Feb 14th, 2006
A foster parent’s worst nightmare
A Child’s Death Reveals a System’s Tragic Flaw
By Noam N. Levey, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Family Pride sent out an alert that this story was covered on the front page of yesterday’s LA Times.
I’m stunned and saddened to hear of the death of a foster child who was removed from her loving foster family, only to be beaten to death at the home of her biological uncle and aunt. The foster parents, Corri Planck and Dianne Hardy-Garcia (above, with murdered foster child) are professional colleagues of mine, and while I can’t comment on this specific tragedy, I do know they had been dreaming of children for a long time. I appreciate Levey’s sensitivity in covering this story. Corri and Dianne’s sexual orientation was not a focus of the article. They were loving parents, and that is what mattered — not that they are a same-sex couple.
I can’t imagine Corri and Dianne’s heartache, knowing they could have provided Sarah with the peace and safety she needed, knowing they had so much love for her, unable to do anything but watch a screwed-up system literally send a child to her death.
In California, gay/lesbian parents can foster and adopt. This is not true in some other states. Instead of wasting time/money/integrity to pass laws that ban gay adoption and fostering, how about redirecting those resources to make sure tragedies like this don’t happen? I think I’m pointing out the screamingly obvious that despite the man-woman-best-interest rhetoric in adoption policies, for Sarah, being placed in a “heterosexual household” was definitely not in her best interest. Being safe was.
Denying gay/lesbian people the right/privilege to raise children who need families is nothing short of bigoted hysteria.