Stepping out there.

I read a column this morning that touched me. It's a blog/column maintained on the USA Today Web site by Craig Wilson. I like his column and wish I knew how to get a job doing that. Anyone who reads this regularly may have just choked on their milk that I said that. Come on- I could learn how to do a column. Really. I could.

Anyway, it prompted me to weigh in on what can be a volatile subject: gay adoption. I have to say that on this subject, I'm pretty darn liberal. I think that any child without a solid home - a real home with at least one responsible parent who is going to be there for them until they're an adult to help guide them and educate them and give them the necessities - is a child who has been let down by the world.

You don't get a choice whether you're born or where or to whom. Babies and children are helpless - at the total mercy of their circumstances. Some of us are exceptionally lucky. I personally hit the bonus ball in life's lottery. I was born; I was born in America; I was born in Texas (had to throw that one in there); and I was born to two, loving, stable parents who gave me a peaceful, secure home and encouragement that I could accomplish anything I set my mind to. I never knew poverty or great illness or the instablity of my family breaking up. I had just what every child deserves.

And in a perfect world, all adoptive parents would be just like mine. But if you're a child who doesn't have parents, or your parents are abusive and you've been sent to live in an orphanage, and you have nothing and nobody, do you really care if you have one great parent or two to love you and take care of you? Do you really care whether that person loves someone of their own sex or the opposite one? Or do you just want a safe place to live, with food on the table, clean water and hope?

I have gay relatives. One I know would've been a great mom. She never tried to adopt, and now that she is caring for aging parents, I doubt she'll try. I hate to think how hard it might have been for her if she had, though. She would've been a loving, responsible, funny, caring parent. Any child would have been lucky to have her as his champion in the world. Who could she have saved? But some in society say that no, it's better for children to languish in orphanages, with no one, one of many, than to be cared for individually by someone who loves "wrongly."

Whatever your feelings about someone's orientation, whether or not you're comfortable with someone's choice of partner (and let me say I'm not always all that comfortable with some of my heterosexual friends' choices of partner!), does that REALLY outweigh the good that a gay person or couple can do in saving a child from a life of anonymous poverty, alone and unwanted? What greater damage that must do than being fed, housed, clothed, educated and taken care of by someone who prefers partners of their own sex.