Marco Rubio And Five Members Of Congress Voted For Florida's 'Scarlet Letter' Adoption Bill

[Revoltingest]

This isn't the case in the rape, which as typical with pro-life initiatives, appears to not be a consideration at all. Secondly, I'm not sure I really agree. No one else but me is responsible for where my sperm drops. Even if I engage in sex, I have virtually zero chance of being impregnated

So....you want to one up me on the smart arsed comments, eh.
Let's agree that a rapist gains no parental rights.
And we'll restrict our discussion to fathers & mothers who voluntarily created the ankle biter.

But the mother could just keep the child and never inform anyways?

That is an interesting point.
Does a man have no fundamental right to raise a child he fathered?
Does he only have the obligation to pay for raising it when the state or the mother invoke this?

Fair enough. Notice makes sense for the purpose addition with (if notice is practical) emphasized.

Woo hoo! Detente!

After an adoption?

After an adoption, the father could perhaps legally regain custody (this happens, as I recall).
This would pose a risk to adoptive parents.
Can he be hit up for child support in such a case? IDK.

"Many adoptions take place without involving the birthfather in any way. He might not receive any counseling, choose the adoptive parents, meet the adoptive parents, see the baby, or sign any papers. But regardless of his participation, he has the same rights as the birthmother. In other words, a birthfather is that child's father unless he voluntarily relinquishes his rights as a parent or has his rights terminated by the court.

All of this is well and good — provided that the man who fathered the child is aware that he has a child and is available when the adoption decisions are made so that he can be involved. But what happens when a man doesn't discover until after the fact that he fathered a child and that child is now in an adoptive home? Or when he hits the road and isn't around to give his consent to the adoption plan that the birthmother makes? These situations, and others like them, directly affect what has to happen before the child becomes available for adoption and how much risk is involved. The following sections show you what you need to know.

All reputable agencies and attorneys follow certain procedures to ensure that the birthfathers, if they can be located, are aware of the adoption plans and know their rights. And if the birthfathers can't be located, these agencies and attorneys make sure you're aware of the risks involved going forward. Anyone who tells you not to worry about the birthfather because he's not around, doesn't know about the pregnancy or adoption plan, or just "isn't interested" in what's going on is playing with fire — and the house that may burn down is yours. Every adoption that proceeds without the birthfather's consent carries a degree of risk. The particular situation determines how much risk. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

Adoption Facts: Understanding the Birthfather's Rights - For Dummies

This is I don't understand. Seems frivolous to me. If I was a woman, I'd just get an abortion then. Certainly I agree with an attempt to contact. Publishing your sexual behaviors the night in question in hopes someone recognizes that one night is so beyond absurd.

To publish "sexual behaviors" would be a ridiculous requirement.
Does anyone actually advocate that....or is it a histrionic restatement of something else?
To publish a list of potential fathers would be more reasonable.
But even that doesn't appeal to me.
A better process is needed.

 

[Revoltingest]

It appears to be what HuffPo derived from:

"One of the reasons more young women are giving birth out of wedlock and more young men are walking away from their paternal obligations is that there is no longer a stigma attached to this behavior, no reason to feel shame. Many of these young women and young men look around and see their friends engaged in the same irresponsible conduct. Their parents and neighbors have become ineffective at attaching some sense of ridicule to this behavior. There was a time when neighbors and communities would frown on out of wedlock births and when public condemnation was enough of a stimulus for one to be careful."

I'm not actually sure how you take this...

Unlike the sexist HuffPo though, at least Bush was clear in his condemnation of young men and young women equally.

I say it appears that Huff Po is taking their own mischievous inference & presenting it as fact (ie, outright lkying).
His statement is not advocacy, but rather an analysis of what's taking place.

 

[dust1n]

I say it appears that Huff Po is taking their own mischievous inference & presenting it as fact (ie, outright lkying).
His statement is not advocacy, but rather an analysis of what's taking place.

Without looking into any of the book or the surrounding material, I could not possibly know what Bush's point in the book is. And without providing anything like it, it would seem HuffPo took a little liberty regarding what Bush is advocating in that one sentence.

This however, does not change the fact that Jeff Bush signed into the law, the one referenced in the OP, and did not make any attempt to do anything about it until it was challenged with court. I do not know personally if Jeff's reasoning is ignorance or maliciousness.

 

[Revoltingest]

Without looking into any of the book or the surrounding material, I could not possibly know what Bush's point in the book is. And without providing anything like it, it would seem HuffPo took a little liberty regarding what Bush is advocating in that one sentence.

This however, does not change the fact that Jeff Bush signed into the law, the one referenced in the OP, and did not make any attempt to do anything about it until it was challenged with court. I do not know personally if Jeff's reasoning is ignorance or maliciousness.

I also haven't seen the text of the law.
It seems onerous, but with rampant mischievous partisan inferences I'm reluctant to severely criticize it.

 

[dust1n]

So....you want to one up me on the smart arsed comments, eh.
Let's agree that a rapist gains no parental rights.
And we'll restrict our discussion to fathers & mothers who voluntarily created the ankle biter.

That is an interesting point.
Does a man have no fundamental right to raise a child he fathered?
Does he only have the obligation to pay for raising it when the state or the mother invoke this?

If fathered means to successfully impregnate, I don't see why this a fundamental right to a raise a child follows. Exceptions are certainly made to parents in prison, deporting illegal immigrants with legal children, physical abuse, drug abuse, mental instability, etc.

Woo hoo! Detente!

After an adoption, the father could perhaps legally regain custody (this happens, as I recall).
This would pose a risk to adoptive parents.
Can he be hit up for child support in such a case? IDK.

I think it would be have to a peculiar set of circumstances in which adoptive parents could lose a child they have already adopted. I think it would be wrong to have anyone pay child support to adoptive parents (unless the adoptive parents divorced or something).

To publish "sexual behaviors" would be a ridiculous requirement.
Does anyone actually advocate that....or is it a histrionic restatement of something else?
To publish a list of potential fathers would be more reasonable.
But even that doesn't appeal to me.
A better process is needed.

Looks like NPR already came out to clairfy some of this stuff:


What did the law do?

The law in question was a 2001 overhaul of the state's adoption regulations. Bush wrote shortly after the Legislature passed the bill that the law was intended to bring more "certainty" into adoptions. The goal was to "provide greater finality once the adoption is approved, and to avoid circumstances where future challenges to the adoption disrupt the life of the child."

One way to accomplish that was to balance the "rights and responsibilities" of both birth parents, as well as the adoptive parents, Bush wrote. To the end of preserving the rights of a birth father, the law required a woman who didn't know who had fathered her child to put a notice in the newspaper so that a potential father could see it and respond before that child was put up for adoption.

The published notice would have to contain an extensive list of personal information, including potential cities and dates where the act of conception might have occurred, according to a 2004 Notre Dame Law Review article:

"The notice ... must contain a physical description, including, but not limited to age, race, hair and eye color, and approximate height and weight of the minor's mother and of any person the mother reasonably believes may be the father; the minor's date of birth; and any date and city, including the county and state in which the city is located, in which conception may have occurred."

And it wasn't a one-time ad — it had to run once a week for a month, at the expense of either the mother or the people who wanted to adopt the baby, as that 2004 article explains.

Because the law required women to put their sexual history on display, it became known as the "Scarlet Letter law," after the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel in which the protagonist must wear a red A on her dress to signify that she had committed adultery.

Did Jeb Bush want women to be shamed for their sexual activity?

It's true that years before the law was passed (and before Bush was even governor), Bush had bemoaned what he saw as a lack of social stigma for men and women alike having children outside of marriage. In his 1995 book, Profiles in Character, he wrote (in a chapter with the dark title, "The Restoration of Shame"), as Bassett reports:

"One of the reasons more young women are giving birth out of wedlock and more young men are walking away from their paternal obligations is that there is no longer a stigma attached to this behavior, no reason to feel shame."

In that book, Bassett also writes, Bush invokes The Scarlet Letter (approvingly) as an example of how society had once condemned people for sexual impropriety.

Those may have been his general thoughts, but it's also true that he didn't wholeheartedly approve of the adoption law. He thought it put too much of the onus on the birth mother to find the father, as he wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Katherine Harris, upon letting the bill pass into law without signing it.

"House Bill 141 does have its deficiencies," he wrote. "Foremost, in its effort to strike the appropriate balance between rights and responsibilities, there is a shortage of responsibility on behalf of the birth father that could be corrected by requiring some proactive conduct on his part."

In fact, immediately after he let the bill become law, Bush was advocating for fixes to it. The Florida House almost immediately passed a law that he considered a "better alternative." It cut back on women's reporting requirements and established a paternity registry, for example. These are state-maintained databases that allowed a man to register if he believed he might have fathered a child. Then, if that child were ever put up for adoption, the father would have been notified and he could have a say in the proceedings.

(A Bush spokesperson has not yet responded to an NPR request for comment.)

Jeb Bush And Florida's 'Scarlet Letter Law,' Explained : It's All Politics : NPR

 

[Revoltingest]

If fathered means to successfully impregnate, I don't see why this a fundamental right to a raise a child follows. Exceptions are certainly made to parents in prison, deporting illegal immigrants with legal children, physical abuse, drug abuse, mental instability, etc.

Ignoring factors which we'd see as typically removing the right to raise a child (eg, unfit parent).....
Would you say that a father has no fundamental right to raise a child?
Is the mother the sole owner of this right?
Does the father only have the responsibility to support the child?

Another scenario, albeit a rare one.....
We can all agree that a rapist shouldn't have the rights to be the child's active father.
What if a woman raped a man, & produced a child....should she have no rights as the mother?

I think it would be have to a peculiar set of circumstances in which adoptive parents could lose a child they have already adopted. I think it would be wrong to have anyone pay child support to adoptive parents (unless the adoptive parents divorced or something).

It happens. We had a nasty local case.....
Baby Jessica case - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This case highlighted the extremely painful consequences of failing to observe the rights of all concerned.

Looks like NPR already came out to clairfy some of this stuff:
What did the law do?
The law in question was a 2001 overhaul of the state's adoption regulations. Bush wrote shortly after the Legislature passed the bill that the law was intended to bring more "certainty" into adoptions. The goal was to "provide greater finality once the adoption is approved, and to avoid circumstances where future challenges to the adoption disrupt the life of the child."
One way to accomplish that was to balance the "rights and responsibilities" of both birth parents, as well as the adoptive parents, Bush wrote. To the end of preserving the rights of a birth father, the law required a woman who didn't know who had fathered her child to put a notice in the newspaper so that a potential father could see it and respond before that child was put up for adoption.
The published notice would have to contain an extensive list of personal information, including potential cities and dates where the act of conception might have occurred, according to a 2004 Notre Dame Law Review article:
"The notice ... must contain a physical description, including, but not limited to age, race, hair and eye color, and approximate height and weight of the minor's mother and of any person the mother reasonably believes may be the father; the minor's date of birth; and any date and city, including the county and state in which the city is located, in which conception may have occurred."
And it wasn't a one-time ad — it had to run once a week for a month, at the expense of either the mother or the people who wanted to adopt the baby, as that 2004 article explains.
Because the law required women to put their sexual history on display, it became known as the "Scarlet Letter law," after the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel in which the protagonist must wear a red A on her dress to signify that she had committed adultery.
Did Jeb Bush want women to be shamed for their sexual activity?
It's true that years before the law was passed (and before Bush was even governor), Bush had bemoaned what he saw as a lack of social stigma for men and women alike having children outside of marriage. In his 1995 book, Profiles in Character, he wrote (in a chapter with the dark title, "The Restoration of Shame"), as Bassett reports:
"One of the reasons more young women are giving birth out of wedlock and more young men are walking away from their paternal obligations is that there is no longer a stigma attached to this behavior, no reason to feel shame."
In that book, Bassett also writes, Bush invokes The Scarlet Letter (approvingly) as an example of how society had once condemned people for sexual impropriety.
Those may have been his general thoughts, but it's also true that he didn't wholeheartedly approve of the adoption law. He thought it put too much of the onus on the birth mother to find the father, as he wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Katherine Harris, upon letting the bill pass into law without signing it.
"House Bill 141 does have its deficiencies," he wrote. "Foremost, in its effort to strike the appropriate balance between rights and responsibilities, there is a shortage of responsibility on behalf of the birth father that could be corrected by requiring some proactive conduct on his part."
In fact, immediately after he let the bill become law, Bush was advocating for fixes to it. The Florida House almost immediately passed a law that he considered a "better alternative." It cut back on women's reporting requirements and established a paternity registry, for example. These are state-maintained databases that allowed a man to register if he believed he might have fathered a child. Then, if that child were ever put up for adoption, the father would have been notified and he could have a say in the proceedings.
(A Bush spokesperson has not yet responded to an NPR request for comment.)
Jeb Bush And Florida's 'Scarlet Letter Law,' Explained : It's All Politics : NPR

That darned reality.....always more complex that quickly reacting partisans will present to us, eh.

 

[Wirey]

Why would I think that a father has a particular right to be notified of a pregnancy he caused but was not already aware of? Sex isn't a legally binding contract.

What role does the state have in these sorts of affairs?

Speaking as someone who has a son he's never met because of exactly this, I would like to have had a chance to meet him. I agree that asking a rape victim to publish details should be verboten, but giving a dad a chance to have contact with his child is not necessarily evil. Perhaps a system where the girl reports to a government agency, in secret, who then contacts dad. Confidentiality being the key. Maybe the dad would be happy, or even overjoyed, to have custody of his child.

 

[leibowde84]

Sen. Marco Rubio (R) was among the Florida state legislators who voted for the so-called "Scarlet Letter" law in 2001 that required single mothers to publish their sexual histories in the newspaper in order to place their babies up for adoption.

Five U.S. congressmen -- Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R), Lois Frankel (D), Jeff Miller (R), Gus Bilirakis (R) and Dennis Ross (R) -- were state legislators at the time and voted for the controversial bill. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D), Frederica Wilson (D), Daniel Webster (R) and Bill Posey (R), who were also state legislators back then, voted against it.

The law, which passed with overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate, required unwed moms who wished to put their babies up for adoptions to post details about their recent sexual encounters in the newspaper in an attempt to contact the father, even if the woman was a victim of rape or incest. The purpose of the bill was to inform estranged biological fathers that their children were being adopted and give them the chance to intervene.

The "Scarlet Letter" law gained media attention this week after The Huffington Post reported that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) had advocated for the public shaming of unwed parents in his 1995 book. Bush allowed the controversial law to go into effect in 2001, but signed a repeal of it two years later after it was successfully challenged in court.

The fact that Rubio, a 2016 presidential candidate, supported the bill could inoculate Bush from criticism that he allowed it to go into effect if Bush decides to throw his hat in the ring.

The Gainesville Sun reported in 2002 that some lawmakers -- including Frankel, a longtime women's right activist -- did not realize the newspaper publication provision was in the bill when they voted for it. "I have to admit I'm horrified that I voted for this," Frankel told the Sun at the time.

Rubio and the other current members of Congress who supported the bill did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Marco Rubio And Five Members Of Congress Voted For Florida's 'Scarlet Letter' Adoption Bill


So, I don't remember this at all, because even when I was living in FL, I would have been 12.

What say you, gentle folk of RF?

I was a sophomore in high school, so I can't recall much of anything from that time ... but, I am disgusted now. Thanks for adding to my list of reasons not to vote for any of these jokers ... EVER.

 

[leibowde84]

Let me first preface the discussion that the War on Woman is a complete fabrication invented by the Gay Agenda solely for destroying the family and enslaving middle-class men in perpetual servitude to women who refuse to be a spouse. Okay, now proceed.

lol.

 

[dust1n]

Speaking as someone who has a son he's never met because of exactly this, I would like to have had a chance to meet him. I agree that asking a rape victim to publish details should be verboten, but giving a dad a chance to have contact with his child is not necessarily evil. Perhaps a system where the girl reports to a government agency, in secret, who then contacts dad. Confidentiality being the key. Maybe the dad would be happy, or even overjoyed, to have custody of his child.

These appear to be instances where the father isn't even known, so I'm not even sure how the government can determine who the father is, let alone contact them.

 

[Wirey]

These appear to be instances where the father isn't even known, so I'm not even sure how the government can determine who the father is, let alone contact them.

There will always be outliers, but for the majority of these cases the father is known.

 

[dust1n]

There will always be outliers, but for the majority of these cases the father is known.

If the father was known, then the bill in question wouldn't be very applicable at any point.

 

[Wirey]

If the father was known, then the bill in question wouldn't be very applicable at any point.

I meant to the mother.

 

[dust1n]

I meant to the mother.

Lost me.

 

[Wirey]

Lost me.

Yeah, me too.

I meant, while there will be rare instances where the mom was raped, or so drunk she can't remember, the vast majority of women know who the dad is. The few who can't, or shouldn't, be identified aside, letting a father know his child is up for grabs doesn't seem to be a bad thing.

 

[dust1n]

Yeah, me too.

I meant, while there will be rare instances where the mom was raped, or so drunk she can't remember, the vast majority of women know who the dad is. The few who can't, or shouldn't, be identified aside, letting a father know his child is up for grabs doesn't seem to be a bad thing.

And how does go about finding a father who they might not know?

 

[Wirey]

And how does go about finding a father who they might not know?

If the mom knows the name, they know who he is. That's my point.

 

[dust1n]

If the mom knows the name, they know who he is. That's my point.

In this event, in which case as far as I can tell, attempts to contact a known father must be made before an adoption can go through. But if a father is known but willingly missing, I don't see how it's on the onus of a mother to legally find the father.

From a pro-life perspective, it just seems to be a disincentive to adoption. I could have an abortion and tell no one; I could just keep the child and tell no one, or I could put a kid for an adoption and because the process of locating and having the father agree.

I agree that some sort of mechanism could be put in place could assist in this matter. Publishing it in a newspaper, with no exceptions, is probably not the greatest idea for a mechanism.

 

[Wirey]

In this event, in which case as far as I can tell, attempts to contact a known father must be made before an adoption can go through. But if a father is known but willingly missing, I don't see how it's on the onus of a mother to legally find the father.

From a pro-life perspective, it just seems to be a disincentive to adoption. I could have an abortion and tell no one; I could just keep the child and tell no one, or I could put a kid for an adoption and because the process of locating and having the father agree.

I agree that some sort of mechanism could be put in place could assist in this matter. Publishing it in a newspaper, with no exceptions, is probably not the greatest idea for a mechanism.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to justify the law. But a phone call letting the father know isn't necessarily a bad idea.

 

[dust1n]

Sorry, I wasn't trying to justify the law. But a phone call letting the father know isn't necessarily a bad idea.

I'll concede to a sternly worded smoke signal. I kid. No, it's probably not. If there was no rule about it, than anyone could potentially just take their kid to an adoption agency without the other parents consent any day, and assuming the parent is a sane person, I don't see why they wouldn't get dibbs, which I do believe is the applicable legal jargon.