Cheerios Commercial: Gay dads adopt and sell cereal

Lorraine

Cringe making: A new feel-good Cherrios on-line commercial for the Canadian audience as two white gay dads talk about how they met, fell in love and decided to be a family by adopting a little black girl during a three-minute video. No doubt that Raphaelle she is being treated well, and that these two dads love her. 

We are supposed to feel all gooey-gooey about the fact that these two handsome, appealing men with charming French accents have been allowed to adopt. Problem Number One. We are all for gay acceptance, gay rights, gay marriage, but indisputable is the reality that gay and lesbian adoption will increase the number of people looking to adoption to build families. The unwitting result is more pressure on the adoption industry to find more babies from a dwindling market so that gay and lesbian couples can adopt somebody else's child. 

Does everyone have a basic need to know the truth of their origins?

Wading into the unknown--photo by ken robbins

Can an individual who doesn't instinctively understand about the need for everyone to know his or her true and original identity be made to change his mind?

I don't know. After a conversation I had the other night it seems unlikely--unlikely at least that a non-adopted person can move the heart and mind of anyone who knows an adoptee who professes no need to know, and is, for all the world to see, a well adjusted, successful, happy individual. But I cannot help think this: Since curiosity is the sign of intelligent life, how can an otherwise intelligent person not be interested in the story of his own life?

Demand for babies leads to adoption abuses

It is the rare adoptive parent who, after adopting from overseas, can wrap her mind around the idea that "her" baby might have been stolen, sold or bartered to fill the huge demand for adoptable infants in wealthy nations, of which she herself was a part.