Friday, February 05, 2010

HB 2148: Their culture war, on our time.

HB 2148 is not the terrible bill it has been made out to be. A reading of the full text shows that, contrary to some of the more strident arguments against its passage, it will not give preference to married strangers over single relatives.

Nevertheless, we must ask ourselves: Why change the adoption rules to give preference to married couples? Are so many people seeking to adopt children that many are being turned away? Can "we" (Arizona) afford to be this choosy?

I'm not confident that this bill will make it any more difficult for single people to adopt, nor that it will make it less likely that current wards of the state will be adopted. I am not confident that it will do these things. But I am reasonably confident that adoption of children by single people is not a current problem and that the legislature should concern itself with matters of greater substance, such as the budget, firearms law reform, or education. Legislators' "signaling" bills waste what is in many sense our time and increase the chances that meaningful fixes to real world problems be put off until next year.

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