Madam, - If the Madonna circus has done anything, it has highlighted important issues regarding children and adoption. The clamour for same-sex couples to adopt has done the same thing. Both stem from a desire to turn children into commodities; in one case, someone avoids the normally rigorous process that adoptive parents have to go through because she is a wealthy celebrity. In another, people demand they have the right to adopt because of their sexual orientation, as part of a push to establish a social and political agenda.
As a parent who has adopted two children, I find both bewildering. As a person of very limited fame and wealth, I had to go through an extensive process of scrutiny and education before I could adopt. And I was convinced that the critical issue was the need of the child to be adopted. I was never led to believe that my sexual orientation and family situation (in my case, married heterosexual male) guaranteed me any rights to adopt children whatsoever.
Children are not things to be claimed by the rich and fatuous, nor used to achieve political objectives. - Yours, etc,
EDWARD VAUGHAN, Shrewsbury Hall, Shankill, Co Dublin.