In what can only be described as one of the most disgusting displays of bigotry and discrimination stemming from the current anti-gay federal government run by Dubya and his cronies, Texas lawmakers are trying their best to write into law a ban on gay foster parents.

Republican Rep. Robert Talton, the cretin who introduced the amendment, said, "It is our responsibility to make sure that we protect our most vulnerable children, and I don't think we are doing that if we allow a foster parent that is homosexual or bisexual."

You sicken me, Bob, and I assure you that I will do my best to smear your name all over the media so that others can see what kind of bigot, hypocrite and hateful bastard you really are.  Your place in hell will be especially hot and uncomfortable, I'm afraid, since you know how prisoners dislike those who try to hurt children.

Arkansas tried this very same thing but their law was struck down in December when a judge said it was unconstitutional.  Apparently the clueless idiots in the Texas legislature missed that memo.

If the law passes and is signed by Governor Rick Perry — something he has promised he would do — it's estimated that between 2,000 and 2,500 kids could be affected.  These children are currently in homes where the foster parents are gay and, if enacted, the law would require those children to be removed and placed in other homes.

I simply do not understand how, when our state already has resource problems when it comes to caring for disadvantaged children, we could possibly justify taking them out of loving, stable and decent homes simply because the foster parents aren't heterosexual.  It's been proven time and again through scientific methods that growing up with one or more gay parents has no direct or negative impact on the development of children, yet here we are putting radical fundamentalist religion ahead of science and the Constitution.

Oh, yes, you can rest assured that this won't pass the constitutional test.  As I discussed in the most recent installment of my gay marriage series, the Constitution strictly prohibits these kinds of laws at the state level.  Not only is it discriminatory (you'd think they had learned their lesson with the sodomy law issue), but it recklessly endangers the lives of the children involved (can you justify removing them from good homes based on intolerance?) and specifically forbids a portion of the Texas population from taking part in a government program based solely on what is protected information — their sexual orientation.

One must also consider the fact that foster parents are paid by the state, so Texas will also be taking away state-sponsored benefits from a class of citizens specifically because of their sexual orientation.

No, those in the Texas government are not very smart at all.  Rick Perry, Dubya's whore of a protégé, is intentionally alienating a large portion of the Texas population (yes, "Dick" Perry, there are a lot of us here in Texas) and will most certainly pay politically for that.  The rest of the Repugnicans — and those spineless Democrats who voted for the law (shame on you!) — will also have to fork over some political capital soon.  This will go to the courts, it will be overturned, and Texas will remember how our own lawmakers tried to hurt Texas children by dragging their own religious beliefs into the state capitol and trying to beat Texans into submission with bigotry.

Gay (foster) parents cannot protect their children from the charged and often hateful dialogue that maligns them as immoral and deviant, especially when such attacks come from the very government which is charged with protecting its citizens and ensuring the safety of children.  Anti-gay rhetoric undermines these children's sense of security as they live with an ongoing anxiety that they could be removed from their homes without warning.  Texas' government is proving definitively that it's more than mere rhetoric, that it's actually a coordinated effort on the part of religious zealots at every level of society to undermine freedom and engender hate and prejudice within society in the hopes that a cultural war against non-heterosexuals will begin.

I do realize all of this is a political ploy intended to pander to the Christian cults who now run this country by way of the Dubya régime.  The idea is to look like you're trying to squelch the gay population and diminish their rights in full violation of the Constitution since that is the ploy Dubya uses and engenders — and even promotes — in his fellow cultists and Repugnicans.

The non-heterosexual population of this country is quickly tiring of the whipping-boy position we're being put in, constantly being used as pawns to stir up hatred in America and to violate the Constitution.  I can only hope that we as a class of people wake up soon and get our collective acts together before we find ourselves in "internment camps" like the Japanese did during World War II.

I assure you that Dubya and the rest of the right-wing cultists are trying their very best to make this happen.