Family Values – Utah style

Sometimes I just want to go out and howl at the moon when I read things like this:

A woman that can’t care for her four children—she’s got a drug problem, the father is not on the scene—begged her uncle to take in her children. He’s already raising two children but he did the right thing and took in his niece’s four children—kids that range in age from 10 months to 11 years old. Enter the state of Utah. The man that took in his niece’s four kids is gay and lives with a male partner. The state of Utah wants to remove the four children from the home of Michael Gregg Valdez—he’s the uncle—and Michael Oberg and put them in foster care.

But in Utah there's one big problem with this whole scenario:

To the state, it's a simple matter of the law, which says that to adopt or be a foster parent, you must be legally married or single and not cohabitating.

But for the four siblings whose lives could be forever affected by this ludicrous homophobic law there’s an even bigger, more heartbreaking problem than Utah’s rabid fear of Teh Gay:

An 11-year-old boy who is in the temporary custody of his great-uncle says he wants to stay where he is. But his great-uncle is gay, and the state of Utah doesn’t license foster couples who aren’t legally married.

That means this boy and his three brothers and sisters could be taken away from relatives and split up until their mother regains custody.

The boy said, “I would rather live with my mom. But if I can’t, I’d rather live here.”

But because of this asinine law, tearing this family apart would be inevitable since:

Finding foster parents for four siblings ranging in age from 10 months to 11 years is nearly impossible. Finding adoptive parents for a sibling group that large is utterly impossible. But the law in Utah is clear: These four children should be tossed into the foster care system, potentially separated from each other for the rest of their lives, and if their mother loses custody permanently, denied any chance of a stable home. Because it would be illegal to place these children in the care of a loving, stable same-sex couple that they’re related to.

Well thankfully not everyone in Utah is insane:

Officials [requested] that the court take custody or grant custody to the state’s Division of Child and Family Services. On Friday, the courts took custody, then turned around and granted Valez temporary custody of the children.

“The judge said, ‘I see absolutely no reason why the kids can’t stay where they’re at,’” Valdez said.

Thank goodness there are still people around with enough decency, common sense, and the heart to do right by these kids.

Family Values? Pfffffffft!

Time to go out and howl at the moon, thanks a lot Andrew and Dan.