DANGER! The Next Wave of Anti-Gay Amendments is Likely to Target Gay Adoptions!

Sorry for the lapse in blogging-- I spent last weekend at a national LGBT Family Law roundtable, and then spent this week catching up on both work and life. So here's the most alarming news from the national roundtable: Rumor has it that 4-6 states are currently considering constitutional amendments to ban gay adoptions. The states currently considering amendments are: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and Ohio. It is the sense of the national LGBT organizations that as the current wave of amendments banning gay marriage winds down, the next wave will be amendments banning gay adoptions. This is truly scary. And we need to be thinking now about how we're going to fight these amendments, even before they are actually proposed. Here's why: The Right can win this war with soundbytes. They can scare the public into supporting legislation that is blatantly anti-child and anti-family with pure rhetoric. And we can't fight them on that level. In order to win this war, we have to actually educate the general public about who gay families are. They need to see us, see our children, talk to us and spend time with our kids and go to school and church/temple with us. They need to realize that we are on the PTA with them, we shop at the same supermarkets they shop at, we sit next to them in church/temple, we go to the same parks they go to and our children play on the same Little League teams as theirs. Only actually knowing us will make them realize how wrong this type of legislation is. And that takes time. We have time now. We can start now. We can be more out, more active in our children's schools, more open with our neighbors and our extended families around the country about the realities of our lives. We don't necessarily have to join new organizations to make an impact -- we can make an impact by just being who we are in public, and doing it well. If we wait until the amendments are already on the ballots, it will be too late. So as you're making New Years resolutions, please make this one of them: gay, straight or bi, please make a point in the New Year of sharing your experiences of being in a gay family, and/or of having gay families in your community of friends, colleagues and neighbors, with someone who is unaware that gay families are positive places for children. Please talk to friends and family members in other states about these issues. Please help begin a grassroots educational movement that can defeat the alarmist soundbytes we are sure to start hearing once amendments are actually introduced. We can win this war -- we must win this war -- by starting NOW.