John Merli: Virginia's motto -- Forward, into the past!

Column

The commonwealth’s breathtaking march back to the Sixties — the 1860s — under way down in Richmond contin­ued this week unabated. As they used to declare in those old black-and-white horror movies, “Surely they must be stopped before they can kill again!”

The latest grand insult to humankind at the hands of the GOP General Assembly, and dutifully backed by our GOP governor, managed once again to offend yet another social group in the name of some of our law­makers’ moral and religious beliefs .

Following in the legislative footsteps of only North Da­kota (a great state, but hardly our moral rudder), Virginia took a giant step towards allowing private adoption agencies to, in effect, inform gay couples that they are not worthy enough to adopt our precious children. No, I am not making this up for weird comic relief.

Now granted, “regular” straight marriages with mixed marital records that enjoy a divorce rate hovering around 50 percent somehow pass muster as worthy pa­rental material. And all those Newts out there who may be guilt of infidelity on several counts and now live with their third spouses also are not automatically excluded from adoption eligibility .

Apparently these “flawed” folks are just fine in the eyes of GOP lawmakers, while gay couples (including those le­gally married in other states) simply need not apply. Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t bother.

Both chambers of the General Assembly — backed by Gov. Bob McDonnell’s typical blessing of all things GOP — are busy adding a so-called “conscience clause” to allow faith-based adop­tion agencies receiving state money to be able to choose the “suitability” of prospec­tive parents. That sounds all well and good, but “con­science clause,” as everyone knows, is code for legally al­lowing all those God-fearing straights out there to reject all those godless gay married couples based solely on the highly disproven and, there­fore, ignorant belief that children raised in gay homes are somehow in jeopardy compared to all the Ozzie & Harriet households out there (that haven’t existed since the Fifties, if then).

Any of us who have known gay couples that have raised adopted kids know full well that gay parents are no more (or less) likely to screw up their children’s upbringing than the rest of us. To allow the moral and religious beliefs of others (in this case, alarmingly, local politicians) to give private groups the blessing of the commonwealth of Virginia to legally discriminate against homosexuals in adoption proceedings is beyond mere stupidity — it’s hypocritical and sanctimonious in the extreme. It also signals to every American in every state in the union (sans North Da­kota) that state-sanctioned bigotry is alive and well and living in Virginia.

What does legally consti­tute a safe home environ­ment for adopted kids in Virginia is pretty much all over the map to begin with, and again it simply comes down to what Richmond tells the rest of us is “moral” or “immoral.” Singles (gay or straight) right now are allowed to adopt. Unmarried couples (gay or straight) are not. So a single gay or straight man or woman is deemed more adoption-eligible than an unmarried couple (straight or gay) that may be pillars of their community and have lived together for 25 years and maybe even suc­cessfully raised children in another state. But a gay mar­ried couple of either gender?

No need to apply.

So we really have to wonder whether all these righteous and moral parameters dictated by lawmakers are designed to really “protect” adopted children — or to simply shield them from having to endure the horrors of living amid all those others “living in sin” and raising our kiddies.

Recent polls have shown a majority of Virginians do not think potential parents should be discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation. So if any law­makers try to wave that old chestnut “majority rules” around, they’re being deceit­ful, at best, as they busy themselves attempting to turn their creaky 19th­century mindset into 21st­century law .

Merli has worked in print and elec­tronic media for more than 40 years and has been a local columnist since 1985. He can be reached at j.merli@comcast.net.