Two huge victories over intolerance and bigotry this week that I have neglected to blog about.
So I’ll blog about it now (see, that’s the beauty of writing every day. I’ll get to important stuff eventually.)
First, a huge stain against the state of Florida has been lifted. Several weeks ago a judge ruled that Florida’s ban on gay people adopting children was unconstitutional, finally stopping what had been a disgusting practice. Still, I expected appeals to tie up this ruling for years.
But wonderfully, the state’s Department of Children and Families (DCF) said this week that they won’t appeal the ruling, which means the horrible law, which denies needy children the chance to have two loving parents, will die. Excellent.
The other big news, of course, was a federal judge ordering the U.S. government to stop enforcing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the military, and the Pentagon saying Thursday that it will obey the order.
The Obama administration is appealing the judge’s ruling, which disgusts me, but I’m not going to dwell on that today.
Progress is coming. Slowly, surely, progress is coming.
I was also alerted to this incredibly moving story of a city councilman in Texas named Joel Burns, talking to gay teens and telling them “it will get better.” A wonderful personal story of hope and triumph, please take a few minutes and watch it here. (It gets good around the 4 minute mark.)
**College basketball season officially starts today, as practice tips off around the nation. I love this day, because I love college basketball so damn much.
But to balance my joy, I read about the lovely assistant coach at Baylor University this week, a man named Mark Morefield. It seems that while Morefield was recruiting a kid from Colombia named Hanner Perea, Morefield kinda, sorta, well, threatened the kid with deportation if he didn’t sign with Baylor.
Yeah, you read that right. Morefield allegedly sent Perea’s high school coach, Alan Huss, a text message that read “I guarantee you if he does [commit to another school] he will be in Colombia for the spring and summer and next year. Don’t forget it.”
Ah, the joys of recruiting. What a disgrace. Baylor has been a real feel-good program the last few years, coming back from tragedy (Baylor was the school where one player killed another), and now this crap.
If this is true, I hope Mark Morefield doesn’t ever get to coach a team of 8-year-olds in a rec league.
