Scaramouche speaks from personal experience:
It’s tragic that the husband of former Toronto mayoral candidate George Smitherman committed suicide. It’s also tragic that the pair’s two young children, aged three and five, both adopted, are having to deal with the loss. After reading this Toronto Star article, though, I have one question, and I ask it as an adoptive parent who, along with my husband, had to be scrutinized up the wazoo before getting the province’s official go-ahead to adopt (a requirement for all would-be adoptive parents in Ontario):
How is it that authorities gave thumbs up to a couple comprised of one man known to suffer from ongoing, debilitating depression (an illness that ultimately resulted in his taking his own life) and another who had had serious addiction issues? Would such approval have been granted had the couple in question been, say, a man and a woman?
It’s possible, I suppose. But I wonder if the province cut this couple some extra slack because of their sexual orientation.
That and the fact that Smitherman is a high-profile Liberal politician, of course.
