Giving Away Other People's Children

This case is creepy. Grandparents in the UK were taking care of 2 grandchildren, as well as their own children. Their local council removed the grandchildren (not the children) from the grandparents on the grounds that they were too old and unhealthy. The kicker is: they gave the kids to a gay couple, after threatening the grandparents against protesting.

The five-year-old boy and his four-year-old sister were being looked after by their grandparents because their mother, a recovering drug addict, was not considered capable.

But social workers stepped in after allegedly deciding that the couple, who are aged 59 and 46, were "too old" to look after the children.

They were allegedly stripped of their carer's rights and informed they would be barred from seeing the children altogether unless they agreed to the same-sex adoption. ...The case raises fears about state interference in family arrangements, and concerns about the practice of adoption by same-sex couples.

Social workers at the City of Edinburgh Council have been accused of waging a "two-year campaign" through the courts to strip the grandparents of their legal rights as carers of the children.

Social services intervened because of concerns over the age and health of the grandparents, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the children.

The grandfather is a farmhand who has angina while his wife is receiving medication for diabetes.

The children have been in foster care for two years while their grandparents battled the social services department in court.

However, the cost of legal bills forced them to drop the case and relinquish their rights.

The grandparents reluctantly agreed to adoption, provided the children were found a "loving mother and father".

They were told last Thursday that two homosexual men had been chosen as the adoptive parents.

Social workers dealing with the case told them that approved heterosexual couples had also been keen to adopt the children.

When he protested to social workers, the grandfather alleges he was told: "You can either accept it and there's a chance you'll see the children twice a year, or you can take that stance and never see them again."

On another occasion he was allegedly told: "If you couldn't support the children [back the gay adoption], if you were having contact and couldn't support the children, and showing negative feelings, it wouldn't be in their best interests for contact to take place."

Social engineering at its worst. Government at its most intrusive. I hope some gay libertarians will raise a stink over this. Actually, any and all libertarians should raise a stink over it.
Read about it here, here and here.
Last week, in a debate on same sex adoption, I said this:

Suppose a pregnant woman is interviewing prospective adoptive parents, and she says, perhaps within earshot of an ACLU lawyer, “I don’t want to give my child up for adoption to a same sex couple.” Do you sue her? ...
I imagine that most people would agree with me that a birth mother can place whatever stipulations she wants on prospective adoptive parents. And that policy cuts both ways: if birth parents are comfortable placing their child with a same sex couple, the state should not prohibit them from doing so.

At this point, I'm not so sure everyone does agree that the birth mother's stipulations should be respected....