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Written by Lisa Neff, Staff writer
Nov 3, 2011
Jonathan Truong, right, his partner Ed Cowen, left, and their son Franklin Cowen Truong, 2, pose for a portrait at their home in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Adoption lawyers and agencies in New York say they're getting ready for a baby boom as same-sex couples emboldened by the state's new marriage law take the next step and adopt children. – Photo: AP/Frank Franklin II
Despite laws that impede the practice, an ever-increasing number of gays and lesbians are adopting children, according to an extensive new survey from the New York-based Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute.
The number of gays and lesbians adopting children has nearly tripled in the last decade.
At least half of gay and lesbian parents are providing homes for boys and girls from foster care, and 60 percent are adopting trans-racially, according to the adoption institute, a national non-profit "devoted to improving adoption policy and practice."
The institute's 69-page survey – released in late October and titled "Expanding Resources of Children III: Research-Based Best Practices by Gays and Lesbians" – is based on four years of research and provides new insights into the perceptions, experiences and needs of gay and lesbian adoptive parents.
"We know the majority of adoption agencies readily work with gay and lesbian clients, and our research shows that most want guidance about how best to do that," said institute executive director Adam Pertman. "Our hope and belief is that by providing greater knowledge to professionals, policy-makers and the public, the result will be more families for the children who need them."
The adoption institute reported:
• About one-third of adoptions by lesbians and gays were "open," meaning the door was left open for children to develop future relationships with their birth families.
• Seventy-three percent of birth families initially had positive reactions toward the sexual orientation of the adoptive parents.
• Male couples more often than female couples reported having been chosen by birth families because of their sexual orientation. Men said that birthmothers expressed a desire to remain the child's only mother.
• More than 10 percent of the children adopted by gays and lesbians were 6 or older, a population generally perceived as more difficult to place.
• Lesbians and gays adopt at significant rates – more than 65,000 adopted children and 14,000 foster children in the United States are residing in homes headed by people who aren't straight.
• At least 60 percent of U.S. adoption agencies accept gays and lesbians as applicants.
• More than 50 percent of lesbian and gay parents adopted children from the child welfare system.
• More than 80 percent of lesbians and gays reported that they volunteered information about their sexual orientation with their adoption workers, and most workers responded in positively.
Several days after the adoption institute released its report, the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., issued another major research-based paper – "All Children Matter: How Legal and Social Inequalities Hurt LGBT Families."
That report concluded that 2 million children "have become collateral damage of decades of ideology, laws and policies designed to hurt lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans."
A coalition of LGBT leaders, policy experts and child advocates, including the Donaldson Adoption Institute, the Family Equality Council, the Movement Advancement Project, the Center for American Progress, the National Association of Social Workers, COLAGE and the Child Welfare League of America worked on the paper.
"Many Americans don't realize how anti-gay laws and policies hurt children," said Jeff Krehely of the Center for American Progress. "The Supreme Court of North Carolina just invalidated all second-parent adoptions, undermining family security and leaving children as legal strangers to the LGBT parents who have raised them since birth. Similarly, when states like Minnesota and North Carolina advance ballot initiatives to deny marriage to same-sex couples, it can have serious consequences, such as denying children access to a parent's health insurance."
The report detailed how existing laws can deny children legal ties to both of their parents and separate children from their parents in cases of divorce or death of a parent. Existing laws can also deny children access to quality child care and early education and deny children Social Security survivor benefits or inheritance.
"Our nation's laws and policies simply have not kept pace with the changing reality of America's families," said Ineke Mushovic of the Movement Advancement Project. "All Children Matter outlines common-sense recommendations that should be looked at very seriously by anyone claiming to fight for children's well-being. Many of these solutions would serve the needs not only of children with LGBT parents, but also those in other families as well, such as children of unmarried heterosexual parents."
Solutions include:
• Pass marriage equality laws, and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.
• Provide equal access to government-based protections for families.
• Provide LGBT parents and their children with equal access to healthcare and health insurance.
• Protect LGBT families with non-discrimination laws and anti-bullying policies.
