Count Me Concerned

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-12598896

This article blows my mind a little . . . a couple is denied the right to provide foster care because "they said they could not tell a child a homosexual lifestyle was acceptable".

"Significantly, the court said that while there was a right not to face discrimination on the basis on either religion or sexual orientation, equality of sexual orientation took precedence."

Wait what?! . . . Anyone else catch the paradox? "Equality of sexual orientation took precedence." I think the term they're looking for is: inequality.

Sure. Ideally, parenting should be a privilege and not a right. But it's not. The power to create and rear children is kind of a mind-blowing phenom when you stop and think about it. Seems like something that's a big enough deal that it should be kept under lock and key. But it's not.

For a group of people worried about parents offending and harming children, we're not really advocating much abstinence to our youth who could potentially become premature parents, even if the sex is "safe". And other than sexual predators, we don't force contraceptives or castration on the "undeserving" or the "incompetent". Thank goodness.

Really, as long as you've got a willing companion (well, and sometimes that's not even a prereq) procreation is an opportunity afforded to all the fertile of our species.

And here we have a couple, willing to take in kids who have been abandoned or neglected or mistreated or in peril and we're worried that they might share some personal opinions with the children in their homes.

All I can think is how many unplanned and unwanted children there are. Kids who end up in proctor homes or orphanages with "staff" instead of parents. Kids born to parents who can't get past their own neuroses long enough to let own children know that they're loved . . . kids born to addicts and abusers. Kids born to poor families who were hungry before one more mouth was added.

No family or set of parents are perfect. They just aren't. Do I want foster programs to be as sure as they possibly can that they're getting parents that don't hit and sexually exploit? You bet. But no child has a guarantee to perfection . . . EVERYONE has hang ups. EVERYONE.

And since when did good parents guarantee a good child? It doesn't. How many people do you love that are amazing in spite of, and probably because of, the trials incurred by their family?

Obviously we want the best for children when we have the choice, but no one is a diviner and the cycle of families has been producing unpredictable results since the dawn of time.

The connotation that such clairvoyance and measure of perfection exists seems to be eerily fated toward the 2081 world of Harrison Bergeron . . .

Which, begs the question: who deemed themselves perfect enough to delineate parental perfection?

Interestingly enough, there were two Justices in on this decision. One was Justice Munby who seems to have some very personal baggage around his own family life and seems to identify as a victim of family abuse . . . and the other is Justice Beatson who came into the High Court directly from acadamia . . . and who has no mention of an immediate family or children in any article or bio I've been able to collect. . . It's easy to find mud on those in the trenches, Jutsice Beatson.