Imagine a little boy who lives with parents who love him. At dinnertime, one parent is cooking in the kitchen and the other is at the table making a mock airplane out of a fork and some spaghetti. This picture-perfect scenario could be a reality for more children living in foster care if couples who pass the rigorous adoption standards are no longer barred due to their sexual orientation.
The number of families made up of same-sex parents and adopted children has reached new heights. Social conservatives clinging to the old concept of the nuclear family should not squelch this trend. A March 2007 report compiled by the Urban Institute and the Williams Institute at University of California at Los Angeles School of Law reports that 65,000 adopted children live with same-sex parents in the United States. Though this number has grown considerably from previous years, too many limitations still exist for gay couples wanting to adopt.
There are about 35 million orphans in the world today, and over 650,000 in the United States. Many gay couples wanting to adopt these children are turned away despite being able to pass the rigorous requirements set up by adoption agencies.
According to the Urban Institute report, only eleven states and the District of Columbia have stated that sexual orientation alone cannot legally prevent same-sex couples from adopting. Most states do not address the issue at all and leave the decisions up to the courts and adoption agencies. Only 60 percent of American adoption agencies will even accept applications from homosexuals. Three states—Mississippi, Utah and Florida—have explicit bans on same-sex adoption. In these states, children in need of adoption will remain in the system rather than go to a family that would love and care for them.
These states’ laws and the people who support them are holding onto the false notion that children need a mother and a father in order to develop properly, which is often based on religious ideology that should hold no place in the laws set forth by a government. Organizations such as the National Adoption Center, the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have all made statements saying that having gay parents does not negatively affect a child.
Proponents of the philosophy that children need both a mother and a father to raise them should, by the same token, be against adoption by single parents. Despite this logic, 33 percent of adopted children are adopted by single men and women. While nobody seems to have a problem with the fact that these children are lacking a mother or a father, the same does not hold true when two moms or two dads adopt a child. I am in not suggesting that adoption by single parents should be disallowed, but it does not make sense that a child in need of adoption would be worse off in a home with two homosexual parents.
Denying adoption to same-sex parents is not only unfair to potential parents, but it also adversely affects the entire pool of children in need of adoption. In order for the maximum number of children to be adopted, every couple who qualifies must be permitted to adopt. Unless this becomes a reality, thousands of children will be barred from joining potential families.
As people continue to open their minds to new concepts of family, more and more family units can be formed through adoption by gay parents. It’s time to abandon the outdated image of the nuclear family. Without the help of state laws and statutes that explicitly and favorably address the issue of same-sex adoption, gay couples will continue to face the same discrimination. It is our duty to the millions of orphans in the world to do everything we can to find them parents. Denying gay couples their right to adopt is denying those children their right to a family.
