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Clash of cultures and innocent pawns

In the past two weeks the Russian Duma and President Putin have carried out an act so bad, and so brazen, that doing that thing and admitting one is doing it for that reason would be inconceivable in American politics today. I hold no brief for American Democrat politicians; indeed, I consider them to be my cultural enemies and capable of all manner of evil and cynical behavior. But I will venture to say that not a single Democrat currently in either house of Congress would openly give the reason for an act which undeniably harms orphans that has been openly and proudly given by Putin and other supporters of the bill they have just passed. American pols would know that such a reason would not play in Peoria, or anywhere else, for that matter.

In case you haven't heard the story, here's a short version: The U.S. Congress recently passed a law known as the Magnitsky Act. It attempts to prevent Russians who have allegedly been complicit in gross human rights violations from coming to the U.S. or using the U.S. banking system, and it involves freezing their assets if they attempt to do so. There are specific Russian politicians in view who are believed to have been involved in the torture death in prison of a lawyer named Magnitsky and who have not been punished in Russia. Whatever one thinks of this law, the important thing to have clearly in view is that it has nothing whatsoever to do with adoptions or with the treatment of orphans. Got that? Keep it in mind.

Putin and Russian politicians felt themselves insulted by the passage of the Magnitsky Act, so insulted that they determined that they must do something in retaliation. Evidently it occurred to them that merely passing a parallel law to prevent Americans suspected of gross human rights abuses from traveling to or banking in Russia wouldn't have a huge effect on Americans (ahem), so they cast about for something else. And thought of...orphan adoption. What a brilliant idea! Punish Americans by implying that they are unfit parents, which can be done by preventing them from adopting Russian orphans. That'll show 'em.

Lest there be the slightest doubt, Putin himself was in no way ashamed of his motive for signing what is known openly as anti-Magnitsky Law--that is the law banning U.S. adoptions in retaliation for the (remember) utterly unrelated Magnitsky Law. On the contrary, he snarled at a critic of the law, “Do you think this is normal? What’s normal if you are humiliated? Are you a sadomasochist?” Got that? Putin believes, and evidently expects his fellow Russians to believe, that it is normal to make draconian legal changes affecting the future well-being and harming the best interests of orphans on the basis of anger at unrelated legislation in another country. Why is this normal? Because it's a matter of honor. If you are "humiliated," you have to do something in return, and if passing a law directly harming the helpless and innocent is the best tit-for-tat you can think of, well, they are just collateral damage.

The adoption ban halts not only adoptions initiated in the future but 46 pending adoptions, including some of children with serious disabilities. See here for some perspective, from a pediatrician who has been following this for many years, on the dreadful conditions in Russian orphanages. She says,

From the perspective of the orphans, the disaster is even more profound and tragic. They remain in orphanages in Eastern Europe—which are the worst in the world—with Russia and Romania taking the lead in disgraceful and outrageous conditions. These institutions are not habitable; children are malnourished and in some cases starving and emaciated. They lie in their own feces and urine and in clothes that are old, torn, and not fitted to their bodies. Orphans lie still and untouched in their cribs, all day and all night. They are in pain from hunger, cold, and a host of undefined medical conditions.

Babies and toddlers who do not “behave” are medicated and sedated with drugs such as Phenobarbital, a common antiseizure drug. This drug’s side effects can cause exhaustion and disengagement. They have no toys and not one iota of affection and connections with staff, which leads to attachment issues. With no touch, affection, and play, the children begin to provide their own stimulation because they need it to survive. If and when they stand up, they rock from side to side and bang their heads. They stare emptily into space and appear to be dull and delayed. Bottle propping and speed-feeding gruel causes them to choke and aspirate their food—sometimes causing pneumonia and death.

It is not at all an exaggeration to say that adoption is the only hope for some of these children to be saved from death.

Any assertion that halting all American adoptions of Russian children is in the best interests of Russian orphans does not pass the laugh test. I shall treat any such assertions with the dismissal they deserve if anyone tries them in the comments. As one petition (see here) says, "Of the nearly 60,000 children who had been adopted from Russia in the past 20 years, 19 have died, while in Russia hundreds of children die in Russian families and Russian orphanages regularly."

One might, of course, be as delusional or as bizarrely misinformed as Duma member Svetlana Goryacheva. She evidently thought her insane blood-libel against Americans (that they are systematically adopting children to harvest their organs, to use them for "sexual pleasure," or to send them back to Russia as an invading army) would play in whatever the Russian equivalent is of Peoria:

According to her theory, the U.S. is using these children to form an army to invade Russia. In her speech in the Duma on Wednesday, Goryacheva said that "60,000 children have been taken to the U.S. from Russia. And if even one-tenth of these orphans were used for organ transplants or sexual pleasure, there will remain 50,000 who can be recruited for war against Russia."

But let's hope one isn't.

It's also worth noting the continued relevance of Solzhenitsyn's injunction to "live not by lies" in today's Russia. I wonder if the very few Duma members who had the courage to oppose this Herodian bill had a copy of that essay by their sides. One member, Alexander Sidyakin, responded to his party's ultimatum that he must vote for the law by abstaining instead. Even that minimal gesture was deemed unacceptable. The United Russia party has demanded that Sidyakin lie and say that his voting apparatus broke and that this explained his abstention on the vote. He has refused and may be ousted as a result.

Truly, this was a law only King Herod would sign--utterly indefensible and inexcusable. It makes me both sad and angry to reflect that there are those even in America who will engage in spin-doctoring to distract attention from the sheer, paralyzing evil of this law.

It is understandable that my readers should wonder what they can do about this, besides praying for Russian orphans. I'm glad you asked. There are various Christian organizations that facilitate Western adoptions from foreign countries, and whether these are from Russia or not, the children involved are greatly helped and benefited (it would not be an exaggeration to say that they are rescued) by getting out of orphanages and into loving homes where they can receive the care they desperately need. The new Russian adoption ban is a sign that the window of opportunity for such adoptions is always in peril and can be closed at any time. Please consider supporting such organizations as Bethany Christian Services and Reece's Rainbow (which focuses on children with Down Syndrome) with your charitable giving.

Comments (83)

A deeply regrettable law.

For the record, the Russian government has been threatening to suspend adoptions for a few years. The U.S. action is just the latest pretext.

One particularly aggravating case was a U.S. woman who returned the child she adopted, sending a seven-year-old boy with reported violent psychological problems *alone* on a flight back to Russia. She claimed she was not informed of the boy's problems.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2010/04/09/russia-adoption-tennessee.html

I'd like to know more about the U.S. refusal to sign an international adoption accord on the duties of adoptive families with Russia, as reported in the CBC article.

Of course, it's shamefully hypocritical for the Russians to be outraged at the adoptive mother's maltreatment of that boy when their own orphanages are so deadly and cruel.

Of course, it's shamefully hypocritical for the Russians to be outraged at the adoptive mother's maltreatment of that boy when their own orphanages are so deadly and cruel.

Better yet, compare their treatment of Chechnya and South Ossetia with their stance on Israel and the Palestinians. That's enough hypocrisy to pave over a thousand mass graves.

There is, unfortunately, a strain of thought on the traditionalist right which suggests we should be indifferent to this law, because adopting foreigners is a Bad Idea. Eastern European children are damaged goods, by this way of thinking, and are bad news for their host parents and their host country. Adoption from Eastern Europe is another dent in the integrity of American society inflicted by bleeding hearts and sentimentalists, and what is more, Russia is non-liberal and this is a non-liberal law, and therefore worthy of our respect. (That kind of reflexive apologia for Russian has become a depressing regular feature of much right-wing commentary these days, much the same as the hard left has always tried to deflect criticism of Communist Russia's many bloody cruelties by torturous circumlocution and moral sophistry.)

Needless to say I find this kind of thinking risible. I do recognize the stupidity and immorality of celebrities like Madonna adopting token Third World children. Still, Americans who adopt orphans from Eastern Europe are not generally motivated by the desire to preen, even if they frequently do so without due caution. There is something to be said for the idea that a large portion of such adoptive children really should be considered unfit for just any old naive Western couple to bring into their homes. Many of them probably do belong in more clinical and impartially supervised environments.

However that might be, the depraved wickedness of such an act of the Russian political class speaks for itself, as it speaks for them, and it is better that we spend no effort in qualifying our condemnation of it. ("Herodian" is an excellent descriptor, by the way.)

Theirs to do with as they please.
If the concept of State ownership abrades,one must consider that in the US children are required by law to get SS number.
This is branding to ID one's property.
Biblical ownership of family and spouse is the only counter-measure to State ownership.

It keep the State out of families and preserves marriages.
And it is Godly, yes God owns us,most of all.

Many of them probably do belong in more clinical and impartially supervised environments.

That's not the only alternative to "any old naive Western couple." For one thing, if a child is just very, very sick, injured, malnourished, disabled, and/or developmentally delayed, the most important things are things like that the couple have excellent medical insurance and that they have the time, energy, love, and stamina to put into helping a child that sick.

JackFrost, I have only a rather vague idea of what you are getting at but suspect that you are not going to contribute much of value to our discussion.


Sage, I wanted to say that I very much appreciate your calling out of reflexive apologia for Russia in some sectors of the right. It is an exceedingly regrettable phenomenon, and an indefensible act like this really tests it: Will the reflexive Russophiles defend this or attempt to spin it by changing the subject to anti-American rhetoric? I have evidence from other venues that they will, undoubtedly sounding a good deal like the left in the process, as is often the case.

Kevin J. Jones, I wanted to mention that this paragraph from one of the articles I link is probably pertinent:

In my experience there have always been politics in Russian adoption. From the minute adoptions started in 1994, they were never welcomed by the Russian government. For over 18 years, as a pediatrician specializing in orphan medicine, I have watched the many adoption moratoria come and go. Some have lasted weeks, some months, and some even longer. Each time the doors to adoption in Russia closed, people lost their children. The re-initiation after the slow-downs often resulted in the babies being removed from the registry and people going back to square one. Families experienced these losses as deaths, but even with these losses, they courageously moved forward with new referrals. Some families experienced multiple losses due to politics and bureaucratic changes in Russia. Russian adoption became marred by an unpredictable reputation with expected political obstruction and slow downs. The process was a military obstacle course with little reliability and the sure potential for failed adoptions with unfulfilled dreams for families.

I'll add that in the Soviet days, foreign adoptions were completely banned.

In other words, the fact that such moratoria come and go is not evidence that Americans are somehow as a general rule abusive or bad adoptive parents. It's rather evidence of general anti-Americanism and of the use of adoption as a political trading card, as we see in the case of the present law.

One bizarre aspect of all of this is the meme that Americans are adopting children in order to harvest their organs. I am told that in the orphanages themselves children old enough to understand this claim are told *by orphanage workers* that they should refuse to be adopted by Americans because they will take them back to America and kill them for their organs. If the child or young person believes this, he is then required to sign a form stating that he refused adoption, which blocks his ability to be adopted at any time in the future.

Who believes this meme and who doesn't is an interesting question. Obviously, a child who refuses adoption from an American family whom he's met and who seem kind and loving must believe it. Who else does? Are all the rest simply engaging in cynical manipulation? The orphanages evidently stand to lose some sort of stipend if the child is adopted, but it's almost difficult to believe the cynicism that would cause one to tell a child a monstrous lie like that for that motive.

Either way, what we have is a kind of bizarre myth that is doing the rounds in Russia and is part of an overall picture of anti-American xenophobia that is a little difficult for us to grasp. Its relation both to reality and to the actual best interests of the children is nil.

I'll add that in the Soviet days, foreign adoptions were completely banned.

In other words, the fact that such moratoria come and go is not evidence that Americans are somehow as a general rule abusive or bad adoptive parents. It's rather evidence of general anti-Americanism and of the use of adoption as a political trading card, as we see in the case of the present law.

It is also a defining feature of modern tyrannies that they build barriers, legal or physical, to keep the people from escaping their grasp. Russian despotism has a peculiar pedigree of imprisoning its subjects, both physically and psychically, for the exact reason that it enables the all-powerful State to save face. Theodore Dalrymple's reading of Marquis de Custine's travel diary, La Russie en 1839, points out some interesting observations in this connection (my apologies for the lengthiness of the quotation, but I trust you will agree it is justified):


For the whole elaborate charade of despotism to work, for the pretense that the despotism is both indispensable and conducive to the welfare of all, everyone must appear to believe in it—including the despot himself. The czar, as a consequence, remains trapped in a permanent state of fear and irritation, because he knows that he is not in fact omnipotent, but he cannot acknowledge openly this obvious fact and he cannot permit anyone or anything else to question the pretense on which his authority depends. "Subjecting the world to his supreme commands," Custine says of him, "he sees in the most insignificant events a shadow of revolt. . . . A fly that buzzes unseasonably . . . humiliates the Czar. The independence of Nature seems to him a bad example."...If the czar is all-powerful, he is of course responsible for everything: therefore nothing untoward can happen in the country without the imputation of the czar's ill will. But in that case, how is the imputation of omnipotence to be reconciled with that of perfect benevolence? If something terrible happens to innocent people, either the czar must not be omnipotent or must not be benevolent. The only way to square the circle is to lie oneself and be deceived when others lie in similar fashion: to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil, even when evil abounds.

For example, shortly after his arrival in Russia, Custine went to the annual festival at the palace of Peterhof, a festival of such magnificence that it took 1,800 servants to light 250,000 lamps for it. Visitors reached the palace by boat from Saint Petersburg, and one boat had sunk in a storm on the way to the festival with the loss of all its passengers and crew. But because "any mishap [in Russia] is treated as an affair of State" in Russia, and because "to lie is to protect the social order, to speak the truth is to destroy the State," there followed "a silence more terrifying than the disaster itself." In Russia, people of the highest social class—as were the boat's passengers—could disappear not only without a trace but without comment. Who in such a country could ever feel safe?

One immediately thinks of Stalinist prison-states like North Korea and Turkmenistan, one of official Moscow's many treacherous gifts to humanity. But even absent the easily-mocked cults of personality, you can see that this feature of Russian political culture has survived the collapse of Communism: That the misfortune of innocents is regarded as an affront to the all-important myth of the benevolence of the State. The plight of Russian orphans is a particularly strong, in-your-face rebuke to the lie of a healthy and prosperous Russian society, shepherded by an all-embracing State whose agents effect a sort of mystical beneficience. The reason adoption is a "sensitive" issue for Russian politicians is precisely that the horrifying plight of the Russian orphan reflects a squalor and sickness that is not only material but also spiritual, and not merely economic but also political. Given that Putin's rule there dates all the way back to the second Chechen war of the late 1990's, their plight is an indictment of his governance, and of United Russia more generally. It is this, more than anti-Americanism per se, that drives such unimaginable cynicism as is required to put about the lie that American families intend to harvest the organs of Russian children.

Confirmation of Sage's last comment is found in this, from one of the articles about Putin's signing this law:

He told a State Council meeting in the Kremlin on Thursday that he saw no reason not to sign it. “For centuries, neither spiritual nor state leaders sent anyone abroad.”

The idea, apparently, is that "sending anyone abroad" represents a loss of face. In this case, an admission that Russia cannot well care for its own orphans.

Some of the attempted spinning I've seen elsewhere involves saying that Americans, instead of rescuing orphans from such horrible circumstances (whether in Russia or elsewhere) should "work with" the home countries to make conditions better. One example that was given was that a particular country with a high rate of female infanticide (I believe it was India but would have to confirm that) has also banned American adoptions, and that this simply means that "we" need to "work with" this country to try to protect girls from infanticide! In other words, even though there are particular, specific children in terrible circumstances and/or at risk of death, and even though there are heroic American families willing to adopt them as their own and give them love and care, somehow the _preferable_ thing is to try _somehow_ (how effectively remaining a very open question!) to make things better for the children in their home country rather than helping them directly. _Why_ is this preferable or better? Apparently it's in some sense better for an orphan to starve to death and for a girl infant to be murdered "within her own culture" than to insult, God forbid, the child's own country and culture by rescuing the child from murder or from death by starvation.

The most insane thing about that, Lydia, is it presupposes that the very same political class whose concern for saving face is such that they would entertain such a ban in the first place would then turn around and serve as a credible partner in American entreaties to "improve" the situation--a situation they are loathe even to acknowledge. It takes an almost pitiable level of naivete to advance a solution like that.

Absolutely. Which underscores the fact that "working with" a country rather than adopting specific children is exchanging concrete and definite benefits to specific individuals for vague and uncertain (and unlikely) benefits to unspecified children through systemic change that we have no reliable way of bringing about.

To be clear: I would never pressure nor guilt-trip any family into international adoption. But if they want to do it and are well-qualified, I say more power to them.

I just want to second Sage's great comment, "Adoption from Eastern Europe is another dent in the integrity of American society inflicted by bleeding hearts and sentimentalists,..." Yes, this situation of Americans running to China, to Russia, to Africa to "adopt" foreign babies is absolutely disgusting. It is breaking the integrity of American society. It is against the virtue of Righteousness. But I digress, I live in an unrighteous society.

And by the way, Let Russia run its own affairs.

Um, Mr. Wheeler, that isn't Sage's actual comment. That is a position he is attributing to other people and criticizing. In other words, you're an example of the problem.

As a human being, I will not refrain from criticizing this evil law merely because it happens to have been passed by another country. If you consider such criticism to be an example of not "letting it run its own affairs," big deal. I'm sure Vladimir Putin is not shaking in his boots at my criticism. But I absolutely condemn what he has done.

And go jump in the lake with your scare quotes around adopt. Adopting is adopting. No scare quotes. They are, in fact, adopting children from these countries. Adoption is an ancient human behavior, used by God himself as a metaphor for his own relation to those whom he has redeemed. And whether you happen to believe _that_ or not, the reality of adoption as something human beings sometimes do is undeniable. It's just silly to put it in scare quotes.

But your comments are generally silly, or far worse, so that should come as no surprise.

I'm not going to defend it because blood libel is blood libel. However, Russia only recently started coming out of its steep demographic decline, so it isn't surprising they would resort to these sorts of lies to block the perception among Russians that their orphans are better off in foreign countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Natural_Population_Growth_of_Russia.PNG

Because it's a matter of honor.

There is a highly disputed theory (hat tip Dr. Beck) that claims that honor cultures are more likely to be found in places where produce farming is limited or absent. The theory is based on the economic idea that livestock can be stolen (or simply wander away) a lot easier than large crops, so a system of close scrutiny and brutal retaliation is needed to secure that investment.

Population growth is what came to my mind as well when I first heard about this. Just like Communists Romania's ban on abortion.

Laura Wood gave her piece a while ago.

http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2012/12/russia-bans-american-adoption/

I can see a state doing this, but I agree it will be very harmful. Russia is not the most child friendly society (look at the neglect and abortion) and we know that children will suffer as a result of this.

Anymouse,

You are one of our better commenters around here, so I'm surprised to read you linking Laura Wood without analysis. Ms. Wood has written about international adoption before and I guess it would be charitable of me to say that she really doesn't know what she's talking about and/or is simply hostile to the idea of children from other cultures or races being adopted by Americans.

Unlike Ms. Wood, I'm happy to stand with Lydia on this issue and condemn Putin and the Russian politicians who supported him in no uncertain terms. I also wanted to thank Sage for his excellent comments.

Why would Putin want to export ethnic Russians? Why make them into a commodity? Putin is 100% correct to want to keep ethnic Russian children in Russia. I'm delighted by his decision.

The wacko adoption craze in the USA has become some weird cult!

On the other hand, at least Russian children are white.

I feel sorry for all the fundamentalist wackos adopting all those Third World refuse:

http://faithandheritage.com/2011/08/reconsidering-interracial-transracial-adoption/

I suspect, though with doubt and trepidation, that you have mis-read Putin, Lydia. Oh, not about the malice in this act - that goes without saying. No, I think maybe you missed the cynicism. I doubt that he really cares all that much about being perceived as a noble leader by his people, still less by outsiders. He is, rather, merely poking Americans in the eye for political gain in some other arena: he knows bleeding hearted American parents will go screaming to their Congressmen about this, and Congress will put pressure on the administration to "do something", and the State Department will find some avenue of give and take where Putin will give up this law in exchange for the US giving him something he wanted all along. I suspect the "honor" and "humiliation" business is pure showmanship, through and through. He couldn't care a plug nickel about the humiliation of the Magnistsky Act. It't an old game, one that the Soviets played day in and day out. (Others did it too, but rarely as effectively). Putin is just using the Soviet play book for political maneuvering.

Tony, I have to take my hat off to you. I never even thought of that. But it would make sense.

Anymouse, I have little desire to read what Laura W. has to say about this subject. I suspect I already know. She and I "duked it out" on a related post (check our "adoption" tag) three years ago, and her views there ranged from absurd and apparently uninformed to odious. (If she really was informed, that just made it all the worse.) She did not fully acknowledge nor care much about the horrific situations of the children involved, and she made the most utterly bizarre common cause (given her racialist views) with multiculturalists. Indeed, it was someone like her that I had in mind in my above comment when I said that some people seem to think it better that a child die of starvation, neglect, or outright murder in an orphanage located in his (or, more often, her) "own culture" than that he be adopted by a family from a Western country. And we got the usual garbage about celebrity adoptions, as though that really has anything to do with the forty-six sets of parents whose in-process adoptions have now been blocked, nor with many other parents who have or would have adopted transnationally.

Roger, whoever you are: Get lost. Fast. Before I start deleting your comments. Probably I should delete the ones that are there already, but I'll give you a chance to take a warning and shut up.

Oh, by the way: Given that most of these children are being maltreated or neglected so spectacularly that their survival is a matter of doubt, the idea that the Russians are deliberately keeping them in-country to try to correct demographic downturn simply will not fly. They are being treated as the exact opposite of a human resource. More like junk that the country hopes will just magically disappear. This is especially true of disabled children, but there don't appear to be upscale orphanages where apparently able-bodied children are carefully nurtured, either. To put it mildly.

In the spirit of Socrates, I was hoping for rational debate. But I see that the method of censorship is the norm here, so I guess I'll move on to another blog.

Best,

Roger

What is with this weird idea to somehow make adoption of needy children a "white man power grab" (I just made up that term, but it does seem to explain it well)thing?

Maybe I'm just too young or uneducated, but I fail to see how adopting children living in horrific conditions from other countries, to bring them to live in better living conditions, is anything but a good thing.

Nor do I see how the desire to adopt black children, or not, has any bearing on this at all. It's a totally separate issue.

But hey, I'm young, and I'm uneducated compared to most of you guys. Maybe I'm that stupid. But I have a feeling that this is one of those "common sense" issues you her so much about.

Maybe I'm just too young or uneducated, but I fail to see how adopting children living in horrific conditions from other countries, to bring them to live in better living conditions, is anything but a good thing.

It is a form of immigration, and since our native demographics are shifting badly some corners of the right fear that bringing more foreigners in (even as young or younger children) will exacerbate the problem. After a certain age, they have a point. Once the child is old enough to actually be a meaningful participant in their native culture it really is as much an immigration process as it is an adoption process.

We have plenty of unwanted children (white and non-white) in our country to adopt, and they're already closer to white Americans culturally than any third world child. We don't need to allow easy adoption of foreign children. There are plenty of avenues for helping them such as working with the local churches to take over the orphanages.

I have no sympathy for these bleeding hearts who won't get to adopt Russian babies. How about they adopt an American baby with health problems (drugs, medical, etc.)? Or give a foster home to an older child from an abused background? Certain exceptions such as perhaps what happens to baby girls in China notwithstanding, there are really not many compelling reasons to make it easy to bring foreign children to US soil for adoption.

** Don't take that to mean I support this law either. I think using orphans as hostages like this is a despicable act.

Oh, by the way: Given that most of these children are being maltreated or neglected so spectacularly that their survival is a matter of doubt, the idea that the Russians are deliberately keeping them in-country to try to correct demographic downturn simply will not fly. They are being treated as the exact opposite of a human resource.

This was my thought as well. The theory that this is really about reversing Russia's demographic decline makes exactly zero sense, given the context here. We're talking about children who in many cases stand precious little chance of growing up to be healthy, productive members of a vital Russian population. People who see demography are purely a matter of raw numbers, and more than that, as purely a matter of the raw number of children below a certain age, are missing a lot. Maybe it's a consequence of thinking strictly in terms of democratic elections, I don't know.

MikeT, several things:

- I can't understand why you think the humanitarian situation in China (i.e., "what happens to girls in China") is different in any relevant way from the conditions of a girl living in a Russian or Romanian orphanage, or why the humanitarian situation there is relevant while the one in Russia is not. Some Chinese girls are murdered or taken from their parents and placed in abominable facilities, and many Russian children die of neglect while lying in their own feces. I'm at a loss to figure out just what hair is being split here.

- I also can't understand the dismissive reference to "bleeding hearts" with respect to these adoptive parents. Their desire to adopt a child from Eastern Europe, to the extent that it is motivated by a desire to improve those childrens' lives, is a good thing in itself and hardly deserving of contempt. There are some liberal bleeding hearts involved, to be sure, but the wide brush being used in so many comments to refer to any prospective adoptive parent as motivated by frivolous or Doubleplus Ungood political ideas strikes me as needlessly uncharitable, and sloppy too.

- If you think it's just as easy as pie to find a white baby to adopt in the United States, and that the supply of those children is just boiling over, I suggest you give the matter a closer look. The reason people are willing to go to such lengths as to adopt a white baby from overseas is precisely that it is almost prohibitively difficult to do so right here at home. That's pretty much how the market for these kids opened up in the first place--massive unmet demand finds massive untapped supply. If you think the answer is for them to bite the bullet and adopt a non-white baby, well, that's another discussion and of course it's easy for you to say.

- To the extent that foreign adoptions are a "form of immigration," they are a practically infinitesimal source of foreign babies and stand absolutely no chance of altering our demographics in any appreciable way. Besides, to the extent we have an immigration problem, it's largely a problem of having millions of non-whites from the Third World immigrating as whole families, coupled with a disastrously low birth rate among native born whites. We could triple the number of adoptions from Eastern Europe tomorrow and hardly anybody would notice.

- Again, I'd be fascinated to see what your suggestions might be for how we go about "working with" the Russian Orthodox Church in their effort to assume control of these orphanages from the Russian state. My assumption is going to be that the Russians have just sent us a very clear message about how such meddling would be received.

MarcAnthony, I suppose you might hear some doing the "power grab" thing but what you've heard here from the likes of Roger is more like plain old-fashioned racism (a word I do not use lightly or often).

Mike T., you're a wellspring of cliches this morning. Sage has answered them well. The idea of "taking over" poorly run orphanages is a joke, as is the idea of "working with the church." I replied to this kind of talk above:

"Working with" a country rather than adopting specific children is exchanging concrete and definite benefits to specific individuals for vague and uncertain (and unlikely) benefits to unspecified children through systemic change that we have no reliable way of bringing about.

Your reasons for preferring such vague and almost certainly doomed attempts to the concrete rescue and help of specific children, when there are families willing to engage in the latter, appear to be...poor.

I always find it odd and distasteful when people blame genuine compassion, compassion which is taking an active and genuinely useful and helpful form, because they regard it as compassion for the wrong people! I can understand situations where we tell a person that a given charity is not really helping the people he thinks it is helping or that his activism is actually contributing to problems for the very people he is concerned with. That's just a matter of trying to make empirical information available. I can also understand some complaints about activities motivated by compassion that turn out to be purely symbolic in nature, when the people in question could use their time, energy, and money to do real concrete good instead. But I absolutely cannot sympathize when someone shows compassion on a foreign child and someone comes along and tells them for some purely ideological reason that they are obligated instead to help an American child. Compassion isn't the kind of thing that should or can be manipulated like that: "Oh, your heart was moved with compassion for this child dying of neglect in a foreign orphanage. Well, get some reins on your compassion. You're an American. You have a patriotic duty to direct your compassion towards an American child. And if you won't do it, we Americans will make legal barriers to your adopting foreign children, because otherwise we'd be 'making it easy' for you to be insufficiently patriotic."

By the way, Mike: What I can't help gathering from your repeated comments about how we shouldn't "make it easy" to adopt foreign children is that, while you condemn the Russian law for its blatant disregard of the best interests of its own orphans, you wouldn't mind some sort of American laws that would harm the very same orphans, so long as those laws were motivated by some sort of American nationalism--a desire to prevent Russian and other orphans from being adopted on the grounds that they are foreigners.

This seems to me to be quite morally questionable, especially given a) the relatively small numbers involved and b) the illness and developmental delay of many of the children involved, which makes it somewhat laughable to imagine them as some sort of carriers of (wrong) foreign culture and ideas.

Oh, Mike T., that's just real charming that you have "no sympathy" for those who "won't get to adopt" Russian orphans. Perhaps you include in that those who have already invested not only emotional attachment but also a lot of money (perhaps $$ will attract your sympathy if nothing else does) in beginning to integrate a specific foreign child into their lives and families and whose adoptions are now blocked in medias res. If you make an exception and do feel sympathy for them, that's big of you. My other comments about the attempt to force compassion into ideologically preferred channels stand.

Tony, I've been thinking about your analysis, and I think it dismisses too readily the issue of loss of face. (See Sage's discussion above of how this goes back to Czarist days.) Putin's response about "what you do if you are humiliated" and "are you a sadomasochist" was made as from one Russian to another, and it's typical of the kinds of angry comments we saw from other Russian pols in the lead-up to this law. These definitely have to me the mark of reflecting some real Russian cultural thought process regarding retaliation. It's, to my mind, a despicable cultural phenomenon, but I don't think it's just a kind of invented cultural theater for purposes of making demands of Americans later. It seems to me not implausible that there are a substantial number of Russians who believe that anything that could "look like an insult" deserves whatever retaliation can be found and that it doesn't matter if orphans are used for the purpose. One might think of it as something like gang culture on a national level: "Are you dissing me? You want a piece of me?" And if you shoot little kids in the ensuing crossfire, too darned bad.

Sage, you mention the difficulty adopting white babies in America. I would say that from what I've seen of those involved in the foreign adoption cause and adopting from Eastern Europe and Russia, that is not a big motivator. A much bigger motivator is the sheer graphic power of information about the systematic neglect of children in foreign orphanages. The foster care system in America is bad in many ways, but I daresay children aren't systematically starving to death in foster care on any widespread basis. Also, the fact that children are in foster care in America, in families, rather than in orphanages makes conditions vary a good deal and makes documentation and statistical conclusions that much more difficult to gather.

So I doubt that race has much to do with this. The strong motivation of the same sorts of Americans who are wanting to adopt Russian orphans to adopt Chinese orphans bears this out as well.

Lydia,

What's the matter, not enough coffee to amp up your reading comprehension this morning, Lydia? MarcAnthony asked why people hold those views and I tried to explain why they might hold them. Do I think adopting a few babies from third world countries is going to alter our demographics? Of course not. You insult my intelligence.

The sympathy issue is another matter, but still...

No, Mike T., your comments were given in your own words and indicated that you think it "should not be made easy" for Americans to adopt from foreign countries and that it would be somehow "better" for Americans to adopt children in-country. Sage answered you in similar ways to the ways that I did. I hesitate to repeat your words, because I don't consider them very edifying, but here were some of them:

We have plenty of unwanted children (white and non-white) in our country to adopt, and they're already closer to white Americans culturally than any third world child. We don't need to allow easy adoption of foreign children. There are plenty of avenues for helping them such as working with the local churches to take over the orphanages.

I have no sympathy for these bleeding hearts who won't get to adopt Russian babies. How about they adopt an American baby with health problems (drugs, medical, etc.)? Or give a foster home to an older child from an abused background? Certain exceptions such as perhaps what happens to baby girls in China notwithstanding, there are really not many compelling reasons to make it easy to bring foreign children to US soil for adoption.

you wouldn't mind some sort of American laws that would harm the very same orphans, so long as those laws were motivated by some sort of American nationalism--a desire to prevent Russian and other orphans from being adopted on the grounds that they are foreigners.

I am generally in favor of ending immigration for several generations unless the immigrant possesses some compelling reason to make an exception. I don't find their circumstances sufficiently compelling to warrant special consideration unless they are so young as to be able to be wholly Americanized. Our demographics are so broken and continuing to break that within 1-2 generations if things don't improve we will face a demographics crisis (50% of new births now are to non-whites and climbing). That isn't a basis upon which to build a stable society. (I'm sure you or Paul might have some smart comment about race and culture, but the fact that we have demonstrably not made any meaningful progress on creating a color-blind society means logic-be-damned the facts on the ground are that increased diversity will lead to a failure of cohesion).

No, Mike T., your comments were given in your own words and indicated that you think it "should not be made easy" for Americans to adopt from foreign countries and that it would be somehow "better" for Americans to adopt children in-country.

And if you read the first paragraph of my comment, you'll find that it was not me explaining my personal views but explaining to MarcAnthony why some on the right like the Russophiles might want that. That I happen to have some limited agreement is another matter. If you're going to cite my comment to beat me over the head, at least do the whole thing so we can keep the full context.

- Again, I'd be fascinated to see what your suggestions might be for how we go about "working with" the Russian Orthodox Church in their effort to assume control of these orphanages from the Russian state. My assumption is going to be that the Russians have just sent us a very clear message about how such meddling would be received.

Well one might start with proposing to the Russians that private charities outside of the control of the US Government would help the Russian Orthodox Church build up its capacity to take over that responsibility in a way that leaves the institutions firmly under Russian control. The Russians have every good reason to be suspicious of federal assistance since not only are we a former mortal enemy, but are known to use our diplomatic efforts to interfere with domestic policy (ex. our State Department has been caught trying to push multiculturalism on French society through official federal programs).

Well one might start with proposing to the Russians that private charities outside of the control of the US Government would help the Russian Orthodox Church build up its capacity to take over that responsibility in a way that leaves the institutions firmly under Russian control. The Russians have every good reason to be suspicious of federal assistance since not only are we a former mortal enemy, but are known to use our diplomatic efforts to interfere with domestic policy

Blah blah. In other words, you condemn this law and consider it despicable, but you also would prefer to see us fiddle around with these (probably ineffective) avenues than "make it easy" for American couples to adopt Russian kids and help them directly. Whatever "make it easy" means, exactly.


That I happen to have some limited agreement is another matter.

The precise limits of your agreement are extremely unclear.

It's grimly and darkly amusing to see someone talking about "Americanization" in relation to orphans a lot of whom are sufficiently disabled that the category is largely irrelevant. If an orphan with Down Syndrome who has the weight of a two-year-old at the age of nine and has never learned to talk is adopted in America, survives, and comes to enjoy eating hot dogs and apple pie, will that count as "wholly Americanized" enough? Good grief.

Well, here's the thing. Yes, we have American orphans. Yes, they should be adopted. But isn't everybody called to do different things? I am planning an event to help teenagers suffering from depression, self-harm issues, and suicidal tendencies. This means that I just can't be using as much of my time working with pro-life issues, despite being extremely pro-life. So what should I do, or anybody involved with charities like this do? Ignore other issues and have everybody focus solely on pro-life issues, since other things like I'm doing will take time away?

So maybe you feel as if you're being called to help orphans who aren't American. Unlike in my above example, I don't even think adopting Americans is somehow more important than adopting foreigners! The welfare of the actual, human person should come first, right? Everything else is theory based on what MIGHT happen in the future. Helping a child in need-that's reality.

Perhaps my analogy isn't a great one. I don't know. But if we're worried about the future of America then maybe it's a good thing that we have people who are charitable enough to care about needy children who aren't even from their own country.

Marc Anthony, you're quite right, and you're there seconding my point about the extreme distastefulness of telling people that they ought to help person A rather than person B. If they are truly helping person A, then we shouldn't be trying to manipulate them to help person B instead. And doing so by means of some sort of weird nationalistic ideology is in some ways even worse. (And unlikely to work, either.)

It would of course be different if we could show that adoptive parents are literally harming or neglecting *their own children* in order to adopt a foreign adoptee. That would be a point worth making. But to imply that an American couple from Ohio have a duty to adopt a child from New York rather than a child from Moscow or China simply because the former is American and the latter isn't is, let's just say, misguided.

Lydia,

I know I shouldn't dignify him with further comment, but I can't help but notice that before leaving us Roger complained that he dropped by because all he wanted was to engage us all in "rational debate". This comment is coming from someone whose contribution to rational debate consisted of the following: "I feel sorry for all the fundamentalist wackos adopting all those Third World refuse." [My emphasis.]

The rationality practically leaps off the page at you, doesn't it?

Mike T.,

I am as hard-core as anyone when it comes to immigration (well, maybe not anyone, but you get the idea) and Sage is just plain factually correct on this issue -- the numbers just aren't there to impact us one way or the other. I'll be saying much more about immigration this year, so let's keep our 'eye on the prize' so to speak, as both parties are going to push for some sort of foolish amnesty for the millions of illegal South American immigrants here already sometime soon.

If these parents were signing some kind of agreement to raise the children as non-Americans or as Muslims, etc., there might be an immigration complaint for those children for whom the category was even relevant. But they aren't. Adoption into an American family is an excellent opportunity for full assimilation to occur, again, to the extent to which an adoptee has the capacity for the category to apply. To treat it as equivalent to the immigration of independent adults and/or immigrant-headed families is wrong-headed.

"In the spirit of Socrates."

Hilarious.

Who gives two hoots how foreign orphans are treated? I don't. I don't mean to be rude and I like many things about Lydia but I often get the sense that she is suffering from Pathological Altruism:

http://www.amren.com/features/2012/07/pathological-altruism/


The white female demographic suffers from this more than any other group, especially white religious fundamentalists.

The white female demographic suffers from this more than any other group, especially white religious fundamentalists.

The second-favorite f-word of contemporary man, and the one he actually treats as an obscenity, is having quite a day at W3TW.

What's funny is that the quotation above is worded so as to sound like a sociologically established claim, whereas I get the sense that it's 1) likely to be false (if there's such a thing as Pathological Altruism, it is probably most common among irreligious white liberals), and 2) just a none-too-carefully disguised slur anyway.

Of course. We're getting our share of people who are good at slurs and don't appear to have much else to say. Not to mention the fact that whether person A cares about situation X hardly constitutes an argument about whether good people in general should care about situation X. I'm sure plenty of sociopaths also don't care about how foreign orphans are treated. The spontaneous sympathies of a drive-by commentator aren't remotely the lodestone of rightly ordered human thought and sentiment.

Actually, I have to say that I'd rather not be liked by anyone who really doesn't care at all about how these children are treated. I could understand someone's saying that he has other, also very important, priorities into which he invests his emotional energies. I could understand someone's saying that he can't afford to think too much about this appalling treatment because it will overwhelm him and because there is so little he can do about it. I can understand someone's just being too busy doing good things to read blogs in the first place and find out about the treatment of children in Russian orphanages. All of that. But if someone reads about this and prides himself on saying, "What the heck do I care about that? They're just foreign kids anyway," then I have no real desire for his admiration. By the same token, why would such a person care about abortion, euthanasia, or any of a host of other evils? If you want to be a selfish jerk and care about nothing that doesn't immediately grab your fancy, it's your soul to lose, but don't expect me to care whether you think well of me or not. That's certainly not the kind of person I want to be known as or to associate with.

- Again, I'd be fascinated to see what your suggestions might be for how we go about "working with" the Russian Orthodox Church in their effort to assume control of these orphanages from the Russian state.

In the spirit of equal opportunity tribalism, here is some policy advice from Russian Orthodox archpriest Chaplin: “We are speaking very often of children who come from Orthodox families, or who even have been baptized in the Orthodox Church,” observed the Church’s representative. The adoption of Russian children by foreign couples in the majority of cases signifies “the impossibility [for the children] to receive a truly Christian upbringing, and thus, their falling-away from the Church and from the path to eternal life, to the Kingdom of God.”

The second-favorite f-word of contemporary man, and the one he actually treats as an obscenity, is having quite a day at W3TW.

Now hold on. It isn't treated as an obscenity, it is treated as a dismissal. The favorite f-word is treated as an act of Congress -- filibuster of course, what were you thinking?

Yes, interesting. One wonders if Archpriest Chaplin think it's better for a child to die of starvation in a crib somewhere in Russia after having been baptized Orthodox rather than being adopted by, say, a Baptist family and (horrors) possibly receiving believer's re-baptism by immersion ten years later. To be fair, Bishop Panteleimon seems to have at least a somewhat balanced view, which inter alia involves admitting that Russia isn't in a position to do what is best for all Russian orphans.

http://www.pravmir.ru/episkop-panteleimon-shatov-podverg-rezkoj-kritike-zapret-usynovleniya-rossijskix-detej-grazhdanami-ssha-1/

(Google Translate did a pretty good job with the page.)

I still find it a little sad that the only success story he could bring himself to report positively on was one in which the girl who was adopted in the U.S. was raised Orthodox. There is definitely a cultural issue here.

The blogger Roissy has speculated that Pathological Altruism might be as high among white females as autism is among white males:

https://twitter.com/heartiste/status/286863951537528834

Pathological Altruism is also more predominant among effeminate beta males (than among masculine alpha males).

Point taken about fundamentalists. But the worldview of self-righteous religious fundamentalists isn't too different from self-righteous leftists. Just look at Brownback and Clooney teaming up to help them poor Africans.

So you feel pity for Brownback and Lydia but admire white supremacist Jared Taylor and sexual predator Roissy? This is seriously one of the most clueless appeals to authority I've ever read.

Step,

What can I say? I'm an anti-egalitarian, aristocratically-minded elitist who loves his own people / doesn't suffer from pathological altruism.

Okay, J. Carlyle, bag it. I'm sorry you like many things about me. I'll get to work on that immediately.

Looks like my tenure here may be short. I was hoping people would be more thirsty for the truth. Regardless, so that we all have our ducks in a row, let me point out that pathological altruist Sam Brownback thinks whites should adopt Chinese girls instead of having white children and white South Africans, well, they should just die:

http://www.examiner.com/article/into-the-cannibal-s-pot-preparation-for-genocide


This is the sad, sick world we live in, folks.

If the best you've got is slander you will have to do much, much better. As an elitist you should appreciate the idea of high standards of proof, although as an aristocratic type you may have unfortunately become addicted to gossip.

If nothing else, you're threadjacking, Carlyle. Looks like your tenure here may be short indeed. What part of "bag it" don't you understand? Never mind. You needn't answer that.

Step2, you disappoint me. Do you really mean to suggest that an argument that begins this way...

The blogger Roissy has speculated...

...does not give you immediate pause for reflection?

Well, I think I speak for all sensible people here when I say that, if pure speculation on the part of a man who has devoted all of intellectual powers to scoring cheap sex does not count for something in your book, then you probably ought to be banned from further commentary here. You are obviously quite unserious, and I'm sorry even to have wasted any effort in contradicting you in the past.

Roissy has not "devoted all his intellectual powers to scoring cheap sex" - that is an absurd, outrageous slander. He is a brilliant man, notwithstanding his amorality.

As for the adoption law: the way it's been framed in the OP Russia certainly comes off poorly. But Putin is the greatest leader on the world stage today, and he's done so much good for Russia in recent years that I'm inclined to hear his side of the story.

Yes, interesting. One wonders if Archpriest Chaplin think it's better for a child to die of starvation in a crib somewhere in Russia after having been baptized Orthodox rather than being adopted by, say, a Baptist family and (horrors) possibly receiving believer's re-baptism by immersion ten years later.
I know this comment was awhile ago, but I just noticed it now. I actually find what you say pretty interesting.

I'm probably going to be using imprecise terms here, so please bear with me. In Orthodox theology, I wonder how they interpret the concept "no salvation outside of the Church"-in this case the Orthodox Church, or at least one of the Apostolic Churches.

It makes me wonder-if he truly believes that those raised outside of the Orthodox Church are going to Hell, how twisted IS his morality? From what I've seen of older Catholic documents (although I'd have to do some digging to find them again)this used to be pretty commonly believed. So say he WOULD rather you die a baptized Orthodox than as a Protestant Baptist-how much should we condemn him for that?

My gut tells me that the concept is morally reprehensible, and at best his sense of morality and of the natural law is seriously twisted. But when it comes to religion, the subject is always touchy, and almost always more complex than it seems at first. So I'm not so sure if he's really that crazy after all-in a way, I hope he is.

"I still find it a little sad that the only success story he could bring himself to report positively on was one in which the girl who was adopted in the U.S. was raised Orthodox. There is definitely a cultural issue here."
It is a valid issue for believers, however. I would naturally prefer them Catholic, but IMHO Orthodox is preferable to being protestant. Suffering and dying in a hellish orphanage is good for no one of course.

'[Mrs. Laura Wood] "is simply hostile to the idea of children from other cultures or races being adopted by Americans"'
Most likely, but that is a POV I know some on the right will hold strongly to. It does not surprise me. She also understands that many of the adopting families will be as liberal as many other American families.

I agree that this law is horrible, but part of it is simply the extreme statism and authority of the Russian Government. They like other governments are engaged in far too much activity for their own people's good. It would be best if the local community and extended families of children could take care of them or put them up for adoption to the overseas community. Russia is still stuck in a Soviet mindset, as expected for a country run by a former KGB agent.

It is hard to know what Putin's motives are in blocking the foreign adoption of Russian children.
Let us be fair to Putin. He is crafty but is he a monster? He has been concerned about the fate of Syrian Christians. Has our State Department expressed similar concern. Putin has confronted the Jihadist threat within the borders of Russia. Putin has given refuge to French film star Depardieu in Russia, as he flees oppressive taxation in France. Putin's Russia has an income tax rate of 13%.
I have heard he is open to modifying the adoption prohibition, to permit Orthodox Christians to adopt orphans who otherwise have no reasonable expectation of adoption in Russia.

If he allows that, that would indeed be a good thing. I should hope he does at least permit such a thing, and if he does that heavily mitigates this action.

I admit I am not a man who trusts Putin, however. He is at least not a leftist, but I do see him as somewhat of a monster in other areas.

Roissy has not "devoted all his intellectual powers to scoring cheap sex" - that is an absurd, outrageous slander. He is a brilliant man, notwithstanding his amorality.

His brilliance is not the question, is it?

that I'm inclined to hear his side of the story.

He gave you his side of the story. He told the critic that this is "what you do if you are humiliated." Deal with it.

I should hope he does at least permit such a thing, and if he does that heavily mitigates this action.

Not really. Why only to Eastern Orthodox Christians? And who decides what expectation the children have in Russia? Given the conditions reported in so many orphanages, an _honest_ evaluation of their having little hope of good care in Russia would allow quodlibetal adoptions.

He is crafty but is he a monster?

Yeah, with this law, he pretty much is. And if he wanted to pass a different version of it, believe me, he could have done that to begin with. He just doesn't give a damn about either the conditions in his country's orphanage or the fate of the children in them or anything of the kind. This is "what you do if you're humiliated." It's "normal." It's funny that people won't listen to what the man says himself when they are determined to defend him.

Tony, I've been thinking about your analysis, and I think it dismisses too readily the issue of loss of face. (See Sage's discussion above of how this goes back to Czarist days.) Putin's response about "what you do if you are humiliated" and "are you a sadomasochist" was made as from one Russian to another, and it's typical of the kinds of angry comments we saw from other Russian pols in the lead-up to this law. These definitely have to me the mark of reflecting some real Russian cultural thought process regarding retaliation.

OK, I will grant you that I was hasty in dismissing the obviously significant cultural milieu of so-called "honor" here. But I think it remains very likely that Putin, so far from suffering from any actually felt humiliation, is laughing up is sleeve at all this, while USING the perceived humiliation by other Russian leaders. That is to say, he is perfectly willing to score points at home by playing on all this "honor" business, and use his own colleagues' foreseeable emotions for political planning. He has been a major player on the world stage for a long time, now, and he knows how international politics mixes with his national politics. I grant that he may have some residue of a cultural concern for how Russians are perceived other than how that affects politics, but after decades of learning to suppress "natural" or learned feelings to further political goals, it is extraordinarily likely that his "humiliated" and "sadomasochist" comments were fully pre-planned political showmanship, rather than strongly felt on his part.

The rationality practically leaps off the page at you, doesn't it?

Jeff, it sure does. Well, it leaped off the page, alright, quite some time ago, and hasn't deigned to return to the page since. :-)

"Why only to Eastern Orthodox Christians?"
Presumably he at least pretends in public to believe in the faith of (some) his people, and that those who disagree are heretics. Naturally I would disagree with his opinion, but that is because I am certain my faith is correct even though I may fall short of it.

We all need to remember this is not the first time Putin has engaged in behavior at least potentially corrupt. He has had many other scandals where he may have violated the limits of the law.

I'd rather give children to heretics, those whom I myself believe to be heretics, than see them be radically starved and neglected, possibly even to death. For that matter, and if it came to it, I'd rather give them to Hindus than leave them in those kinds of conditions.

This whole "let them die if you can't preserve their Russian-Russian-Russian Orthodox Culture" attitude revolts me. It seriously does. It's utterly inhumane, and I have no sympathy for it whatsoever. Hence, no,it wouldn't strongly mitigate things if such changes were made, especially given the fact that lots of evangelical Protestants want to adopt. Such changes would merely be *somewhat* better than the complete ban Putin has unabashedly supported and rammed through already.

It does not revolt me. I would not be eager to see Hindus adopt Christian (or potentially Christian) children, despite my respect for Hinduism. I still believe that my Catholic Christian faith is objectively superior. Culture and religion outweighs the physical health of the body.

Nevertheless, I would be loathe to support government controls over adoption simply as a matter of principal. The government should not have that much control over what you rightly described as a natural part of family life. Adoption is as natural (and prepolitical) as natural birth is.

But I do think there is a danger of prizing the life of the body over the life of the soul, which is one of the great sicknesses of our contemporary culture. I don't want to participate in that.

I would not be eager to see Hindus adopt Christian (or potentially Christian) children, despite my respect for Hinduism. I still believe that my Catholic Christian faith is objectively superior.

I don't have any great respect for Hinduism and wasn't saying that I do. But yeah, if children are in horrific circumstances and can't be cared for otherwise, it's an emergency situation.

Not to mention the fact that, yes, it shows an incredible lack of perspective literally to believe that a child is inevitably or even overwhelmingly probably going to hell if he's adopted by Baptists. Seriously. People need to get a grip.

Putin has given refuge to French film star Depardieu in Russia, as he flees oppressive taxation in France. Putin's Russia has an income tax rate of 13%.

I wonder if there could be a connection between an extremely low tax rate and state orphanages characterized by squalor, starvation and neglect. Oh well, at least the orphans who survive aren't "oppressed".

That may be partially related. But so is a system that takes the care of orphans away from the families, churches, and communities who should be most responsible for their care. And that is a legacy of Soviet modernity, not the product of low taxes.

A number of places have remarkably low tax rates without the conditions we're describing, so no, I don't see any "connection" and your attempt to suggest one is an incredibly base and mindless piece of ideological partisanship. Maybe the total demolition of private association and the utter corruption of civil society brought about through a deliberate program of left-wing worship of the salvific power of the state has a little something to do with it--I don't know, just thinking out loud here.

I'd also like to look at things like government spending as a share of GDP in the RF, as well as sources of revenue other than income tax, before I leapt to the remarkably stupid conclusion that the Russian state is starving itself of funds as a matter of policy, and is therefore unable to do things like...be minimally humane to children. I suppose among people for whom a society's humaneness literally is quantifiable as a function of the income tax rate, it is inconceivable that human beings are capable of being decent while paying low taxes.

As Anymouse says, the rancid legacy of seventy years of leftist totalitarianism counts for something, no matter how inconvenient that might be for provincial Western liberals.

I agree that Step2's conjecture as to causes seems implausible.

However, I find much more distasteful the earlier commentator's implication that Russia's tax rates and Putin's "giving refuge" to someone like Depardieu have _anything_ to do with how we should evaluate Putin's act here, that those things "offset" it in any way, or that they should make us sympathetic to him or less inclined to think him a monster in the area of taking care of orphans. I speak as a tax hawk and as someone who is fairly libertarian-sympathetic, but that's...not a good way to talk. It's like the tax hawk's version of, "He's a bastard, but he's our bastard." It should be absolutely obvious that a politician can be a moral monster who is willing to sacrifice orphans while still having some practical reason for keeping tax rates low in his country!

Should the state look at the religion into which a child was baptized, or the faith or lack their off on the part of the child's parents, when making determinations concerning adoption? A secular country like the United States answers no. That is why homosexual adoption is Ok in the United States. Russia increasingly defers to the Orthodox Church in making judgments on these matters.

Thomas, this is an emergency situation. These children are in appalling situations. You're acting like that isn't the case, like this is just normal adoption conditions where things are stable for the children at present and those responsible for the children have the luxury of finding what they believe to be the optimal situation for them from here on out. In fact, you're ignoring salient facts altogether, which I'm sorry: It's what I've come to expect from Russia's defenders. It's like they have their fingers in their ears and don't want to hear.

Also, frankly, if you think the Russian politicians who passed this law care tuppence about the souls of these children, you are not living in the real world.

As for the Russian Orthodox church, if indeed the Russian Orthodox church would prefer to leave these orphans where they actually are than see them adopted by Baptists, they are inhumane and insanely blinkered religious ideologues. That should be self-evident. I really cannot refrain from speaking strongly on this subject, because morally, this shouldn't be that hard.

I contend you feel that way because you are not Orthodox or Catholic, and do not feel that being otherwise puts a soul in great danger. We all know that this is cynical on the part of Russian politicians. But I do not think we need to call the Russian Orthodox Church "insanely blinkered religious ideologues" unless we want to wind up in the same category as Step2.

Part of being a Christian involves believing that the alternatives send a man to hell. I don't think that is particularly remarkable. That is simply the norm for doctrinaire believing Christians. (Since forever!). I challenge you to find someone from the middle ages who would not understand that POV.

And would you really let a homosexual couple adopt a child who was in danger of being starved or beaten to death? That for me is a situation where I might prefer the "do nothing" option over the potentially humanitarian one, because of my fear over cooperation with evil. It is a hard call, IMHO

But I do not think we need to call the Russian Orthodox Church "insanely blinkered religious ideologues" unless we want to wind up in the same category as Step2.

I might disagree with Step2 on any number of things, and maybe he holds some views I'd consider monstrous, but even he doesn't stoop to defend the law in question. Attacking it for the offense against decency that it is puts me at no risk of being in his "category," whatever that is. And I'm sorry, but it is simply not a traditional teaching of Orthodox Christianity that all non-Orthodox are damned, so I have no idea what tangent is even about. If an Orthodox priest is defending the law on that basis, then his reasons are just as Lydia described--inhumane and insanely ideological--and not doctrinal or religious per se.

Besides, this whole conversation presupposes that the Russian Orthodox Church is taking great pains to see to these children's religious and cultural formation, and we have no special reason to think that's the case. Indeed, we have a lot of reason to presuppose that spiritual neglect is as much a part of the equation as material neglect. This is about pure nose-counting, not saving souls. It's preposterous to imagine that these children, discarded like bubble gum wrappers and left to rot, are being raised to live holy lives as Orthodox Christians.

And again, your comparison just doesn't make sense in anything like a traditional Christian context--since when do the Orthodox (or Roman Catholics) teach that being adopted by an earnest Protestant couple is comparable, from the standpoint of spiritual peril, to being taken in by a homosexual couple? I'm not sure I'd buy that reasoning anyway, but the premise on which the analogy is based isn't even valid.

In regards to the homosexual couple, I think that if a child were about to be starved and beaten to death you'd have to let the homosexual couple adopt.

Maybe that's the right thing to do. But maybe it isn't. In any case, I, myself, would not be able to live with a starved and beaten child on my conscience.

...But now we've really gone off on a tangent, and Sage is right anyway.

Sage is right on all counts. One would have to believe some extremely bizarre things, both moral and theological, to justify restricting adoption of these children only to one religion when they are in such emergency situations. For example, one would have to believe that if a child has been baptized in X denomination he is then going to heaven for the foreseeable future, that if he is adopted and raised by people of Y denomination instead, then he is prima facie going to go to hell, and that this justifies allowing him to be starved and neglected to death, whereupon he will go to heaven. There are problems with every premise, there. Indeed, such reasoning would justify the refusal of a person of X denomination to allow a kindly heretic stranger from denomination Y to rescue his baptized infant child from certain death if the heretic stranger would have responsibility for the child from that point onward. And that should be a reductio of the position.

My own belief is that someone like Archpriest Chaplin simply doesn't want to admit the real nature of the situation, and so he doesn't admit it. He prefers to talk as though these are happy, well-kept children being brought up fairly well in a welcoming atmosphere with a distinctly Russian Orthodox heritage and that the only thing that is a little sad and could be rectified by adoption is that they aren't living in a nuclear family. And in that case he can afford to wax eloquent about the danger of their "falling away" from Russian Orthodoxy if adopted by a non-Orthodox family.

That is a valid point, Lydia and Sage.

"it is simply not a traditional teaching of Orthodox Christianity that all non-Orthodox are damned"
That is interesting. I understand that we can not presume another person is saved or damned, (and assumed that the Orthodox would agree) but have always assumed that the Catholic/Orthodox positions did put non Christian/Orthodox believers in a category of doubtful salvation.

That is interesting. I understand that we can not presume another person is saved or damned, (and assumed that the Orthodox would agree) but have always assumed that the Catholic/Orthodox positions did put non Christian/Orthodox believers in a category of doubtful salvation.

There's room for debate here (although if you talked to some ultra-traditionalists if you even admit that much you're a heretic). I do think, though, that it's certainly FAR better to be raised by conservative Christians than to die as a child in a horrible Russian orphanage.

The Russian Orthodox Patriarch, His Holiness Archbishop Kirill, spoke about the need for Orthodox Christians to adopt orphans in his Christmas address.
"It is important for our people to adopt orphans into their families, with joy and a special sence of gratitude to God, giving them not only shelter, and an upbringing, but also their love."
As of 2011 their were 650,000 orphans in Russia, of which 110,000 lived in state institutions. In 2011, 7400 orphans were adopted by Russian families. In 2011, 3,400 orphans were adopted by families abroad. Approximately 1,000 were adopted by American families.
The need is indeed great.

My understanding is that he also endorsed this wicked law signed by Vladimir Putin. That's the problem.

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