Group Asks Judge To Halt Gay, Lesbian Adoptions
San Antonio Express News,
May 4, 1999
Box 2171, San Antonio, TX 78297-2171
Fax 210-351-7372
Email: letters@express-news.com
Jim Vertuno, Associated Press
AUSTIN - Lawyers for a conservative legal group asked a judge Monday to
order the state to stop letting gay and lesbian people adopt children or provide them
foster homes.
The Plano-based Liberty Legal Institute, which focuses on family and constitutional
issues, filed the motion on behalf of Rebecca Bledsoe, a Child Protective Services
supervisor who said she was demoted after removing a 3-year-old boy from a lesbian
couple’s home in Dallas two years ago.
Bledsoe, a Child Protective Services caseworker, is suing to return to her supervisory
position.
The request was filed with state District Judge Bill Rhea in Dallas, said
Bledsoe’s attorney, Roger Evans. The judge didn’t immediately rule.
Child Protective Services has a duty to place children in law-abiding homes, Evans
said. Homosexual sodomy is against the law - although rarely enforced - in Texas.
Texas has no policy concerning an adoptive or foster parents’ sexual orientation,
and the request essentially asks the judge to force the state to adopt one, Evans said.
"It’s not particularly intrusive to question about homosexual conduct in the
context of inquiry about pedophilia, or past sexual abuse. It’s just another
question," Evans said. "We’re asking the court to interpret the law in the
interest of the children of Texas."
Bledsoe said she thinks placing children into a gay or lesbian household is never
appropriate.
The role-modeling of a married couple "is what is considered normal," Bledsoe
said. " We should make every effort to place a child with a married man and woman,
and our agency does not make that effort."
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