The Tea Party has been consuming a lot of my thoughts lately. They have always been able to drive me nuts. Its really nothing new, but today, especially, I am livid. Arkansas has this piece of shit in their State Congress named Justin Harris. He is a proud Tea Partier. He is fanatic about his anti-abortion stance. His right wing constituents, I suppose, think that's fabulous.
Because abortion is such an obvious evil, alternatives must be presented so we can demand its illegality. Adoption is a fine choice, No? So this upstanding "Christian" and all around good man decides to walk the walk. Genius. Because it will also garner votes. And lets be clear, this man is on the Education Committee and is the Vice Chair of the House Committee on Aging, Children and Youth, so he must really love children and want to make the world better for them.
Initially, in September 2012, Harris and his wife had decided to foster three girls who were all sisters. In adoption circles these are called "special needs" children because it is incredibly difficult to find a home for siblings to stay together, even though it is obviously in all of their best interest. Within a few months they had two girls in their care. No mention was made at the time of where the eldest girl had gone, but she was just never discussed as if it had always been just the two. It turns out that she had been a victim of sexual abuse in her birth home and that is why the girls were displaced. This child was suffering from severe trauma due to her history. Did they really expect them not to have issues? Well, no. Per Harris, the placement agency neglected to inform them that the girls "were disturbed by the trauma of their upbringing in their birth family." Right. Because three siblings looking for a new home cannot have faced any trauma. And it would have never occurred to either his wife or himself to ask why these children needed to be fostered.
Shortly after he gave the eldest daughter back to the fostering agency, Harris and his wife adopted the younger two. Within a year they, too, were too much for the Harris family to deal with (one was 6, the other 3) and they were re-homed. That is a thing. It exists. It is legal to adopt children and then decide against it and quietly give them to some other person, without doing any background check or asking the state to advise on the transfer. The man he dumped the two girls off on was a former employee of Harris' day care center. It turned out he was a pedophile. (this begs an obvious question I was unable to find the answer to, if I do I will update this post.) The six year old was molested by him and, finally, the state became again involved in the care for these children. The state thought they were still with the Harris family. They were still sending him a check for their care, after all.
It is completely unimaginable how much trauma these girls have suffered. The state tried to intervene into their awful lives to make it better. What could be better than a "Christian" home where the father is a congressman working on committees focused on the care of children? And the wife ran a day care center. These babies were given a family who decided they weren't worth the effort and pawned off again to a man who has now pled guilty to molesting one of them. They are now, reportedly, in a new home and doing well. Imagine how much better their lives would have been if the Harris family hadn't been involved at all.
The followers of the Tea Party are so anxious to have leaders who spew the same hateful rhetoric that they do and make promises of turning our beloved country into the clusterfuck they envision that they don't see the hypocrisy of those they elect. Not only is this absolute monster adopting children to (dis)prove the ease to which our nation could progress without abortion, but his day care has also received millions of dollars in subsidies that he denounces in his junkets. All while he was stating to have been against it and would overturn it. He knew he would never have to do that, so why not tell his voters that? They needed to hear it.
The eldest child was eight when she came to the Harris family. He has since explained that they gave her up before the adoption of the other two girls because she was such a terror. She was dangerous and could not be controlled. Good for them, on the day pictured below she was on her best behavior and able to cooperate in the perfect-family photo op for his campaign. I can't even imagine why he would need her after that, honestly.
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