Bizarre, Constitutional Law, Politics, Society

Family Group Accused of Using False Picture of Lesbian Couple

Scott Maxwell at the Orlando Sentinel has an extraordinary story about the lengths that social conservatives and anti-gay advocates will go to block the adoption of children by gay couples. Vanessa Alenier and her partner, Melanie Leon, are affluent and loving parents who were awarded custody of a child who was in their foster care in Florida. One problem for the Florida Family Policy Council, it appears, is that they are also attractive, so (on the left) is the picture the council posted with their calls for opposition to the adoption while (on the right) is the actual couple.

For the judge, the adoption should have been an easy decision. The investigators found that the one-year-old boy left in their care “happy and thriving.” The judge made the mistake it appears of focusing on the child’s well-being as opposed to the identity of the parents. The Family Council denounced the decision as a case of “[a]rrogant judicial activism” and has been campaigning against the couple.

These “family advocates” oppose giving a foster child a loving home and caring parents. It is better it seems to throw him back into the foster care system to be bounced from home to home. This case is proof that these are not family values (since they are opposing the creation of a loving family) but political values.

For the full story, click here.

47 thoughts on “Family Group Accused of Using False Picture of Lesbian Couple”

  2. It is going to be 50 degrees and sunny. That’s not cold. My daughter is getting 2 feet of snow today. The cold weather has not yet convinced her to go to Austin to law school.

  3. I bet that teachers looking at me…..Thanks.
    .
    Good morning swartmore mom. How is your side of the state today? Its colder than a well diggers ass here. As a matter of fact I heard construction sounds and looked out side, it appears that somebody is getting some water work done. Too damn cold at 40 here. The lettuce did not freeze though.

  4. AY–

    Here’s a video of the “Marxist” Bill Martin Jr. singing his anti-capitalist children’s book “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?”

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdHCYgO9zh8&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

  5. Texas has the worst reputation, but I have not heard much controversy over adoption by gay couples yet.

  6. AY–

    I may have posted the following before–but this “stoopid” Texas story bears repeating:

    From Think Progress (1/26/2010)
    Right-wing Texas Education Board accidentally bans popular children’s book author.

    Last week, ThinkProgress reported on the Texas Board of Education’s push to change the state’s social studies curriculum to marginalize progressives. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reveals that the latest to be nixed is actually popular children’s author Bill Martin Jr.:

    In its haste to sort out the state’s social studies curriculum standards this month, the State Board of Education tossed children’s author Martin, who died in 2004, from a proposal for the third-grade section. Board member Pat Hardy, R-Weatherford, who made the motion, cited books he had written for adults that contain “very strong critiques of capitalism and the American system.”

    Trouble is, the Bill Martin Jr. who wrote the Brown Bear series never wrote anything political, unless you count a book that taught kids how to say the Pledge of Allegiance, his friends said. The book on Marxism was written by Bill Martin, a philosophy professor at DePaul University in Chicago.

    http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/26/brown-bear-martin/
    ***************

    More on the story from dallasnews.com (1/25/2010)
    Name confusion gets kid’s author banned from Texas curriculum
    Traci Shurley, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

    Excerpt:
    Bill Martin Jr.’s name would have been included on a list with author Laura Ingalls Wilder and artist Carmen Lomas Garza as examples of individuals who would be studied for their cultural contributions.

    Hardy said she was trusting the research of another board member, Terri Leo, R-Spring, when she made her motion and comments about Martin’s writing. Leo had sent her an e-mail alerting her to Bill Martin Jr.’s listing on the Borders.com Web site as the author of Ethical Marxism. Leo’s note also said she hadn’t read the book.

    “She said that that was what he wrote, and I said: ‘ … It’s a good enough reason for me to get rid of someone,’ “said Hardy, who has complained vehemently about the volume of names being added to the curriculum standards.

    http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-books_25tex.ART.State.Edition1.4ba2046.html

  7. Elaine M.,

    Touche’ it is kind of hard to beat stupid isn’t. But then again, there are many ways to spell stupid.

  10. What do you expect to hear and see from the far religious right? Especially in Florida! These so-called Christians will go to any lengths to spread their nonsense. The truth is not an impediment to these church going miscreants. What happened to judging a person “by the content of their character”?

  12. I hadn’t realized the importance that physical beauty had on parenting skills. I certainly hope that this new found requirement for parenting leads to mass steralization of the
    ” unfortunate looking ” in society. We certainly wouldn’t want them breeding together!!! Just think of all the furture ” unfortunate looking ” people that would turn out!! It is far better to have the beautiful people, like Brittney Spears for example, raising our future!
    Thank-you Florida Family Policy Council for shedding light on this area. Without your enlightening words on the subject the rest of us would have gone through life believing that……

    ” A loving family and a happy healthy child are as far from ugly as it gets ” Buddah is laughing Feb 6 2010 @ 8:03 am.

  13. I am seeking royalties for the use of my late great uncles likeness. lol. I am only kidding.

  14. Continuing my rant … we all know that physical beauty directly correlates with parenting skills. Heck, even intelligence is dependent on the height of ones cheekbones and the svelteness of ones figure. As exhibit A, I offer this poor dunder-headed soul, who obviously has a galaxy size problem in the appearance department. Oh, his poor embarrassed relativity back home:

    http://msnbcmedia3.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/z_Projects_in_progress/050418_Einstein/050405_einstein_tongue.widec.jpg

  15. The couple on the left needs to call up Reille Hunter’s lawyer and see if they can get some kind of an injunction.

  16. Personally, I am hoping for a hell for these conservative miscreants. To deny a child a happy productive and life after banishment from a likely Christian home (statistically speaking) out of some bigoted notion of what a real “family” is supposed to be, seems more than a venial sin to me. Maybe Jerry Falwell can book reservations for them, since, for him, it’s a local call.

  17. Are not Adoptions, Neglect Abuse and other types of cases like these closed to the public?

    So the question that I have is other than the person who had the child or the childs father. How did they become aware of the status of this case. Was grandmother upset?

    It is my understanding that the order of placement goes as this. 1) Parents 2) Relative Placement 3)Foster Care.

    So if the parents are deemed unfit then the next order of business is the extended family. I guess they did not meet the burden either.

  18. Beauty is skin deep and Ugly is to the bone.

    I’d not give much for a man’s (womans) religion whose dog is not the very better for it.

    I don’t remember the author.

  19. One must appreciate the irony in a group using, shall we say, “unfortunate looking” as a propaganda weapon against formation of a family that results in not only failure at bar but as serves to illustrate said group’s own true ugliness. Ugly of the kind which is to the bone or so I am told. And I don’t mean “unfortunate looking”. True ugly comes in pretty wrappers often as not.

    A loving family and a happy healthy child are as far from ugly as it gets.

    Opposing that quality of domestic situation – no matter the particulars of composition – is the antithesis of civilized.

  20. Further proof that the so-called ‘family values’ crowd couldn’t care less about children or families.

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