South Carolina Couple put 16 Year old Daughter up for Adoption?

Internet messages are circulating virally about a story of a couple from South Carolina – identified as the Chadwells – who allegedly put their 16 year old daughter up for adoption after learning that she was gay.

Variants of the message have appeared on Facebook, Twitter and in Internet forums, specifically on forums that involve LGBT issues.

The story reads in part –

A Southern Carolina couple have made national news by being the first parents to put their child up for adoption due to their sexuality. Usually parents give up their children because they can’t raise them due to finances or because they are young and don’t have the mental ability to bring up a child. Kids are also usually given up for adoption at a young age, but April Chadwell is barely 16 years old and has been listed as legally adoptable by the state of Southern Carolina. Mrs. Chadwell released a statement saying “It was a tough choice to give up our daughter to the state, but we don’t know how to handle someone who decides to live a lifestyle that we do not agree with”.

Despite being circulated through social media and Internet forums virally, the story appears to be entirely fictional. Some of the earliest versions of this story appear in 2012 on a site called The Daily Bleach which is a satirical website that produces fake stories under the assertion that they are true.

However in April 2013 the story went viral after it was reproduced on another satirical website called www.tysonbowersiii.com, operated by an author under the name Tyson Bowers III (real name Bryan Butvidas) who pens articles at Christwire.org. Butvidas is a satirical columnist who poses as characters with hardline views on controversial subjects. In this case Tyson Bowers III is a hardline homophobe who teaches the dangers of homosexuality and liberals and also about the “joys of a sexless life”.

A screenshot from the TysonBowersIII.com website.

Most readers can quickly ascertain that the stories on sites like www.tysonbowersiii.com and www.dailybleach.com are intended to be satirical but others take the stories at face value and circulate them to friends, and this is what has happened with the fictional Chadwells and their gay 16 year old daughter.

Satirical pieces produced through these websites often garner so much success because of their perceived plausibility. Despite being very much “out there” storylines, the authors try hard not to make the story too unbelievable, keeping it just within the realms of possibility to illicit anger from the reader, thus making them a victim of their own emotions and willing to circulate the false information to their friends.

Often these satirical pieces produced by such websites can prove to be so plausible that they can even dupe legitimate media outlets which has happened several times in the past.

Such controversial tales often become extremely popular across the Internet because they play on the readers emotions and the author understands and exploits the fact that human nature enjoys, to some extent, to feel outraged by a story, and this dramatically increases the chances of the reader sharing the story with others, which accounts for the success this piece of fiction has received.

And needless to say, a story of parents giving up their child for being gay will certainly invoke strong and emotional responses from family orientated readers as well as gay (or pro-gay) readers.

As usual, we always recommend researching a story before taking it as genuine. In this case the story is certainly false.