Adoptive Dads Sought on S/M Webpage
SF City-Funded Adoption Agency Advertises with "Mister Marcus"
AdoptionSF.org, a joint project of the City of San Francisco's Human Services Agency and Family Builders by Adoption is advertising for adoptive parents on the "Mister Marcus" page of San Francisco's Bay Area Reporter website. The Reporter's front page motto is "Serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community since 1971."
"Mister Marcus" publishes a weekly column in the Reporterwhich covers and publicizes upcoming "leather" events. Examples include: "A weekend of bdsm activity and featuring NW Master and slave contest on Sat. night" (July 2, 2009) and "Hell Hole Fisting Party tonight upstairs at Mister S playroom from 2000 to 0200 next morning" (April 16, 2009),
The rotating ad, which features two men and a little boy, includes the text "We never knew how PROUD we could be until we adopted Ben." As the ads rotate, the AdoptionSF ad is juxtaposed with ads for the "Healthy Penis Campaign," also a city of San Francisco-funded effort, which is captioned "I get checked for syphilis every 3-6 months"; an ad for Erossf.com, "San Francisco's acclaimed 18+ sex club for gay and bisexual men", captioned "Bedroom Eyes" and which features a graphic of two men in towels embracing; an ad for theReporter's online classifieds page (on which the Adoption.sf ad also appears), which features a photo of a nearly naked man, and is captioned "Check out models and escorts in our new and improved classifieds! More photos and videos! Click here."
A publicly-funded online ad campaign for adoptive parents targeted at men who frequent s/m events seems irresponsible. Recent news suggests rather more care should be taken when seeking adoptive "fathers." On June 29, WRAL TV of Raleigh-Durham, NC, reported on the case of Frank Lombard. Lombard, the associate director of the Center for Health Policy at Duke University, is an openly homosexual "partnered" man, who had adopted two African-American children. He was arrested on June 24 for sexually abusing one of the adopted children, a five-year-old boy, and for offering the child online to be abused by other men. WRAL published part of the transcript of the online chat sting operation that netted Lombard: "In the chat transcript 'F.L.' is asked how he got access to a child so young. 'Adopted,' he replied, and said that the process was 'not so hard ... esp (sic) for a black boy.'"
The AdoptionSF website describes the organization as "a collaboration between San Francisco Human Services Agency and Family Builders." The contract between the city and Family Builders specifies the use of state and local taxpayer dollars for the purpose of "Increasing the number of children adopted by Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) adults." But the only apparent "collaboration" is that the city and state of California fund Family Builders. The telephone numbers and addresses for AdoptionSF and Family Builders are identical.
Until June 2009, Catholic Charities of San Francisco had been part of that collaboration. According to the Catholic San Francisco newspaper, from 2006-2009 Family Builders received $110,000 annually from Catholic Charities. When the partnership was announced, it set off a firestorm of protest among Catholics, although Catholic Charities' then-executive director Brian Cahill referred to it as a "great opportunity." On October 17, 2008, Catholic San Francisco announced that the partnership was being dissolved. At that time Cahill said "We regret that a small group of activists, in order to further their own agenda, continue to distort and discredit our efforts on behalf of these neglected children. The welfare of children has been a paramount concern of Catholic Charities… for the past 100 years."
Although Catholic's funding of Family Builders was scheduled to end in June 2009, as of August 10, 2009, the "Catholic Charities San Francisco Adoption" webpage continues to direct those "seeking to pursue foster care adoption" to Family Builders.
