Gay adoption: legal rights and considerations

Gay Adoption

Numerous studies have shown that it is not the gender of the parent that is essential to a positive upbringing, but the quality of the relationship between the child and the caregiver. Home environments with gay parents are as likely to successfully (or unsuccessfully) support a child's development as those with heterosexual parents. Yet, individuals across the world continue to object to these adoptions on religious and moral beliefs, which is a conflict of church and state, especially in those states where gay marriages are legal. There is no reason, therefore, to deny gay couples the right to adopt children and raise a family.

The topic of gay adoption is of worldwide concern. This week in Great Britain, the Roman Catholic Church announced that it would pull out its support of three top adoption agencies, because it cannot comply with Labour's new gay equality laws. The Church is cutting its ties with the Catholic Children's Society, one of the biggest such agencies in the country. Similarly, the dioceses of Nottingham and Northampton decided to folllow suit and droptheir agencies (Petre). Meanwhile, in Australia, the NSW Government has failed to release a report on the need for same-sex adoption laws that was legally required by Parliament in 2006. When the last adoption reforms were passed in 2000, Parliament demanded a report be produced no later than 2006 (Dennett). The government said that it is finding this topic too complex to resolve it at this point.

In California, a lesbian couple were not only allowed to raise foster children, but became exemplary models for handling the psychological and physical traumas that such children have. Ironically, however, when this couple wanted to adopt a child, there was concern by a fundamentalist lawyer who decided to remove a child from the household to save it from physical and emotional harm that he "knew" from his religious beliefs would be present in the home of "people like that" (Muskera).

The difficulty with all three of these examples is the conflict of church and state. The issue should not be decided at the government level, since people cannot be denied equal rights due to sexual orientation. Moral issues should not come to play. Individuals who are against the adoptions do not care about equality or that research does not support their fears. Nor do these individuals care that the American Academy of Pediatrics, among an entire list of other human services and medical organizations for the betterment of children and families has taken a stand that adoption by gay parents and gay parenting in general does not offer real or significant emotional dangers to children. Rather, the emotional danger comes when parents -- be they heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual -- abuse their children.