homosexual gentlemen, maybe in the family, who might not make perfect parents (who would?) but who would make just fine, caring, nurturing moms and dads.

Thinking about all this on Martin Luther King's birthday, we were reminded of something: Good parenting isn't about outward appearances; it's about the content of one's character. That's what we need to look at – thoroughly, with a clear head and good heart – in deciding who will raise some of these children, Arkansas' children.

[The Galluccio family is online at jgalluccio@email.msn.com]