Yeah Baby!!!!
Jun 27, 2003 Feminism/Politics
Supreme Court Strikes Down Texas Sodomy Law
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down on Thursday sodomy laws that make it a crime for people of the same sex to engage in “deviate sexual intercourse” a ruling that gives gay rights advocates a major victory.
By a 6-3 vote, the nation’s highest court in an opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy ruled a Texas law violated constitutional privacy rights.By a separate 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court also overturned its 1986 ruling that upheld a Georgia sodomy law and that declared that homosexuals have no constitutional right to engage in sodomy in private.The 30-year-old Texas “homosexual conduct” law makes it a crime for same-sex couples to engage in “deviate sexual intercourse,” defined as oral and anal sex, even if it is consensual and occurs in the privacy of a person’s bedroom. Violators face a maximum punishment of a $500 fine.
The ruling will invalidate sodomy laws that exist in 13 states. Besides Texas, the other states are Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.
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More comments re., biracial
Jun 27, 2003 Adoption
I agree that people shouldn’t adopt a child whose ancestry is going to be something difficult for them to deal with and folks need to be honest with themselves. And I think it’s fortunate that those of us who are adopting have different needs because all sorts of children need adoptive families.
The part that disturbs me about the biracial stipulation is something that tonight’s social worker (and other adoption social workers I’ve talked to online and in person) said: That plenty of people who *only* want biracial babies are gambling on getting a baby with a lighter complexion. Two social workers in different states told me about families who brought adopted babies back at four and six months and relinqueshed parental rights before the adoption was finalized because the baby was too dark. (Babies of color are often born lighter and their complexions darken as they get older.)
Does his mean all families who will adopt a biracial baby but not a full African American baby think this way? Of course not and I don’t mean to tar them all with the same brush. But as I personally explore transracial adoption, these issues become more relevant to me.
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Tags: Erica, transracial
Hooray! Homestudy!
Jun 27, 2003 Adoption
Ok, you guys were right: I didn’t need to freak out but at least now my house is cleaner than it has been in months!
Our social worker was wonderful, really encouraging. We will be in the birth pool as soon as we get out autobiography in (she said ours only needed a couple of changes) and that will likely be at our next homestudy visit on July 7th. She also said that there are very few people in the program right now willing to take a child whose birth parents are both African American. (As an aside I’ll say that there’s a waiting list for the biracial — one African American parent, one non African American parent — program, which astounds me. I don’t really get how people could say they’ll take a black child but only if s/he is not “fully” black.) In other words, our wait may not be very long.
I said, jokingly, “Hey, a baby by the new year!”
And she said, “I can’t make promises but it’s certainly very possible.”
All of the adoptive parents in the African American program who finished the January training have placed by now. One of them placed a week after entering the pool.
Very exciting stuff, eh?
The hard part now is filling out our birth parent preference letter. This is how much history of drug/alcohol use or family mental illness that we’re willing to accept. I think that’s impossible to say in general but she said we can just put down “call first” and then before they give a birth mom our bio, they’d call us with her health history (and they can fax ultrasounds and things to our doctor) and we can say yes or no to sharing our info with her.
So that’s going to be the topic of discussion this weekend, I think.
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Tags: Erica
Comments on the post below
Jun 25, 2003 Feminism/Politics
I’ve gotten some comments privately, too, so I thought I’d address them here.
Here’s why I posted it: When we talk about work vs. home, there’s always this assumption that the parent in question (usually the mom) who is contemplating work vs. home personally has this great fulfilling job where she carries a briefcase and makes Important Decisions. This totally leaves out a whole world of parents who are working at mind-sucking, miserable jobs.
What I liked about the post I quoted below is that it says, heck, jobs aren’t worthwhile just because they’re jobs. I know this likely isn’t news to you but it’s news to lots of people. Trust me. Decompressing from work is really hard and there are plenty of women (men, too, but I mostly hang with women) who are now homemakers (for lack of a better word) and are slightly freaking out because their jobs defined them. Never mind that they didn’t like their jobs or that their jobs didn’t like them, it’s still hard to recreate yourself in the image of a Parent Who Is at Home.
I’m betting it’s even harder for men, actually, because this job=you has been drilled into them much more extremely.
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Having it all
Jun 25, 2003 Feminism/Politics
From Buttafly :: Intelligent Procrastination:
Liberals and conservatives alike fill up endless pages with words of advice to women about how they can try to “have it all,” meaning have both a family and a career. Liberals suggest having fathers stay home more and government programs to help mothers keep working after their children are born; conservatives usually recommend that women postpone a career until their children are in school full time. Such advice usually comes with the doleful caveat that, alas, it is perhaps impossible for women to have it all and they will inevitably have to make career sacrifices.
Wait a minute. “Having it all” requires having a job? When did we forget that work sucks?
Women seem to think that if they don’t work they’re doomed to a life of fretting about burnt cookies and ring-around-the-collar. It’s a sad state of affairs if people think that life degenerates into a lackluster, unimportant existence if they’re not being told what to do by a boss. Besides, what if being a housewife did mean your worries revolved around cooking and keeping the house in order? Is that any less noble than your worries revolving around total quality initiatives and process optimization so that the company you work for can make a little bit more money?