s********n 发帖数: 4346 | 1 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/us/14adoption.html?_r=1&hp
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.
Related
*
Times Topics: Adoptions | Same-Sex Marriage, Civil Unions, and
Domestic Partnerships
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Kirk Irwin for The New York Times
It's a big family: With same-sex marriage illegal in Ohio, custody
agreements must suffice.
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.)
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【在 s********n 的大作中提到】 : http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/us/14adoption.html?_r=1&hp : 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. : Related : * : Times Topics: Adoptions | Same-Sex Marriage, Civil Unions, and : Domestic Partnerships : Enlarge This Image
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