At forum, teen takes on Ruzicka over gay adoption [View All]

[donsu]

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_2480310


With tears dripping down her face, 12-year-old Olivia White took on Gayle Ruzicka, the grande dame of conservative Utah politics.
"It's not about whether you're gay or straight or have a marriage certificate or not," Olivia said in defense of her mother, Chris Johnson, and Johnson's partner, Lorie Hutchinson.
"I just want to know what problems she thinks we'll have growing up with wonderful people who love us," she told the audience Thursday night.
At Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson's second Freedom Forum about Utah's 5-year-old law blocking gay adoption, Olivia and Ruzicka were the unintentional focus of discussion - Olivia as an example of a child caught in limbo by state law and Ruzicka as the only speaker in favor of the ban.
Noting she had prayed for guidance before the discussion, Ruzicka calmly argued that child rearing is based on traditional, complementary gender roles - nurturing, sympathetic mothers and matter-of-fact, stoic fathers. Gay couples are a poor substitute, Ruzicka said.
"Adoption is not about the parents. Adoption is about the children," the Eagle Forum director said. "Children should not be used to further political agendas. Children are not toys."
Ruzicka's ideas are fine in theory, Salt Lake City Democratic Rep. Roz McGee countered, but thousands of children languish in foster care, unwanted by the married couples state lawmakers concluded would be best qualified to adopt. "We don't have perfectly matched pairs of parents waiting to adopt," she said.
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"nurturing, sympathetic mothers and matter-of-fact, stoic fathers"


sympathetic? matter-of-fact? stoic?