I have a friend who is a new parent having adopted his kids after they were taken from their mother. That adoption was made official a few weeks ago, now they are his, and he is dealing with his children’s memories and feelings, they are 5 and 18 months.

I have another friend who writes about heartbreak, he himself a father, foster parent, and someone who feels deeply about the role ‘foster parents’ play in the life of children stuck in the system and so I am moved to feel and to write.

I have been in the foster parent field for a number of years. And I feel for my boys, in ways I have never felt before, they spur in me maternal instinct that sometimes takes my breath away. I know what it feels like to be in a home where abuse and addiction is rife.

I have been a participant in that life – and so I know what that is like for kids to be taken from that kind of life and settled someplace new for their own safety. But I also know that the system is not kind to many, in many places ‘gay’ is unacceptable to many legal systems when it comes to children and families. In Canada, that is not the case, thank God.

My boys are much older than my ‘friends’ children, yet I love them and protect them just the same even though my boys are not children any more. I have spent the better part of a decade working with kids and parents trying to find ways to help children who get stuck in the middle of the battle field.

So I was reading earlier tonight and I wept because I understand and I get very emotional when I consider what my boys have been through in their lives and just how hard we have worked to live them into existence, readying them for the world that was not kind to them to begin with.

I wrote to my friend, “I may not be, by some standards, the right parent, but nonetheless, I am a parent. And I love my boys with all my heart and soul. People who bring children into the world then discard them or mistreat them are abhorrent.”

Kids are resilient and will bounce back they told us, what they failed to admit was that baggage in young children gets very heavy the older they get. Baggage for any young person who is not prepared to deal with that baggage, or have the ability to resolve that baggage can be detrimental to their lives and our lives as well.

What do we tell them about what we know? And when is the right time to speak truth to them? There is not much to explain when my boys came to us for the first time, we did what we could for them and we gave them safe haven and we loved them and cared for them.

That did not assuage the feelings that were present from the outset, and we worked very hard at maintaining a united front in spite of all the crap that had gone on before we came into the picture.

I am of the belief that if you are old enough to create children, then you should be educated on how to care for them properly. I have lobbied for more parental education during pregnancy. I have lobbied for education about the “evils” of the world, like addiction, alcohol and abuse.

I have even gone so far as to try and help people who are having kids to remember why they are having children and how important it is to know what they are getting into before the children come, because I have watched people I know, grow up, have children then regret that they ever had them.

In our lives, as gay men and women, we know what ignorance can do to the life of a human being. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out. In the U.S. as in many other countries LGBT people are kept from the adoption process because of our sexual orientation, which is just beyond me in many ways…

If straight parents can’t get it right, why not let us love them instead? Did I mention that most foster parents I know here in Canada, in my social circle are gay? Did I mention how hard we work at taking care of our kids, how much love we place into them day in and day out? And does is come to anyone’s surprise that the system favors fucked up parents rather than a gay or lesbian foster parent!!!

There are so many kinds stuck in the revolving door of the system all over the place, I worked in an orphanage for 10 years when I was in school for kids that were taken away from parents that abused them so I know that they exist. I am not BLIND for the little children.

I remember those days that I would spend weeks at a time working in one particular orphanage as a young adult, and I remember the nights that one particular boy begged me to take him home with me because he wanted so bad to be loved by someone – anyone…

I still remember him today, and I do what I can today, because of his memory. There are so many kids out there that need good homes, someone to love them, someone to care for them, and so many of us can do nothing but weep because we are ‘abhorrent other’ and how could we possibly love a child and live abhorrent lifestyles???

Parents who bring children into the world, then either abandon, abuse or ignore them are abhorrent to me. It just doesn’t get any more succinct to me than that. If you can’t love them into existence then you sure as shit shouldn’t be having sex…

I spent an hour tonight talking to my boys after all this came to pass and I know tonight, that if I had to do it all over again I would, because my boys are loved, they are cared for and they always have a home under my roof. I did for my boys what nobody else could have done for them, I rose to the call and I did my best for my boys.

ok, I am done railing…