Homosexuals eye foster children
Devastating development for Missouri
JEFFERSON CITY – Foster care children in Missouri are likely to be handed over to homosexual couples thanks to a June bill signing that resulted in the repeal of a Missouri sodomy law.
Up until now, Missouri Baptist children in the Missouri Baptist Children’s Home (MBCH) have been referred to biblically married parents that are chosen by the institution’s personnel, according to MBCH President Bob Kenison. He acknowledged that this method may now be in jeopardy.
“You can’t tell them (homosexual couples) you can’t do it, if the law allows them to do it,” Kenison said. “But what you can do is refer them (to another agency).”
Kenison was asked directly if his staff has ever found itself in a situation where it had to hand over an MBCH child to a homosexual couple.
“We never knowingly do that,” he said.
Kerry Messer, lobbyist for the Christian Life Commission of the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC), explained that he had successfully fought for the last 16 years to retain the language, which reads: “A person commits the crime of sexual misconduct in the first degree if he has deviate sexual intercourse with another person of the same sex.” However, when lawmakers passed House Bill 1698, which targets sex offenders, they also voted to “clean up” the statutes by striking the sodomy clause. Gov. Matt Blunt then signed the changes into law, leading Attorney General Jay Nixon to conclude that the state no longer had any basis to deny homosexuals their so-called rights to become foster parents.
“I’m very upset and disappointed that our legislative leadership had no more leadership as to prohibit this from happening,” Messer said.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Scott Lipke, R-Jackson, is an attorney who said that state lawmakers are simply respecting the 2003 United States Supreme Court ruling, Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down the criminal prohibition of sodomy. The case has had the effect of invalidating similar laws throughout the United States—like the one in Missouri—that attempt to criminalize homosexual activity between consenting adults acting in private.
“I didn’t agree with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the issue, but unfortunately they are the last voice,” Lipke said.
Messer countered by saying “there’s a lot of blame to go around” politically. He said he tracked the bill to where he knew that the House had approved the repeal provision but that the Senate, which has a handful of Christian statesmen, had not. But at some point in the process, Messer said, someone with a liberal bent on either the legislative research staff or the House-Senate conference committee forced it through. In other words, Messer said that term limits have created a climate in the Capitol where slick-talking activists can con relatively inexperienced lawmakers into doing things that they would not ordinarily do.
“What I want to know is, ‘Who brought it to him that this part needed to be cleaned up?’” Messer said.
He admitted that the answer to that question may never be known.
One example of the secrecy involved in the process is Lipke saying that he never knew of a Kansas City case three years ago in which two lesbians, Lisa Johnston and Dawn Roginski, applied for foster parent licenses only to be denied by Department of Social Services policy that was based on the existing state sodomy law. And the intrigue swirling around this issue most assuredly engulfs gubernatorial politics with Blunt, a Republican, and Nixon, a Democrat, preparing for their showdown in 2008.
Nixon, who was appealing a Jackson County Circuit Court ruling in February favoring the lesbians, contends that the state no longer has an argument that would prevent them from raising a foster child. Blunt, who prefers to place foster children into the biblical family structure, disagrees with Nixon and is encouraging the Department of Social Services to maintain its policy even though it appears to be on shaky legal ground because of Lawrence v. Texas. A few lawsuits by emboldened homosexual couples may be all it will take to crush any remaining resistance to their obtaining foster children in Missouri. Indeed, Messer said some Missouri counties are already letting homosexual and lesbian couples have these children. It is also likely that the right to obtain will give homosexual activists more political and legal ammunition to bolster their push for homosexual marriage and a redefinition of the traditional family in Missouri.
Deborah Scott, associate director of Social Services, said the department is drafting an emergency rule that it hopes will prevent homosexual couples from obtaining foster children.
“The department is troubled that the court did not have the opportunity to hear our arguments about adding potential trauma and confusion to the lives of abused and neglected children by placing them in a home with an alternative lifestyle,” Scott said.
Messer lamented the pitfalls of the political process on this matter.
“Bureaucrats, staffers and lobbyists have much more internal influence than the general public realizes,” he said. “In this case, they have left a lot of good people out to dry.
“We as Missouri Baptists are going to come back with an agenda that the Legislature deal with foster care now that this has occurred. We cannot with any integrity do anything less than demand that the Legislature fix this problem of homosexual foster care.”
“We need to be urging Christian parents to step up,” Kenison said. “Right now, Missouri Baptist Children’s Home is trying to find 1,000 families that are willing to take foster children. We’re making good progress, but we’d really like to have another 500-600 families.”