Gay Adoption: Fighting the Battle
In early November Arkansas voters approved a ban on adoption by unmarried couples. I wrote briefly about this on the Chicago Examiner stating that in 1999 Arkansas’s Child Welfare Agency Review Board established a policy that banned gay men and women from serving as foster parents but the Supreme Court ruled against it after a seven-year battle with the ACLU.
Although the title of the measure is “unmarried couples” the agenda clearly is aimed at keeping gay men and women “from becoming foster or adoptive parents”.
My husband with AJ at the orphanage in Russia.
On November 25 a Florida court pointed out that allowing gay couples to adopt is less about protecting gay couples than protecting children. These laws, it seemed, were originally written to discriminate against gays and have thus ended up harming the thousands of children in foster care.
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman found the 1977 Florida law unconstitutional because it violated the rights of these foster children to receive equal treatment under the Florida law.
The big problem with states like Florida, Missisippi, Arkansas, and Utah is that laws like these do not allow children in foster care to be placed with unmarried gay couples (or unmarried people in general…the law created to keep foster children out of the homes of gay individuals). Even if loving, stable couples wanted to foster or adopt they are just not able to.
However, in other states there are 65,000 children who are being raised by same-sex parents, according to a March 2007 report (Urban Institute and the Williams Institute at University of California at Los Angeles School of Law). The report also mentions that about 14,100 foster children are living with one or more gay or lesbian foster parent.
Currently, 11 states and Washington D.C. specifically state that sexual orientation cannot legally prevent gay and lesbians from adopting but three states (Arkansas, Mississippi, and Utah) have gotten around this by dying unmarried couples the right to foster or adopt.
And, even though states (like Michigan) don’t have bans it still can be difficult, as there are few judges and adoption agencies that will officially “allow” same-sex adoptions.
How does this affect children? For those being denied good care it can be devastating. Personally, I would much rather any child be in a loving home, no matter the race or sexual orientation than be left to hop foster homes or be institutionalized like my son was.
