I've never much cared for Florida. I mean, sure, alligators are cool. It has nice weather in the winter and is home to many kind grandmas, not to mention Disney World. But it also is the only state to completely ban gay people from adopting children. And I can't help but take that a little personally.
Granted, Florida does allow gays to be foster parents. And even that's too much for Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, who is turning up the anti-gay rhetoric as he vies for the Republican nomination for governor.
McCollum, who defended Florida's anti-gay adoption ban in court and who paid George "Rentboy" Rekers $120,000 to act as his expert anti-gay witness, doesn't think gays should be allowed to be foster parents, either.
"I really do not think that we should have homosexuals guiding our children. I think that it's a lifestyle that I don't agree with," McCollum told the Florida Baptist Witness. "It's my personal faith, religious faith, that I don't believe that the people who do this should be raising our children. It's not a natural thing. You need a mother and a father. You need a man and a woman. That's what God intended."
Hmm. So no homos around the kids because McCollum's religious-based bigotry is more important than kids without stability in their lives. And gays simply can't provide that because they are "people who do this … thing" that is not "natural." But what is this thing? Being gay? Having sex? Sorry to break it to you, McCollum, those things are natural.
What isn't natural is voluntarily becoming a foster parent in a state that has no shortage of kids in need of a home. Becoming a foster parent isn't exactly an innate trait. It takes a lot of consideration and sacrifice to open your life and your home to kids in need. Are there terrible foster parents out there? Oh, hell yes. And by automatically weeding out the gay ones you simply shrink the pool, not make it safer.
So if only a mother and a father will do, then that not only rules out gay folks, it also rules out single men and women, which Florida also allows to be foster parents. So I guess what McCollum really wants is to make the shortage of foster parents in Florida worse. You know, for the kids.
"And this election is about … our children," he said. "It's about the grandchildren and children of the people of Florida and making Florida a better place for them."
As long as "better" in this instance actually means "shittier," then McCollum is totally correct.
Not surprisingly, McCollum is also against letting gays and lesbians marry.
"I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman," he told the Florida Baptist Witness. "I believe that a family should consist of one man and one woman."
Wait, so if they have kids then they're not a family anymore? Dude, you're confusing me.
There's really no confusion, however, about the travesty McCollum would be as governor for LGBT Floridians. "I don't believe in involving the government in enforcing or encouraging the lifestyle of gays and homosexuals. I just don't believe that," he said.
But I guess involving the government in discriminating against "gays and homosexuals" (because there's apparently a difference) is A-OK.
