article by the New York Times’ Sabrina Tavernise.
We should note that the piece does not mention the Every
Child Deserves A Family Act, which would provide a “federal
fix” to the problem by eliminating discrimination in adoption and
foster care.
But still, it’s an important story as it notes the need for
adoptive parents nationally and the qualifications of LGBT parents,
as well as the flawed patchwork of state laws and regs that makes
it difficult to adopt in some places.
Adoptions by Gay Couples Rise, Despite Barriers
Growing numbers of gay couples across the country are adopting,
according to census data, despite an uneven legal landscape that
can leave their children without the rights and protections
extended to children of heterosexual parents.
Same-sex couples are explicitly prohibited from adopting in only
two states — Utah and Mississippi — but they face significant
legal hurdles in about half of all other states, particularly
because they cannot legally marry in those states.
Despite this legal patchwork, the percentage of same-sex parents
with adopted children has risen sharply. About 19 percent of
same-sex couples raising children reported having an adopted child
in the house in 2009, up from just 8 percent in 2000, according to
Gary Gates, a demographer at the Williams Institute on Sexual
Orientation Law at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“The trend line is absolutely straight up,” said Adam Pertman,
executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, a
nonprofit organization working to change adoption policy and
practice. “It’s now a reality on the ground.”
That reality has been shaped by what advocates for gay families say
are two distinct trends: the need for homes for children currently
waiting for adoption — now about 115,000 in the United States —
and the increased acceptance of gays and lesbians in American
society.
The American family does not look the same as it did 30 years ago,
they argue, and the law has just been slow to catch up.
Most of the legal obstacles facing gay couples intending to adopt
stem from prohibitions on marriage, according to the Family
Equality Council, an advocacy group for gay families. In most
states, gay singles are permitted to adopt.
Though advocates for gay families can point to legal victories —
court rulings in Florida last year and in Arkansas in April —
they note that they are tempered by losses, such as in Arizona,
which passed a law recently requiring social workers to give
preference to married heterosexual couples.
“It’s two steps forward, one step back,” said Ellen Kahn,
director of the Family Project at the Human Rights Campaign, a
resource for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender families and the
agencies that work with them.
But laws and politics aside, advocates say that more adoption
agencies and social workers are seeing same-sex couples as a badly
needed resource for children in government care.
“The reality is we really need foster and adoptive parents, and
it doesn’t matter what the relationship is,” said Moira Weir,
director of the job and family services department in Hamilton
County, Ohio. “If they can provide a safe and loving home for a
child, isn’t that what we want?”
The Obama administration has noted the bigger role that gays and
lesbians can play in adoptions. The commissioner for the
Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Bryan Samuels, sent
a memo to that effect to national child welfare agencies in
April.
“The child welfare system has come to understand that placing a
child in a gay or lesbian family is no greater risk than placing
them in a heterosexual family,” Mr. Samuels said in an
interview.
The numbers are small. Mr. Gates estimates that 65,000 adopted
children live in homes in which the head of the household is gay,
or about 4 percent of the adopted population.
Ms. Kahn, who trains adoption agencies to work with gay and lesbian
prospective parents, said that the number of agencies she works
with has more than doubled over the past five years to about
50.
She added that discrimination still remains and that in some
conservative states, adoption agencies that serve gay families
function like an “underground railroad.”
But adoptions are happening anyway, even in places where the law
does not give both parents full rights. Matt and Ray Lees, a couple
in Worthington, Ohio, said they were selected as parents for a
7-month-old, ahead of several heterosexual couples, in part because
they had successfully adopted two older children.
Social workers conducted detailed background checks on both of
them, but under Ohio law, they must be married to adopt jointly, so
when the legal adoption process began, only one could participate.
(Same-sex marriage is illegal in Ohio.)
The Leeses took turns. Ray adopted three — two who were
originally from Haiti and a baby — and Matt is completing an
adoption of five siblings whose drug-addicted mother could not care
for them.
“When we first considered it, we thought, people are going to
think we are crazy for having eight kids,” said Matt Lees, 39.
But they did not want to split the siblings and after careful
thought, decided to take them.
“It was the best way we could think of spending the next 20 years
of our lives,” he said.
They bind their two legally distinct families together with custody
agreements. They do not provide full parental rights, however,
because like many states, Ohio does not allow second-parent
adoptions by unmarried couples unless the first parent renounces
his or her right to the child. They have to maintain two family
health insurance policies.
Same-sex parents who adopt tend to be more affluent and educated
than the larger population of same-sex parents, according to Mr.
Gates.
Matt and Ray Lees both have college degrees and white-collar jobs
at Nationwide, an insurance company based in Columbus.
It was hard for them as two fathers at first. Their eldest
daughter, 6 at the time, cried and asked who would cook and do her
hair. But those days are long past. And though the family is a
curiosity in their neighborhood — two white men driving eight
black children in a large Mercedes minivan — they are not alone.
There are at least two other gay families raising adopted children
nearby.
Adoption has not attracted the kind of attention nationally that
gay marriage has. Advocates say they like it that way. The more it
is in the public eye, the greater the chances conservative
legislatures will try to block it, they add.
But conservative groups say the fight is weighted in favor of gay
people because courts tend to side with them in rulings. Indeed, a
court in Durham County, N.C., had been quietly approving
second-parent adoptions that were not formally allowed by statute,
until a State Supreme Court ruling stopped it in December.
And the expansion of civil union laws has caused some
religious-based charities to stop or modify operations in cities
and states where they have passed, including in Illinois this
month, where several charities have temporarily suspended new
parent applications.
Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies at the Family
Research Council, a conservative advocacy group, said the goal of
advocates of adoption by same-sex couples was “to silence people
like me.”
Mr. Pertman believes the trend of rising adoption is
irreversible.
“The war has been won, but the battles are still being fought,”
he said.