What should we think of Harold’s ‘shocking’ view on gay couple adoption

Surprise, surprise!

Erika Harold, the woman now seeking the Republican Party’s nomination for Illinois attorney general, may have once believed that gay couples were unfit to adopt children.

Would anyone have expected Harold to speak differently back then?

THE REASON I throw out the touch of sarcasm to the statement is that it doesn’t surprise me that someone who identifies herself with the Republican Party would have views on sexual orientation issues that might be considered a touch backward.

I certainly would be surprised if, some 20 years ago, a would-be Miss Illinois contestant would be spouting out talk publicly that could be considered sympathetic to the interests of gay people.

So when I read the report by WMAQ-TV about the recollections of people who were at the Drury Lane hotel in Oak Brook that Harold had less-than-progressive views on the issue, I wasn’t surprised.

I certainly didn’t find it “shocking” (as WMAQ did in the story’s headline). If anything, it would have been newsworthy if a credible Miss Illinois candidate had been willing to say something sympathetic about homosexuals, or adoption, or a combination of the two issues.

AS THINGS STAND, this has become the lone controversy to crop up in the Republican Party’s efforts to take back the state attorney general’s post from the Democrats, as four-term holder Lisa Madigan has decided to step down voluntarily when her term ends in January.

Harold, an attorney and Harvard Law School graduate, tries to present an image of herself as quite moderate and reasonable. To the point where there are some segments of the Republican Party who think she’s really not one of them.

But if all of this is true (for the record, Harold says she has no recollection of what she might have said some two decades ago), it would indicate clearly why a light-skinned black woman with a high education level would be so willing to identify herself as a Republican.

Although I also suspect she’s a Republican because, as a native of Urbana, that’s the local political party of significance in her part of Illinois. A central Illinois Democrat would be virtually irrelevant.

AS FOR WHAT it was Harold said, WMAQ-TV reported that back when she competed for Miss Illinois in 2000, she was asked a question (not as part of the public show, but backstage during interviews by pageant officials) about gay couples and adoption.

It was put to her whether it would be preferable to put a child with a loving gay couple, or with a heterosexual couple even if there were suspicions of child abuse.

Harold supposedly picked the latter, citing religious beliefs for not wanting to expose children to gay people. But as I wrote earlier, she now says she doesn’t remember any of this, and offers up general statements that imply her views have changed.

Which is good. The idea of someone aged 38 (as is Harold now) clinging to views from when she was 20 would be sad. For what it’s worth, this view didn’t help Harold win anything – she fell short in 2000, tried again in 2002 and won Miss Illinois, before going on to Atlantic City to win Miss America in 2003

ALTHOUGH THE ANSWER Harold is alleged to have given in 2000 certainly wouldn’t have been unexpected from a Republican-oriented person. Heck, it is still the attitude of many people who identify with the GOP.

Harold is taking a bit of a haughty attitude. Her official response is to say, “NBC Chicago has chosen to air an unverified story from anonymous sources 12 days before an election about an alleged event that supposedly occurred nearly two decades ago when Erika was 20 years old.” In short, lambast the reporter, rather than acknowledge the issue.

But a part of me wonders if this controversy may wind up gaining Harold a bit of political support – it would convince some people this one-time pageant contestant truly is one of them.

Considering that the few polls taken of this particular race show Harold with a very slight lead over opponent Gary Grasso – and about two-thirds of the electorate still undecided. It could help her win the primary; even if it would position her ideologically in such a way that she’d be likely to lose Nov. 6 to whichever of the eight Democrats now in the running manages to win the upcoming primary election.

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When it comes to adoption & Catholic Church; are we moving forward?

Is this at least one segment of the Catholic Church coming to its senses? Or is it one group figuring that someone else will pick up the legal costs, and that they will be able to benefit from someone else’s fight?

I’m not quite sure how to interpret the fact that Catholic Charities’ chapter in Peoria, Ill., is no longer a part of the court fight that is trying to keep the Catholic Church in the business of adoption of children.

THE CATHOLIC DIOCESE for Peoria, which covers a large segment of central Illinois, said it is dropping out of a lawsuit that says the state’s policies concerning adoption and gay couples is wrong, and they shouldn’t have to follow it.

What the Catholic organizations that are involved in adoption want is to be able to continue their long-standing policies of only providing children for adoption or foster care to heterosexual couples.

While state laws concerning civil unions give a legitimacy to the idea that gay couples are as legitimate as a married heterosexual couple. Which would pit the Catholic Church and the state at odds with each other.

That is what caused the Catholic dioceses of downstate Illinois to file their lawsuit challenging the state order that tells the Department of Children and Family Services to quit using Catholic Charities when it comes to placing the children that are in state custody.

AT LEAST ONE court has ruled that the state is right in such an action, on the grounds that if the church wants to be involved in adoptions and foster care then they have to play by the state’s rules (ie, the law).

That is what has the Peoria Diocese thinking that this legal fight is over. They decided last week to drop out of the fight, leaving it to the dioceses of Springfield, Joliet and Belleville to keep this battle going in court.

Reports are that by Jan. 31, the state will have transferred its contracts from the diocese to a new organization – although it’s not clear yet which group will get the contract to handle the children of central Illinois.

Although you know that whenever a government contract goes up for bid, there is always the potential for mischief and for somebody to get rich off the public tax dollar.

IT ALWAYS IS possible that if the remaining dioceses (it seems like the Springfield Diocese is most eager for this, although the Joliet Diocese that oversees Will and DuPage counties also is involved) find a court willing to reverse the sentiments of a judge in Springfield that the church has to follow state law just like everybody else, Catholic Charities in Peoria could decide to try to get back into the business of placing children who don’t have parents.

Then again, maybe they’re taking the attitude of the Catholic Charities for the Chicago Archdiocese – which decided a few years ago for completely-separate reasons that handling adoptions and foster children was just too much of a headache.

The reason this issue hasn’t gotten bigger play in Chicago is because our portion of the Catholic Church isn’t directly involved.

But it still does come down to the issue of whether or not groups can claim their own personal beliefs can allow them to get around certain portions of Illinois state law.

ALLOWING PEOPLE TO decide which laws they want to follow and which they don’t creates way too much potential for chaos in our society. I’d like to think that even the Catholic Church would agree with that latter statement.

And perhaps that is why this particular legal fight over adoption is no longer, to use the old cliché, playing in Peoria.

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Will the court intervene in Catholic desire to keep handling foster children?

Are we going to be in a long-running political fight between Illinois state government and the Catholic Church’s structure across the state?

It will be interesting to see what a Sangamon County judge (that’s the Springfield area, for those whose knowledge of the state ends at 119^th Street) does on Tuesday, because a blatantly-partisan act by that court could set the stage for a political war between the governor and the Cardinal.

EVEN THOUGH TECHNICALLY, the Chicago Archdiocese isn’t involved in this latest action. I’m sure there are Catholic officials in Chicago who are more than eager to see their religious brethren across Illinois to prevail.

At stake is the fact that the Catholic church is upset that the state government earlier this year went ahead and approved the law that permits gay couples to engage in civil unions – which provide many of the legal benefits that traditionally-married couples already get.

The church has said it does not plan to recognize such couples as having any special legal union, which would mean that it would refuse to consider them if they were interested in becoming adoptive, or foster, parents.

That led to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services late last week to inform Catholic Charities that it will no longer permit the Catholic-affiliated to have anything to do with children,.

THE NEARLY 2,000 kids now being cared for by programs affiliated with Catholic dioceses across the state will be transferred to other organizations – most of which will be secular in nature.

Catholic officials have responded to civil unions by filing a lawsuit in Sangamon County Circuit Court that seeks to force the state to keep using Catholic-affiliated adoption programs to help place children in homes.

A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. There’s no guarantee as to what will happen at that time. But officials sympathetic to the church side of this legal fight are hoping that some sort of injunction is issued by a judge to force the status quo to be maintained until the larger legal issue is resolved.

Then again, perhaps the court will do nothing of substance, and state officials will get a second legal victory this week (following the unanimous Illinois Supreme Court decision Monday that kept video poker legal to fund a massive construction program for the state).

NOT THAT THE Catholic Church has any chance of striking down the civil unions law that took effect last month, and has resulted in some 1,600 gay couples being issued licenses by counties across the state for civil unions during the law's first full month in effect.

This is about people trying to use organized religion to reject portions of our society that they don’t want to agree with. They want to be able to behave as though Illinois doesn’t recognize anything legitimate about a gay couple because it offends their sensibilities.

For those people who claim that their religious beliefs are somehow being compromised, I’d say that’s nonsense. This is about nothing more than partisan politics and ideology.

The fact that the proponents of this Catholic challenge are filing their court case in Springfield confirms that – in my mind.

FOR THIS LEGAL action was filed on behalf of the Catholic dioceses of Joliet (which covers the suburbs in Will and DuPage counties down south to Kankakee), Peoria and Belleville, along with the Illinois capital city.

The court (and political) systems in those first three cities have Democrat ideological leanings. While I realize that courts don’t knee-jerk (in most cases) rule in cases based on what the local political people desire, the fact is that it does have an influence.

Those courts might very well have tossed out the legal action to ensure that the state political powers-that-be in Springfield remain sympathetic.

But Springfield remains locally a solidly Republican establishment, including its court system. If any of those dioceses has a chance of getting the court to issue a quickie ruling in its favor while the greater legal issues are pending, it is Sangamon County.

I SUPPOSE THE Joliet Diocese could have taken the lead, but chosen to file the lawsuit in DuPage County court (located in Wheaton) – which still leans Republican, although not as intensely as it used to. But I could just as easily see the counter-measure to transfer the case to Joliet and Will County court.

Personally, I detest the idea that partisan politics and religion get co-mingled so closely. What comes next? Catholic-affiliated hospitals refusing treatment to those who don’t fit some church bureaucrat’s vision of an “ideal” person?

Which is why I wouldn’t mind it in the least if the church got out of the adoption business, if it has such a hang-up in complying with Illinois law.

It wouldn’t be the biggest stretch. The reason this isn’t a Chicago case is that the Archdiocese (which covers Cook and Lake counties) gave up on dealing with foster children and adoptions back in 2007 for reasons that had nothing to do with gay people or civil unions.

THE DIOCESE BASED in Rockford also got out of the child business earlier this year – with an Ottawa-based agency taking over such programs for northern Illinois.

Perhaps that is the lead the other dioceses should take. That is, if they can’t see their way to accept the fact that civil unions are here to stay in Illinois (until the day comes that Illinois follows the lead of New York and gives in to gay marriage proper).

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U.S. Supreme Court takes a pass on taking ideological stand about abortion

Once again, we can see why it is a mistake to automatically assume the Supreme Court of the United States is some ideological machine that will automatically rule to uphold one conservative cause or another.

There are those people in the battle over firearms who are convinced that the high court will eventually shoot down the ban on firearms ownership within the city of Chicago, claiming city government has no authority to impose such a law.

NOW I’M NOT saying they won’t. The high court, after all, does have a 5-4 majority of justices who consider themselves ideologically conservative on many of the social issues of the day. And they do tend to think that the proper interpretation of the U.S. Constitution will produce a lot of rulings of favor to the social conservatives of our society.

But we got to see Monday some evidence that only a fool tries to predict how a court will react or even how a conservative will react.

It was on Monday that the high court chose to take no action on an appeal of a case involving Illinois’ specialized license plates.

There is a group that openly considers itself anti-abortion that has long wanted to have a specialty plate telling people to “Choose Life.” They say proceeds raised by the Illinois Secretary of State’s office for the plate would be donated to a group that tries to encourage women who don’t want their yet-to-be-born babies to put them up for adoption.

THE SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES got their kicks from this case when, last year, a federal judge ruled that Illinois was wrong for denying the group the ability to have this license plate.

He tried arguing that the state was interfering with a person’s right to use their automobile’s license plate to express their view on abortion.

Of course, that ruling got struck down late last year by the appeals court in Chicago, as a three-judge panel ruled (correctly, in my opinion) that the license plate by itself was not about speech.

The high court’s lack of action on Monday lets that ruling remain, although court watchers will be quick to remind us that such lack of action does not constitute an automatic endorsement.

NO MATTER. IT means the three-judge panel’s ruling remains the law.

That panel noted that since none of the dozens of specialty plates sold by Illinois motorists who can’t just settle for a standard issue plate to identify their automobile deal with the issue of abortion, it could be said that the state is not taking sides.

In fact, that has been the justification for allowing people to purchase license plates to identify their collegiate alma mater, but not for abortion – they’d rather not get involved in this issue that will tick people off, no matter what.

Because letting such a message on a license plate issued by a state government does wind up constituting an endorsement, of sorts, of that viewpoint.

IS THIS WHOLE issue of creating a license plate just a tactic by anti-abortion activists to force the state to endorse their viewpoint?

That may be a little bit strong, but it definitely comes off as forcing other people (motorists and pedestrians) to have to view one’s viewpoint, which in my book constitutes trying to use the state’s “muscle” to shove that abortion view down our collective throats.

It comes off similar to the situation in Indiana, where there were court cases until last year with regards to that state’s standard issue license plate – the one that reads “In God We Trust.”

The courts ultimately struck down the lawsuits in that case that tried to argue that such a message should constitute a specialty license plate that people should have to pay extra money for if they really want it on their cars that badly.

I’M SURE THERE will be some Illinois residents who live in the areas along the state’s border with Indiana who will wonder why their state can’t have some sort of “Christian” message (although I have always thought the whole anti-abortion argument to be so anti-mother as to be un-Christian) on license plates, while their Indiana neighbors can.

What I’d argue is that I wish we could do away with the concept of specialty license plates altogether.

The fact is that the only reason to have a license plate on a car to begin with is to make it easier for law enforcement types to be able to identify a moving vehicle.

If anything, having license plates of multiple designs and colors can add to the confusion in a case where a cop does have a legitimate need to know immediately who ought to be in a particular car.

I KNOW THROUGHOUT the years I have heard many police officers grumble about having to keep track of what constitutes a legitimate license plate and what does not. I’m sympathetic to their view.

So in the sense that the Supreme Court’s lack of action gives us one less type of license plate in Illinois, I’d argue it’s a good move. Now if only they could do something to get rid of some of these other plate designs, then we’d be better off as a society.

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