An update to my May of 2011 post: "2 gay dads, 12 happy kids, and the family values politicians who legislate against them"

Uhmm - Make that 14 happy kids - Amazing dads come through again, adopting 2 more children in crisis.

Well once again I am updating a story I posted back in 2011. This time it is a happy story. With some ironic twists. I mean this is Arizona you know --- and the story involves 2 gay men --- who have been the go-to guys for Arizona's Child Protective Services every time they have a crisis situation involving abused and neglected children. What irony - no? Arizona hasn't been the most gay friendly haven in the country.

This state, with the help of millions of dollars, lots of fear-mongering, and a ton of hideous lies from the likes of Cathi Herrod of the Center for Arizona Policy, passed a draconian amendment to our state constitution in 2008 making darn sure that no gay or lesbian couples could ever get married or even enter into a civil union. Cathi Herrod wanted to make damn sure that families like Steven and Roger Ham's family would have absolutely NO rights, NO recognition, NO protections, NO dignity, No anything. It took this nasty homophobic woman 2 tries to get that amendment passed and lord knows how many millions of dollars, but she got it done.

Meanwhile, desperate social workers from Child Protective Services and family court judges have been turning to Steven and Roger Ham for years. Whenever there is a child in crisis (read: abused by a straight couple) that no one else (read: straight couples) will take, Steven and Roger Ham are the couple they turn to. But Arizona's top "family advocate", Cathi Herrod, still believes that people like Steven and Roger are a huge threat to straight people's marriages and unfit to raise children. Too bad (for her) stories like the ones below keep undermining her blatant ugly lies about the dangers of allowing gay and lesbian families to have their relationships legally recognized and their families afforded the same rights and protections "traditional" families have.

From the original story I blogged about in 2011:

State child-welfare officials learned to trust and rely on the Hams, bringing them 42 foster children over 10 years. Some needed shelter for a few days; others stayed for months. Child caseworkers knew the men would take in any child, day or night, no questions asked, and treat them as their own. And in the Hams' home, children were never sent back for doing something wrong, and it didn't matter that they were not all the same color, or had special needs. 

And the story that was published in today's Arizona Republic:

Steven and Roger Ham, two gay dads raising 12 children adopted from foster care, were done. They had six girls and six boys, ages 4 to 18. Their youngest was out of diapers, their oldest about to finish high school.

So after eight years and with a full house, they closed their Arizona foster- and adoptive-care licenses in May 2010. Their family was complete.

But the judge handling their last adoption warned them: “Never say ‘never.’ ”

And one January night after all the kids were in bed, the last of four loads of laundry in the dryer, Steven and Roger saw a report on the news that would change everything.

Two foster parents in Prescott had been arrested on charges of child abuse after a teacher alerted police to a 4-year-old student covered in bruises.

Roger frowned at Steven. Could it be? Their daughter Ambrose, who’s 6 now, had two younger half-siblings in foster care in Prescott, one of them a 4-year-old girl.

The details of the case were heart-wrenching. A police officer noted that bruises on the girl’s face were so deep they could be seen from inside her mouth. A 2-year-old brother also had been taken into state care.

“We felt sick,” Steven said. “We thought, ‘Those are our own daughter’s siblings.’

“It was devastating.”

The men had known the children were in foster care but believed it was a good situation. They had not been asked to take the children because they had closed their license.

So once again the Hams came through for the State of Arizona's most vulnerable children. They quickly renewed their foster-care license, a process that normally takes months, and they brought Bella and Julian home.

Cathi Herrod has got to be quaking in her combat boots. Couples like Steven and Roger Ham are NOT threats to straight couples' marriages as Cathi would have us believe, but they are godsends to the 14 abused and vulnerable children they adopted and the many, many children they've fostered over the years that no one else would take in.

It's got to be getting harder and harder for ole Cathi to make her pathetic claims that legalizing gay marriage is an attack to weaken the traditional family when there are saints like Steven and Roger around. And I've got to believe that there are many social workers from the Child Protective Services agency and judges from the family courts who have turned to Steven and Roger Ham for help over the years who see Cathi Herrod for who she really is - a despicable liar and a fraud.

It's time for Cathi Herrod to stop advocating for destructive laws that hurt families she does not approve of and start advocating for all families, not just the few that meet her standards. And if she cannot do that, she needs to plant her sanctimonious ass in a saddle and ride off into the Arizona sunset - never to be seen or heard of again.