http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la%2D000012680feb19
COMMENTARY
Adoption Wears Many Faces
By ADAM PERTMAN
February 19 2002
The common thread among all the states that prohibit or impede adoption by
gays and lesbians is their stated desire to provide the best possible homes
for children.
It is not homophobia, they assert, to enact laws and policies acknowledging
the benefits of parenting by both a mother and a father who are married to
each other. They invariably add--during legislative or courtroom debates if
not in statutory language--that preventing homosexuals from adopting
effectively protects children from being negatively influenced or even
physically harmed by the adults who are supposed to protect them.
All those arguments are ill-informed and disingenuous nonsense. If
politicians and judges in these states truly believed their own words, they
would act immediately to remove millions of supposedly at-risk children
from families in which one or both parents are gay. More urgently, they
would be using the legal system to attack the scourge of single
parenthood--which deprives far more kids of two married, cohabitating,
heterosexual parents than any other cultural phenomenon in history.
A serious effort to achieve either of those goals won't be mounted
anywhere, of course, though some social conservatives probably would like
to see it happen. But it won't for two principal reasons: Whatever their
personal or political views, policymakers generally understand that there's
little they can do to alter the reality that diverse families of all sorts
are becoming commonplace in our country; and, more pointedly, there is no
credible evidence that children raised in nontraditional families suffer
from a lack of love, stability or safety.
Both those points were underscored in a big way earlier this month when the
American Academy of Pediatrics announced its backing for gays and lesbians
in so-called second-parent adoptions, the mechanism by which one partner
becomes a second legal parent to the other's biological or adopted
children. Such adoptions have taken place in about two dozen states,
although only seven and the District of Columbia explicitly permit the
procedure. A few prohibit it or make it bureaucratically impossible; and
one, New Jersey, allows homosexuals to adopt as couples at the same time.
The academy's support for second-parent adoptions is important not only
because it puts the imprimatur of a highly regarded, mainstream
organization on a controversial practice but also because an academy
committee reviewed 20 years of research and concluded that children raised
by homosexuals are just as well-adjusted as their counterparts reared by
heterosexuals.
This is obviously good news for gay-rights proponents, as well as for
advocates of nontraditional families. It would be a huge mistake, however,
for policymakers to interpret the academy's findings too narrowly: The
findings also should broaden the pool of perspective parents for the tens
of thousands of children who live in foster care. There isn't a state that
has enough applicants to give these kids homes, yet too many still prevent
gays and lesbians from adopting.
It always has been tough to figure how anyone could conclude that a child
was better off in his or her fifth foster home than in a loving, albeit
untraditional family. Now, in light of the academy's findings, it's going
to get even harder to view such policies as anything other than overtly
homophobic.
The situation in Florida, the only state to ban all gay and lesbian
adoptions outright, shows how silly and counterproductive the debate has
been. In affirming a state law forbidding adoption by homosexuals last
year, a federal court in Florida said that the three HIV-infected children
being raised by a gay man (who had been named Foster Father of the Year)
would be better off in a home with two married, heterosexual parents.
Never mind that children like these, with serious special needs, are
languishing in every state without parents of any type. And never mind the
convoluted logic that leads Florida to allow gays and lesbians to serve as
foster parents but not to adopt the children they are raising anyway.
I just hope politicians and policymakers do keep this in mind as they
consider the implications of the academy's findings: As a result of changes
in federal laws, Americans can adopt in any state, not just the one in
which they live. So the states that try to prevent or restrict a gay or
lesbian from becoming a parent cannot achieve their aim; they can only
prevent children in their custody from getting permanent families.
*
Adam Pertman is the author of "Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution
is Transforming America" (Basic Books, 2000).