Grandad in fury as gays adopt kids

[Albus]

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/01/28/grandad-in-fury-as-gays-adopt-kids-115875-21076739/

Two children will be adopted by a gay couple after their grandparents were told they were too old to raise them.

The grand-parents wanted to raise the five-year-old boy and his four-year-old sister, their heroin addict daughter's children.

But the pair, from Edinburgh, were told that at 46 and 59 they were too old.

They agreed to the adoption - then protested when they learned the children were going to two gay men.

The grandfather says he was told if he did not drop his objections he and his wife would not get access to the children.

He said: "It breaks my heart to think that our grandchildren are being forced to grow up without a mother figure.

[non sociopath skin]

1. This seems to be a bizarre story to me

I simply find it hard to believe that we have the full details. It sounds like a script deliberately calculated to raise the ire of every right-wing commentator and every tabloid in the land and I can't see any LA of any stripe being so cack-handed.

Anybody out there know the full story?

The Skin

[Albus]

2. Thing is though, there have been a number of these social services

stories in recent years.

Mark & Nicky Webster, who had three children taken away by social services and adopted before fleeing to Ireland to have their forth were eventually exonerated of child abuse and allowed to keep him. The other three remain separated from them though.

http://www.fassit.co.uk/save_our_children.htm

Fran Lyon, was told that her baby was to be taken into care at birth, so she fled to Sweden, where he had the child and continues to live, without problems. Swedish doctors have advised her to sue.

http://heartofmorpeth.com/NewsAndViews/FranLyon/franlyon.html

Gail and Graham Curlew were deprived of their grandchildren by Norfolk County Council

http://tetrasomy.forumup.ca/ptopic596-tetrasomy.html

There are others.

Then, of course, on the other side of the coin there are the cases where social services have disastrously failed to protect children, despite there being lots of danger signals. Baby P and Victoria Climbie come to mind.

So yes, LAs can be very cack handed on occasion and while we all know that social workers have very difficult jobs to do, they are people, just the same as the rest of us, and, just like the rest of us, some will be incompetent, some will be high handed, and some will be downright nasty and evil.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. There's more detail in the Telgraph

One part of which may be relevant:

The grandfather is a farmhand who has angina while his wife is receiving medication for diabetes

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/4365171/Social-services-remove-young-children-from-grandparents-and-arrange-adoption-by-gay-couple.html

Perhaps that, with the age, has made social services decide there's too much risk of serious ill health or death before the children have grown up. :shrug: I'd have thought they're not too old, personally - there's also uncles and/or aunts at home:

Four of the couple's children still live at home, two at school and two in full-time work, and they said they were "angry and upset" about what had happened to their niece and nephew

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/scotland/4379200/Mothers-anger-over-gay-couples-adoption-of-her-children.html

However, I have less sympathy for them, when they have run to the newspapers only when they found out the prospective adoptive parents are gay. The protestations of "we're not homophobic" are ringing a bit hollow.

[non sociopath skin]

4. Yes, that's clearly the "hidden agenda" for the Red Tops and right-wingers ....

... who wouldn't have given a tinker's cuss about this family if it hadn't been an excuse for a bit of gay-bashing.

The Skin

[Donald Ian Rankin]

5. I don't think that's true.

Remember that the social services are also a favourite tabloid target, two of te faovurite criticisms being a) that they try too hard to leave children with their families (repeated often in the wake of the baby P case) and b) that they are too willing to separate children from their families (as here).

[non sociopath skin]

6. Of course. But it's the gay adoption bit that took it from page 3 ...

... to front-page headlines and BritFreeper notoriety.

The Skin

[emad]

7. How to fuck up kids and get away with it:

There's enough family trauma already with the kids' mother being an addict.

Brand the maternal grandparents equally incapable because of age, health, any other spurious reasons you can think up.

Re-brand the kids as part of a politically correct New Labour gay family, never mind that what all kids want is an ordinary Ma and Pa.

Still, the story will feed the wingnuts and stir up more rampant homophobia.

[Albus]

8. Well said! Among all the politics and vested interests in these things, we should never

forget that at the very heart of it lie the interests of the most vulnerable people. The children themselves.

None of us should forget that, but too many of us do I fear.