House Bill Introduced To Thwart Gay Adoption Discrimination

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, more than 129,000 children are currently waitng for adoption in the United States, and each year over 25,000 kids grow out of foster care before finding permanent homes.  Despite this, there are still parts of America where adoption by gays and lesbians is illegal.  (Ramon Johnson at About.com provides an overview of the laws in each state, as they apply to same-sex households.)  U.S. Congressman Pete Stark of California has introduced legislation that would prohibit states and child welfare agencies from restricting adoption or foster care placements based on the sexual orientation or marital status of potential parents. 

From the Washington Blade:  Stark said in an interview that he introduced the legislation, H.R. 3827, in part because thousands of children each year "age out" of the child welfare system without finding homes...  States with explicit restrictions on adoption that the pending legislation would affect are Utah, Florida, Arkansas, Nebraska and Mississippi. Florida, for example, has a statute specifically prohibiting gays from adopting, and in Arkansas, approved Act 1, which prevents same-sex partners from adopting children.  The legislation, Stark said, also would restrict funds for states where restrictions are put in place by agencies, individual social workers or judges, or where restrictions are part of the common law of the state.  For states that don't comply with the law, federal officials could withhold from the states funds provided to them for child welfare services.  Stark said the chances of the legislation passing this Congress are "pretty good" and said a hearing could take place this year in a House Ways & Means subcommittee, although nothing has been scheduled. ... Stark said chances of his proposal succeeding would be better if he could "keep it separate from the marriage and the military issue" and emphasize how the bill would benefit children.

Providing unwanted children with loving families sounds like a no-brainer.  But there are members of the Religious Right who would rather have kids languishing in orphanages than sheltered by committed same-sex couples. 

Bill Donohue, that Lemony Snicket of the Catholic League, appeared on television last week and said,  "We're not going to allow gay people to adopt children. That's against nature.  It's against nature's God!  But they won't stop!"  And curmudgeonly Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition declares, "It's in the best interest of children to keep them from being placed in homes where individuals are engaging in homosexual activity."  Tony Perkins of the anti-gay Family Research Council  insists that "children raised in homosexual households are more likely to experiment with homosexuality, to be sexually promiscuous and to have behavioral and many other developmental problems."

None of this is true, of course.  These are the talking points of fearmongers.  The American Academy of Pediatrics, the Child Welfare League of America, and adoption advocacy groups across the nation all say that children with gay or lesbian parents fare just as well as those raised in families with a mother and a father.

It's one thing to speak out against LGBT equality from a religious perspective.  It's quite another to deny homes to special needs children who want nothing more than to be part of a family.  If Rep. Stark's proposed legislation becomes reality, there will be fewer discarded youngsters spending their formative years alone.  And unloved. 

(Illustration by Edward Gorey.)

Comments

[Amanda]

This is why fundies have a bad reputation. They would ignore thousands of needy kids for the sake of their rightwing religious agenda. It's really shameless.

[Trent]

Its not like Bible thumpers really care about these kids. It's all about keeping Teh Gays in their place.

[Aggie, Fair Haven, Vt.]

As a teacher, I can tell you it doesn't matter if a kid lives with Eve and Steve, or Bob and Steve... what matters is that they have two parents who care for them. I once had an administrator ask me what I wanted for my class. She was thinking I'd say "more computers", or "a new whiteboard", or something like that. What I said was "a family for every kid to go home to". Honestly, that makes a bigger difference with achievement, test scores, whatever, than anything else.