CARNAL NATION

Are you qualified to operate a day care center if you've done porn? Can you have custody of foster children?

The first of these questions has been answered for Anne and Joe Gale of Grand Rapids, Minnesota: yes, you can be licensed to operate a day care facility in your home. The other one is still up in the air. The Gales operated an adult website starring Anne Gale in the 1990s and early 2000s, which they shut down in 2004 when a stalker discovered the Gales' address. One year later, they opened their home day care facility and took in two foster children, the natural offspring of Rachel Voight, then 21. Voight now wants the children back, and has brought up the Gales' past, accusing them of a "morally deficient lifestyle" that makes them unfit custodians. The Gales in turn have claimed that Voight is financially unable to provide for the children and have pointed out her own history of check forging and drug use as factors that make her unable to properly care for the children.

The Gales underwent thorough background checks to assess their suitability as day care workers, and they revealed their past swinging activities and the Internet site to state workers at the time. There is no morality clause in Minnesota's child care requirements, and as Jerry Kerber, director of licensing for the state Human Services Department, said, "As far as we can find, adults engaging in sexual activity in front of a camera and putting it up on the Web isn't actually illegal."