I fully agree with you, Ake, when you say: "However I feel we as a society are wrong to put young children into a situation which could be harmful to them....for all of the reasons I have given above.

"...Childrens welfare should come before the hurt feelings of any minority....Ake "

My mother and I 'took' foster children for years, more than 30 of them, all told, some of them arriving in the middle of the night. It's probably a good thing that I was not aware that some foster homes are not loving ones. We were not trying consciously to be 'loving', what we *were* trying to do was help the child feel wanted and accepted and safe. Foster care is a necessity in this world but it is full of the potential for harm. But so is any home.. Children arrive every day into heterosexual homes and some of those homes and parents should not be trusted with even a puppy.

We have no laws affecting the heterosexual home's suitability until the unsuitability is shown clearly. And that is how it should be.

Placing a foster child in the home of homosexuals is done only after the home and the prospective parents are examined, interrogated and okayed under much stricter guidelines than the three-day-old baby that goes home from the hospital with its heterosexual parent(s) enjoys.

The point is if crimes are committed against children then is when the law should step in.

It seems to me that you are ruling on the basis of the visible- if the foster parent(s) were black - or 'other' colored - or disabled in some way or in some other way 'visually unsuitable', it appears that you'd like to be able to decide on that basis as to the couple's suitability, because that's what would make you feel safer. So when you hear that the prospective foster parent is homosexual it helps you decide on that basis that it is not a suitable environment.

But life isn't like that. A blind or lame person may be a loving, wise parent, a black person may be a perfect match for a foster child - of any color - and a homosexual couple may prize a child as a dream they could not ever have any other way.

I have some friends who would love to adopt an older child, but they know that they would have to jump through all kinds of hoops and have their lives turned inside out for examination (How many heterosexuals are stainfree? It's just that heterosexuals' stains fit more closely the rules of the mainly heterosexual person behind the desk) and they decided that it was not worth it. They would have been wonderful parents.