Child Abuse in the Name of Wokeness

Mia Cathell of Townhall has been doing yeoman's work documenting a disturbing case out of Atlanta, Georgia.  Her four-part series can be found here, here, here, and here.  I recommend reading it in its entirety — but not too soon after eating.  The case concerns a gay couple, calling themselves married, who were arrested for abusing the two boys they adopted.

I confess that I've been avoiding this story because I find it so disturbing.  My sister and I are both adopted.  I get emotional just thinking about the horrors suffered by these boys who were less fortunate than us.  But what the story says about our culture and society is too important to ignore.

The arrested men are Zachary Jacoby Zulock and his putative spouse, William Dale Zulock, Jr.  The men are in their 30s, live in a large suburban house, and are active in the Pride and BLM movements.  I'll give you one guess which political party they support.

They are accused of unspeakable acts against their two adopted boys — ages 6 and 8 at the time of the offenses.  The charges include child pornography, child rape, and pimping the boys out to other pedophiles in the greater Atlanta area.  I won't go into details about the abuse, because it's not necessary for the point I want to make.

According to Cathell's report, officials in Georgia expedited the Zulock adoption — even to the point of minimizing the candidates' background check.  We now know that one of the men, Zachary Jacoby Zulock, had been accused of raping a child in Oxford, Georgia in 2011.  Apparently, the investigation was less than rigorous.  According to the sheriff's department:

The 2011 case was handled in a manner that is inconsistent with today's current investigatory standards but the law enforcement officers in the Criminal Investigations Division at that time have since retired.

In other words, we screwed up, but the officers have quit, so we're taking a Mulligan.  But why'd they screw up?  What if it wasn't a mistake "inconsistent with current investigatory standards" at all?  What if it was intentional avoidance of a rainbow flag–carrying, "No H8" tee-shirt–clad mob and their Antifa enforcers?

Here's something else to make your blood boil.  The state even pays a monthly stipend to the Zulocks for adopting and caring for two special-needs children.  Perhaps the state should have been more specific about what "care" was expected in exchange for its subsidy of the Zulock lifestyle.

Unfortunately, the MSM are avoiding the story entirely — for obvious reasons.  The LGBT community claims that the Zulock story is an anomaly and shouldn't be an indictment of gay adoption in general.  The Democrats are condemning Republicans for "pouncing" on the story.  To them, anything that undermines the narrative is a greater sin than the molestation of children.  Think about that.

Few are talking about what the story says about the radical ideology that's being pushed on America.  Call it leftism, wokism, liberalism, socialism, or just plain foolishness.

The ideology that all men are not equal is corrupt and dangerous, and it victimizes our most innocent.  It's the ideology that asserts that some people are entitled to benefits from society simply because of their genetics, social status, or lifestyle choices.  It's the ideology that people who check certain intersectionality boxes are presumed of higher moral character and are deserving of special considerations:

  • Preferential hiring
  • Preferential academic admission
  • Preferential criminal sentencing
  • Financial reparations
  • Expedited adoption

That brings me to a disturbing conclusion about where woke ideology leads.  It leads to a broken society with no moral compass.

I'm not making an argument that gays should not be allowed to adopt.  I'm pointing out that woke ideology has driven us to grant benefits to certain classes of people (and gays are one of those classes) because of what they are, not who they are.  Hard work, honesty, and integrity are irrelevant — if one belongs to an approved race, sex, or lifestyle preference.  The presumption that to be gay is to also be of good character is as wrong as it would be for heterosexuals.  Unfortunately, wokeness asserts that it is unacceptable to questions the desires or motives of a protected class.  Therefore, for certain people, the government makes allowances — as it did in the Zulock case.  The case is a frightening illustration of how dangerous it is to bend the rules to fit a narrative.

When we bend the rules, the innocent suffer.  When a job or college admission is given to someone because of his race, it's denied to someone else who may have worked harder or longer.  When "me too" demands that women be presumed honest, the truth may remain undiscovered.  When we refuse to incarcerate a criminal because too many of their intersectionality group are disparately impacted, they in turn prey on the defenseless.  When we expedite an adoption to support a narrative that an LGBT lifestyle is wholesome and loving, children become commodities for exploitation.

The atrocity of the Zulock case is not an indictment of a gay lifestyle.  It's an indictment of woke politics — the politics that enabled the sexual enslavement of two young children.  It's the ideology that declared it politically incorrect to question the motives, character, or competence of protected class members.

Woke ideology is a perversion because it does not promote equal treatment under the law.  It demands preferential treatment for certain designated categories of people.  A mob that loots a department store are not criminals — if they're doing it in the name of Black Lives Matter.  Religious observance in the public square is perfectly acceptable — as long as the religion is not Christianity.  Public nudity is wrong — unless it's in support of the pride movement.  We must allow gay couples to adopt children without the normal rigorous checks — because they are brave examples for us all to aspire to.

The Left embarked on woke politics with the claim that they would correct the sins of the past — reparations for the wronged and leveling the playing field, if you will.  But the past is still the past, and sins of the past still happened.  The best we humans can do is strive to not repeat those sins in the future.  The past cannot be erased or "fixed."

Unfortunately, our ill advised attempt to change the past has put us on a path of irrationality in which racism is corrected with racism and intolerance is countered with blind acceptance — even where acceptance is not warranted.  This has brought us to the place where the welfare of children is secondary to virtue-signaling.  Welcome to the world of woke.

John Green is a political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho.  He has written for American Thinker and American Free News Network.  He can be followed on Facebook or reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.

Image via Pixnio.

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