Bob Hagan has for decades been one of Ohio’s most progressive-minded and intellectually adventurous legislators. So it comes as no surprise that the Democratic state senator from Youngstown would blaze a new policy-making trail with a plan to reform adoption laws.

Hagan’s proposal: Ban Republicans from adopting children.

In an email dispatched to fellow legislators last week, the senator announced his plan to “introduce legislation in the near future that would ban households with one or more Republican voters from adopting children or acting as foster parents.”

Explaining that “policymakers in (Ohio) have ignored this growing threat to our communities for far too long,” Hagan wrote that: “Credible research exists that strongly suggests that adopted children raised in Republican households, though significantly wealthier than their Democrat-raised counterparts, are more at risk for developing emotional problems, social stigmas, inflated egos, an alarming lack of tolerance for others they deem different than themselves, and an air of overconfidence to mask their insecurities.”

“In addition,” the Democrat noted, “I have spoken to many adopted children raised in Republican households who have admitted that ‘Well, it’s just plain boring most of the time.'”

Hagan acknowledges that the “credible research” to which he refers cannot he quantified. But that should not be a problem, he explains, as a bill proposed by Republican state Rep. Ron Hood, R-Ashville, which would prohibit adoptions of children by gay and lesbian couples, suffers from a similar deficiency.

Since Hood’s homophobic legislation is not backed by evidence that gay and lesbian parents are in any way detrimental to children, Hagan argues, why should his Republicanphobic legislation have to be grounded in anything more than emotions or ideology. (Hood’s proposal, one of many similar measures being pushed around the country in a move by Republicans to stir up their voter base in advance of the 2006 and 2008 elections, would bar children from being placed for adoption or foster care in homes where the prospective parent or anyone else living in the house is gay, lesbian bisexual or transgendered.)

Hagan has no cosponsors for his bill at this point, a circumstance that may have something to do with the fact that the legislation has been proposed, as he says, with “tongue was planted firmly in cheek.”

But Hagan does have a point for legislators in Ohio and other states who are wrestling with questions of whether to discriminate against upstanding and responsible citizens whose sexuality does not meet with the approval of the homophobic wing of the Republican party.

“We need to see what we are doing,” explained Hagan, who notes that, while Republicans seek to score cheep political points, there are close to 3,000 Ohio children awaiting adoption and close to 20,000 in foster care.

The conservative Cincinnati Enquirer agreed.

Noting that “(Republican Representative) Hood’s offensive and discriminatory bill would hurt, not help, children,” the usually pro-Republican newspaper observed in an editorial that, “perhaps Hagan’s modest proposal gave some folks a taste, however fleeting, of what it would be like to be labeled as a class somehow incapable, unworthy or unacceptable.”

But Hagan has the best counter of all to the repeated attempts by Republican legislators to fake up issues involving gays and lesbians — from amendments to ban same-sex marriage or their new nationwide push on the adoption front. Speaking of Hood’s proposal, Hagan says, “It flies in the face of reason when we need to reform our education system, address health care and environmental issues that we put energy and wasted time (into) legislation like this.”