Adoption Regulations should be approved as proposed to protect prospective parents from discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religious affiliation, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability or political affiliation. This allows the best interests of the child to be the paramount consideration by professionals in determining an appropriate home and family for each child. With 6,000 children in Virginia awaiting adoption, and one of the lowest rates of public adoption in the country, we need every available capable parent and/or family. Our children deserve this. 

Those who cast this as a religious freedom argument are wrong. There is no restriction on their right to exercise their faith contained in this proposal. It is a false argument based on simple, unrelenting prejudice. 

I challenge those who make specious claims about same-gender-loving parents to let down their walls enough to get to know some. They are some of the most wonderful people in the world. Not all are qualified to be, or desire to become, parents, but those that do need to be treated with respect--the same way heterosexual prospective adoption parents are treated (certainly not all heterosexual parents qualify or desire this either). And everyone should drop this nonsense about gays and lesbians being pedophiles. More heterosexual people are pedophiles by far. Should we just disqualify all groups, and let the children rot? 

Or shall we step up and join the 21st century and create opportunity for our children to thrive? We cannot waste any of them, and shame on us for allowing it to ever happen, especially to satisfy the narrow prejudices of people who refuse to change, even though an open reading of Scripture, and certainly the teaching of Jesus, shows that change--widening the circle to include ALL God's people--is exactly what God demands.