Religious right selfishly turns boy into pawn in gay-adoption battle

On the left is the picture that the Florida Family Policy Council of Orlando, used to illustrate the gay couple that was awarded custody of a relative. It appeared under the headline: "FL judge violates law, places child in homosexual adoption" (on the right) is the actual couple.

The judge’s ruling said exactly what most people would want to hear in an adoption case.

It said that the 1-year-old boy who had been living with his foster parents was “happy and thriving” — and that a permanent adoption made perfect sense.

It should be a simple story with a happy ending.

Except it is not.

That judge’s ruling — which focused solely on the child’s well-being — enraged some on the religious right.

Why? Because the little boy’s adoptive parents are gay.

So now those who profit from division are pouncing.

They aren’t the people who have cared for this little boy, who have nursed his wounds and tucked him in at night. In fact, they haven’t done a thing for him.

They haven’t consulted the experts — everyone from a child psychologist to a Guardian ad Litem — who say the parents provide precisely the loving environment that this child needs.

All these critics know is that they don’t want gay people to have the same rights as straight people.

So they want him separated from the parents who love him.

“Arrogant judicial activism” was how the finger-waggers at Orlando’s Florida Family Policy Council described the ruling in an alert it sent out to its members last week.

And to make their point about just how frightening this ruling was, the Policy Council included a photograph of the couple — a strange and androgynous-looking duo, one with bleached skin and both with mullet haircuts. The couple look so odd (you literally can’t tell whether they are male or female) that one might wonder how any judge could place a young child with such a disturbing-looking duo.

Except the judge didn’t.

The abnormal-looking couple that the Policy Council chose to illustrate this story is not the same couple granted the right to adopt the child.

No, the two-woman couple awarded custody of the 1-year-old — South Florida trade-show executive Vanessa Alenier and her partner, Melanie Leon — look more like J.Crew models: all-American with catalogue clothes and smiles.

The picture that the Policy Council chose was a grotesque caricature.

These are the dirty tactics of Christianity’s far-right warriors.

Not the majority of mainstream Christians, mind you. Not those who are focused on caring for their own families and practicing their own faith — but those who are obsessed with homosexuality.

These extremists wage their campaigns of intolerance based on deception and misrepresentation.

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