Putin’s Immoral Choice | Orphanages vs. Loving Same-Sex Families

By Melanie Nathan, October 14, 2013.

Russian lawmakers would rather see infants and children starve and suffer neglect, resulting in deformities and attachment disorders than provide these children with the opportunities for love and health.  A picture speaks a million words – how does one grasp what could have been; and why would Russian lawmakers,  Vladimir Putin at the helm, toss these small children away in the name of bigotry and hate?

President Vladimir Putin signed a law banning gay and lesbian couples in foreign countries from adopting Russian children. The Kremlin said in a statement that “the measure is aimed at guaranteeing a harmonious and full upbringing for children in adoptive families”. It also bans adoption by unmarried individuals who live in countries with laws permitting same-sex marriages. Yet apparently these same lawmakers send their own kids to study in these very countries that permit same-sex marriage.

Several Russian lawmakers stated that children are much better off in the state-run orphanages than raised by same-sex parents.

The Russians who base these decisions on the so called ‘moral’ teachings of the Russian Orthodox Church, ought to be ashamed. These children are neglected, starved and desperate for loving families. Hypocrisy abounds.

Yet Putin, the Russian politicians and the Russian Orthodox Church call for the anti-gay laws that really serve only to further the suffering of children.  Spectrum Human Rights’ article, “Putin’s Orphanages vs. Gay Adoptions,” has the pictures to prove it.

Through the 18 years dating back to when I started my own adoption process, it would seem the Russians have done very little to help their orphaned children, caged in cribs and crying our for loving homes, except to prevent those very children from receiving real lives through real love and the fulfillment of all that makes a family. And now with these added anti-gay laws, the stakes are high for the children and their odds are worse.

And all one has to do is look at the myriad of LGBT families who have adopted both domestically and abroad.  Spectrum Human Rights  provides a pictorial comparison showing children who have benefited from adoption by gay and lesbians into same-sex families.

I recall adopting my daughter sixteen years ago from a Vietnamese orphanage.  We had started a Russian adoption process at the same time. During the course of our journey, we were sent pictures of Russian orphanages and children, and we almost adopted from both countries, when the Russian adoption fell through because a local Russian family took the child. Hopefully a good outcome for that child, and what of the very many that never get adopted?

Babies and small children remain jailed by cribs and overcome by attachment disorders because of their desperate need to be held constantly in those early years, and for a love that only family can bring.  Some of our friends adopted from Russian orphanages all those years ago as single parents.  They brought home broken and diseased children and raised them in loving same-sex family homes. These kids are now normal, accomplished and loving members of communities and loving families.

And so Putin’s bigotry and hateful laws, spurred by the ROC, are hurting Russia’s children. One cannot escape the simple facts – and one cannot ignore the photographic comparison as presented by Spectrum Human Rights:

“Recently a Russian lawmaker has proposed a bill that would deny gay parents custody over their children. The draft bill, published on parliament’s website, would make the “fact of nontraditional sexual orientation” a basis for denying custody.

Meanwhile, Russian authorities do nothing to prevent child abuse and murders in so-called “traditional families”. Just recently 9 years old boy was brutally killed by his mother’s boyfriend for reciting poems too loudly and interrupting their drinking orgy. Both “traditional parents” suffer from severe alcoholism.  The boy’s school teacher died from a heart attack after identifying the body at the local morgue.”

SEE THE PICTORIAL HERE: http://spectrumhr.org/?p=1568