Chillicothe, Ohio: The Councilwoman Said What??!!

MEEEOOOWWW!!! Occasionally, I archive stupid things people say about Safe Haven Baby Boxes. Well, this one falls beyond the usual pale of whacky-talk.

Chillicothe, Ohio City Council member Julie Preston recently introduced a resolution to authorize the installation of a Safe Haven Baby Box at Fire Station #1,

According to the Scioto Post:

Preston said this [SHBB} is long overdue…and agreed that it will be a safer version of the scene at the cathedral steps in The Hunchback of Notre Dame

We are sorry to say that this doozy did not show up in the video interview with Preston posted by the paper, nor did Preston offer this opinion during the short perfunctory “discussion” at the meeting. (marker 33:30). I wish it did.

Notre Dame???!!! Quasimodo???!!!

A fictional character In Victor Hugo’s classic novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and a film favorite across the world. Think Lon Chaney. Think Charles Laughton. Think sanitized Disney.

But the novel…

Quasimodo is born disfigured and pretty much hated and ridiculed by the general population of Paris, though they seem to appreciate his acrobatic bell-ringing skills. Hunchbacked, missing an eye, the other difficult to find through his bushy eyebrows and unruly hair; deaf, broken teeth, referred to as “hideous,” “a creation of the devil,” “animalistic, ” “un-Christian,” and deserving of death because he looks like “the offspring of a Jew and a sow .” Today, this Not Healthy White Infant would not bring much on the American entitled-to-perfection child supply market.

The Back Story: Quaisi was born to a Roma family and switched at birth with an able-bodied baby girl, named Agnes. Agnes’ mother, believing her daughter had been “eaten by the Roma”, dumped the replacement on the steps of Notre Dame Cathedral.

The Rest of the Story: There, he is adopted by Archdeacon Claude Frollo, who is not only a priest but a Renaissance intellectual /humanist who speaks several languages and studies law, medicine, theology, and natural science. Lucky Quasi! Unfortunately, Frollo is also a student of alchemy, which leads the same public who hates Quasi to believe he is a warlock.

Oh, I forgot! Frollo is afraid of women (temptation), has a strong attraction to sadism and sexual deviancy, and longs to escape celibacy– of course. In his spare time, he hangs out with a gang of “scoundrels.” Among other misdeeds, he kidnaps our Roma heroine, street dancer Esmeralda, actually the now grown-up Agnes, whom he and Quasimodo have both fallen in love with. Whew! Days of Our Lives writers, please take note

The End: And guess what!. Quasi, who has had it up to his bushy eyebrows with Daddy Dearest & Parisian lowbrows in general, refuses to help his adopted father after he falls from Notre Dame and hangs from a gargoyle. Quasi, obviously an ungrateful adoptee, refuses to help and lets him fall to the ground. Smash and splatter.

So much for baby creches and adoptive fathers.

Ask Quasimodo how he feels about baby boxes.

Really, is this a good tell if you want to push a Safe Haven Baby Box through City Council?

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a novel–a work of imagination. We are not. The lives of current and future Box Babies, fostered and adopted people, manipulated biological parents, individuals with disabilities, and those who fight this baby box injustice are real.

____________