“My Mom is a lesbian…”
We are told that Donald Trump is scheduled to sign an Executive Order today: “Establishing a Government-Wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom”. The name is a hideous mask – a guise – a ruse. While it seems to invoke religious freedom, in truth it is an excuse to trample on the constitutional rights of millions of Americans.
If signed, the Executive Order would allow for discrimination against LGBT people. It is not surprising to note that Vice President Mike Pence has continued to push for this, his pet piece of persecution – this religious exemption bill, in full keeping with the promise to thwart LGBT equality. If signed, this Executive Order would override President Obama’s 2014 Executive Order which protects federal employees against LGBT-based discrimination, and it could also serve to impact LGBT people with regard to the foster-adopt system.
Trump’s threat looms – and with the stroke of pen he could hurt tens of thousands of same-sex couples seeking to adopt or foster children, tens of thousands of LGBT youth in foster care, and hundreds of thousands of LGBT workers employed by federal contractors and the federal government. And maybe more…
My partner Karen foster- adopted 3 children when she was a single mom. She was not deterred by special needs, nor by the obvious scars that abuse, neglect and difficult pregnancies could yield. Karen is the very mom who Trump and Pence seek to deny to thousands of children.
Yesterday Karen and I told Vee, her ten year old, about Trump’s looming EO. Vee looked puzzled. She expressed how odd it seemed to her that the President of our country would seek to hurt children in her situation. She decided to write him a letter:
Dear Donald Trump,
My mom is a lesbian who adopted me and my sister and brother when we were very little. I am now 10. My sister Ty is 8 and my brother Shane is 6. Your rules can be really dumb. If you ban LGBT people from being able to adopt children, I would be stuck in an orphanage. That’s right, you heard me, Donald Trump, I would still be in foster care.
One of the reasons I needed a new family is because my birthfather burned me with a cigarette among other horrible punishments.
How could you think that just because somebody is gay or lesbian, that makes them worse than my birthfather who abused me?
Now my life is perfectly fine. I have a little sister and brother with special needs. Even though my brother can be annoying, I still love him.
I love my mom and she loves me.
I don’t understand how you do not care about us because we are American kids and you just want to hurt other kids like me. I hope all foster kids can be lucky like me.
Please don’t do things that hurt our families.
Thank you,
Vee.
Such an executive order is not about religious freedom, but rather about political exemptions. Exempting people from the Constitution is unAmerican!!. This would be the most damaging executive order ever signed by an American President. However we will #RESIST and we will fight for our rights and the Courts will continue to overturn Trump’s inane overreaches.
SOME STATS:
- Researchers estimate the total number of children nationwide living with at least one gay parent ranges from 6 to 14 million.3
- An estimated two million LGBT people are interested in adopting.4
- Gay and lesbian parents are raising four percent of all adopted children in the United States.4
- More than 16,000 same-sex couples are raising an estimated 22,000 adopted children in the United States.2
- More than 16,000 adopted children are living with lesbian and gay parents in California, the highest number in the United States.4
- Same-sex parents in the United States are four times more likely than different-sex parents to be raising an adopted child. Among couples with children under the age of 18 in the home, 13% of same-sex parents have an adopted child, compared to just 3% of different-sex parents.2
- The median age of same-sex adoptive parents is 42, as opposed to 44 for comparable opposite-sex parents.2
(1) U.S. Census Bureau. 2010 Census Briefs.
Daphne Lofquist, Same-Sex Couple Households. Current Population Reports, ACSBR/10-03. U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC. 2011.
(2) Gary J. Gates. LGBT Parenting in the United States. The Williams Institute, Los Angeles, CA. 2013.
(3) Overview of Lesbian and Gay Parenting, Adoption and Foster Care. American Civil Liberties Union, New York, NY.
(4) Gary J. Gates, M.V. Lee Badgett, Kate Chambers, Jennifer Macomber, Adoption and Foster Care by Gay and Lesbian Parents in the United States. The Williams Institute, Los Angeles, CA. 2007.
(5) Equality Maps: Foster and Adoption Laws. Movement Advancement Project. Denver, CO.
https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/LGBT-Parenting.pdf
By MELANIE NATHAN
@commissionermnathan@gmail.com
@MelanieNathan1
#RESIST
Facebook Resist Trump Page: https://www.facebook.com/trumpbully/