Musings: Don't "Adopt A Highway"

As civic-minded and welcome as they are, "Adopt A Highway" and "Adopt A Block" cleanup programs should be called "Sponsor A Highway" and "Sponsor A Block" instead. Why stop using "the A word" to describe a civic program of extremely part-time caretaking that may be renewed or transferred to another party? Because it greatly cheapens the meaning of familial adoption, which is generally a solemn, legally binding, lifelong, 24/7 commitment to the filial devotion and caretaking of a child (or in lesser terms, of a pet). Furthermore, adoptive parents everywhere have usually gone through years of anguish, effort and expense in order to adopt their children.

Using the term Adopt-A-Whatever to describe any volunteer or philanthropic effort, no matter how well-conceived (other than its name), is a slap in the face of every adoptive parent and child in this nation. Moreover, this fact is doubly insensitive, since no authority has yet heeded the words of Adoptive Families of America, or any other adoptive parents who have spoken in recent decades, and imposed or legislated change. Indeed, it is the height of rudeness for a governmental, civic or lobbying body to be that willfully insensitive, as if to say to adoptive parents, "Oh, stop being so sensitive. It's no big deal." If it's no big deal, why not change it? And that's my point: Sponsorship cannot compare to adoption. So let's call it what it is: Sponsor A Highway. After all, Merriam Webster says it best:

Main Entry:    spon·sor
Function:    noun
Etymology:    Late Latin, from Latin, guarantor, surety, from spondEre to promise
1 : one who presents a candidate for baptism or confirmation and undertakes responsibility for the person's religious education or spiritual welfare
2 : one who assumes responsibility for some other person or thing
3 : a person or an organization that pays for or plans and carries out a project or activity; especially : one that pays the cost of a radio or television program usually in return for advertising time during its course