Then, a blog I read from time to time had this article on it which points to a piece of legislation that has been proposed (I can't quite figure out if this piece has been put before the Ohio legislature yet or not).
House Bill 515 is a modification to the legislation in Ohio around adoption and foster parenting laws. At least, on the surface.
However, a brief perusal of this law shows that it is a diatribe of legalized bigotry:
(B) An individual may not adopt if the court in which the petition for adoption is filed determines that any of the following apply:
(1) The individual is a homosexual, bisexual, or transgender individual.
(2) The individual is a step-parent of the child to be adopted and is a homosexual, bisexual, or transgender individual.
(3) The individual resides with an individual who the court determines is a homosexual, bisexual, or transgender individual.
The law goes on to attempt to define their use of the terms homosexual, bisexual or transgender:
(C) As used in this section:
(1) "Bisexual" means an individual who engages in sexual activity with members of both sexes.
(2) "Homosexual" means an individual who engages in sexual activity with another individual of the same sex.
(3) "Transgender" means an individual who may be classified according to an accepted nosology, such as the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, as having a gender identity disorder, or characterized by either of the following:
(a) A strong and persistent cross-gender identification;
(b) Persistent discomfort with that individual's sex or sense of inappropriateness in the gender role of that sex.
The jaw-dropping stupidity of such a law is amazing. First of all, there is no compelling evidence that parenting by any of the three groups mentioned has any adverse impact on the children. Second, and perhaps laughably, the law on one hand ignores studies by organizations like the APA, and defers to work favored by NARTH such as this inconclusive muddle of gibberish or the pseudo-science of Paul Cameron and his Family Research Institute. (Notably, Paul Cameron was booted from the APA in 1983 for violating their ethics guidelines). Then, in the later parts of the law, the lawmakers fall back on the APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) to reinforce their position. So what is it people - the APA's DSM is useful because it's convenient, but their studies are inconvenient? The science behind one is good, and the same science standards applied to the other are somehow "bad science"?
However, the logical fallacies of Ohio's legislators are far from my point. That they would even dream of writing a piece of legislation that was so obviously a throwback to the kind of mentality that believed that "blacks are inferior" back in the slavery-era days is stunning.
Fortunately for Canadians, the equality provisions of the Charter would mean that such a law would have to be firmly and soundly rooted in rational facts before it would stand under a section 15 challenge. The use of Section 33 - The Not Withstanding Clause would give such a law a relatively short shelf life - about 5 years. (Unless Canadians were stupid enough to re-elect the same party after they wrote such a noxious law)
On the other side of the coin, with links like these, I can only guess how long it will be before some alleged "back bencher" writes a similarly objectionable (and ill-informed) piece of legislation for one of Harper's so-called "free votes".
This is one of the reasons why Pierre Trudeau's placement of the Charter in Canada's Constitution is a stroke of absolute genius. While an act of Parliament, such as our former "Bill of Rights", may be repealed and modified readily by other "acts of Parliament", modifying the Constitution (and therefore the Charter) is a much more difficult task to undertake.
[Update 11/2/06]: Apparently the bill mentioned above scared even the Republican caucus off in Ohio.
1 comment:
But that's the problem with the charter, it prevents the Conservatives from doing whatever they want since what they want is (to them) so obviously the "will of the majority".
I've never understood why conservatives have to be so hypocritical in their views and outlook.
JN
www.nishiyama.tzo.com
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