REACT: Madonna and Child (and not the Christmas story)

Pop Singer Madonna and her hubbie, Guy Ritchie, recently adopted a child through some sort of African express lane. It was more like picking a child off the shelf than a traditional adoption process.

Now it is all shaping up to be a scandal. While other potential parents wait years for sluggish bureaucrats to run a kid through the process, Madonna was able to get instant results based on her celebrity. Ergo, the scandal.

Well, this is surly a first class scandal. Shocking. Disgusting.

Oh! I am not condemning Madonna. No ... no ... no! What is scandalous, shocking and disgusting is “the normal process” that can delay an adoption many months (years), while anxious patents wait and needy children languish.

I am not speaking theoretically. My own adopted daughter was determined to adopt her Jamaican nephew after the separate tragic deaths of her brother-in-law, then sister. It was an uncontroversial adoption. Troy was 13 at the time and more than willing to be with his aunt. No other relatives objected. There were no estate issues. There were no official problems. Just a needy kid and a loving aunt.

Just following normal bureaucratic procedures delayed his happy arrive into our family by four years. Troy was 17 when he strode across our threshold for the first time. He had been denied 4 years of loving security and stability by "the normal process."

Aren't these public official and bureaucrats aware of time? This was a maturing teenager in need of his family. He was denied this by nothing more than "the normal procedure."

Many worry that prospective parents are finding ways ... legal and illegal ... to short cut the system. Well, if the "system" was not so damned heartless and obstructionist, there would be no need to bypass it.

So let’s keep the horror of scandal where it belongs, on the heads of those who find ways to slow down adoptions -- and not those who find ways to speed them up. I am so weary of the so-called do-gooders claiming the system is there to protect the child. That is utter nonsense. One reason children remain institutionalized is that they are little money magnets for the institution.

I say, good for Madonna. I don't care if she went around ... under ... or over ... “the normal procedures” because “the normal procedures” suck.