I am young. I will not be seriously considering children for some years to come. I'm a preprofessional music educator, I babysit some of the greatest kids I've ever met, I've worked with church children's choirs, nurseries, and Sunday schools since I was eleven years old. I think children are the most interesting kind of people there are, and all it takes is the proper guidance to turn them into world-changers. I am also a lesbian.

Now imagine me, if you will, at eight years old with my baby doll. I'm probably chattering at you nonstop, telling you the baby's name and his favorite food and how he won't go to sleep at night unless I sing to him. Now tell that child she can't have him. Tell me I will never have a child because I was born wrong, born with some switch in my brain flipped that will keep me from ever being able to raise a child in the right kind of home.

Tell me I can't be a mother. Tear from my arms the children I can never have.

Tell the little girl who's been in the system her entire life that she won't have a family this year because the only couple that showed interest was white and she's African-American when she'd give anything to never have to pack everything she owns into a garbage bag again. Tell the boy who's never been read a bedtime story that you'll be denying him parents who will love him.

There is so much love to be given and so much is needed. By locking it up you ensure that no one will ever know how many lives that love could have touched, and that breaks our hearts.