Frank Lombard is a Duke University health official, a licensed social worker, a white, college-educated, legal father of two African-American boys, and according to federal authorities, a pedophile.

He allegedly abused his adopted son personally and then offered him on the Internet for abuse by others. "Perv dad for fun" was his online moniker.

Nobody could have guessed. Nobody but him is responsible, right?

I want to believe that. Really, I do.

But adoptions are government acts. What did his fellow social workers who approved this adoption know? What did they overlook? What questions didn't they ask because, well, he was "in the club" -- one of them?

Adoption is the way we strip a child of his or her natural protection -- his mom and dad -- and the government steps in to give this baby a new and better father or mother. Preferably both, I say. But I'm old-fashioned.

I have a bias in favor of mothers. I have a suspicion (let me be frank -- I'm not proud, but it's true) of men who want to get close to children while depriving them of mothers. Yes, let me be politically incorrect: On the whole I would prefer two mothers to none at all for a child.

How do children do who are raised by only fathers? Not that well, actually -- on average, I hasten to add.

Maybe gender doesn't matter at all. But maybe it does. Are we allowed to ask? To wonder?

Yes, I know, women fail babies too. But I would be happier if children were not deliberately deprived of mothers by other adults in their lives.

That's part of why much of the Michael Jackson post-death celebration has left me cold, especially the part where people close to Michael tell the press what a wonderful father he was. "I am heartbroken for his children, who I know were everything to him," Jackson's first wife, Lisa Marie Presley, blogged and other media reports echoed.

Maybe it is true. How would I know?

But the one thing I know for sure about Michael Jackson is this: He did not want any mothers involved in the lives of his children. He married Debbie Rowe, bred her like a sow, took two children away -- at first with her consent -- and claimed them all for his own. Later on a third baby appeared and was dangled over a balcony. Nobody seems to know where that baby came from, and nobody seems to think it's anyone else's business how a man accused of pedophilia acquires a child.

Michael Jackson deliberately deprived his children of a mother because a mom didn't fit in with his agenda.

But we let him do it. We crafted the laws he took advantage of to help adults who do not want to make babies the old-fashioned way get what they want.

I'm old-fashioned. Biased, even, but I already admitted that. I think fathers are immensely important to children -- unless and until the fathers indicate they do not want a mother in their child's life. Then I revert to an old-fashioned, even primitive, instinct: Babies ought to have mothers.

Will anyone run this column? Are we allowed to ask the question, "How in the world did this happen?" Could it be that the social work profession, committed to gay rights and family diversity, did not look very hard at Frank Lombard -- did not look beyond class and race and orientation to see if anything was amiss?

I do not know what went wrong in this instance. I do know that we should not let fear of homophobia prevent us from at least acknowledging the facts and asking questions.

A poor, black, orphaned baby was given to a rich, white, educated man who is accused of sexually abusing him.

Is there anything we could have done differently? Is there anything we ought to do to save the next orphaned child?