“Orphans? Would you really? Adopt children?""There are advantages. If they turn out badly, we can blame their natural parents. We can also choose our own assortment of ages and genders. We can even get them ready-grown, if we wish.”

“We may not play with the new theology even if we may think we can turn it to our advantage.”

“We could choose to be a nation that extends care, compassion, and concern to those who are locked up and locked out or headed for prison before they are old enough to vote. We could seek for them the same opportunities we seek for our own children; we could treat them like one of “us.” We could do that. Or we can choose to be a nation that shames and blames its most vulnerable, affixes badges of dishonor upon them at young ages, and then relegates them to a permanent second-class status for life. That is the path we have chosen, and it leads to a familiar place.”

“After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?”

“Can we really choose anything?''Maybe. If we want to bad enough.”

“In an ideal world, we would have been orphans. We felt like orphans and we felt deserving of the pity that orphans get, but embarrassingly enough, we had parents.”