The 2015 Values Voter Summit — an annual event where conservatives gather round to bitch about abortion, big government and gays — has come and gone. Many delusional and hateful things were said about LGBT people. God smiting the United States over marriage equality was a popular theme.
Hitting all the big themes was Star Parker, the founder of Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education (CURE), which pushes for “free-market solutions to poverty.” According to Parker, fighting poverty is “not to be the work of the state, but the work of the church.”
After ranting about the amount of money government wastes on the poor and propagating the lie that Planned Parenthood sells “baby body parts,” she said something very interesting, indeed.
“We have 500,000 orphans in our foster system,” Parker said. “Most God-fearing Christians don’t even know we have an orphan system, but those homosexuals know because now that they’re married, that’s where they’re going to get their children, right out of our foster system!”
OK, wait. Slow down. What? Is she really saying that the majority of Christians in America have no idea that this country has so many children in the foster system in need of care? How on earth do they not know this? Were those thousands of people Parker was addressing at the Values Voter Summit just learning about this for the first time?
According to Parker, homosexuals know all about the foster-care system and they’re taking in and adopting children. But Christians (who are never gay, obviously) have no fucking idea?
Clearly, Parker is trying to scare folks by claiming that homosexuals are snatching kids out of the foster system, as she’s implying that said homes have some kind of nefarious purpose for doing so, which is bullshit.
The truth is that there are plenty of lesbian and gay couples who are, in fact, foster parents or who have adopted kids from the foster system.
A great example: April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, whose legal challenge to Michigan’s anti-gay-marriage law made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where they won. The reason they were suing Michigan in the first place was over what was in the best interest of their children. Under Michigan law, they could foster jointly but could not adopt jointly. Wanting their children to have a legal relationship with both parents, they sued. The rest is history.
This country’s foster-care system is a mess. There are hundreds of thousands of kids and not nearly enough foster families. Kids are bounced from home to home, many until they turn 18 and age out of the system, at which point they’re basically told, “See ya. Good luck.” Spoiler alert: Many of these adults have a very hard time making it once they’re on their own.
So forgive me if I find it odd that right-wing Christians know where every Planned Parenthood facility is and have plenty of time to harass women going in for pap smears, but are apparently unaware that there are so many children who have already been born who desperately need help. Even if they are aware, they’re not stepping up to do it.
If ever there was evidence that the people at the Values Voter Summit have an incredibly warped sense of values, this is it. Then again, under the right-wing demands for small government, foster kids are just a bunch of takers who, according to Parker, just need some “free-market solutions.” Just make sure they aren’t taken in by gay and lesbian couples and they’ll be fine.