First the good news:
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…
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 overall numbers are still relatively small. The Times piece reports that the 65,000 adopted kids living in gay-headed households account for 4% of the total. But the point is that (a) kids who need love and care are gettng it, and (b) in another “both sides are not the same moment” there is increasing recognition of and support for, essentially, the ordinariness of same-sex families, up to and including from the administration of that known enemy of teh gay, President Obama:
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 bad news: in many states, same sex households are still the families that dare not speak their names. Arizona, for example, continuing its campaign to supplant Mississippi as the most benighted state in the union, set into law a principle of discrimination against same sex adoptive parents.
More generally, bars to same-sex marriage produce obligate single-parented children. Why?
Because in states that prohibit the marriage of gay and lesbian couples, it is a common feature that two unrelated people may not jointly adopt. In those states — the Times focuses on examples from Ohio — one half of the couple or the other adopts, and the other just kind of hangs around, legally speaking.
Which is what produces such terrible threats to the American family as this:
The Leeses took turns. Ray adopted three — two who were originally from Haiti and a baby — and Matt is completing an adoption of five siblings whose drug-addicted mother could not care for them.
“When we first considered it, we thought, people are going to think we are crazy for having eight kids,” said Matt Lees, 39. But they did not want to split the siblings and after careful thought, decided to take them.
…It was hard for them as two fathers at first. Their eldest daughter, 6 at the time, cried and asked who would cook and do her hair. But those days are long past. And though the family is a curiosity in their neighborhood — two white men driving eight black children in a large Mercedes minivan — they are not alone. There are at least two other gay families raising adopted children nearby…
“It was the best way we could think of spending the next 20 years of our lives,” he said.
But of course, it is out of the question to provide this family the legal structure that actually gives kids the maximum protection against the chance and hazard of real life. Fortunately, the Lees are clever as well as (on the reporting here) exemplary human beings, and so they are taking care to guard their children from both random threats and the hostility of a state. FSM forbid that kids thrive in the “wrong” home! Their arrangements aren’t perfect, but the couple is doing what Ohio law now allows:
They bind their two legally distinct families together with custody agreements. They do not provide full parental rights, however, because like many states, Ohio does not allow second-parent adoptions by unmarried couples unless the first parent renounces his or her right to the child. They have to maintain two family health insurance policies.
If folks — not naming names here — but if folks actually possessed family values, among such precepts would be included the recognition that parents willing to devote themselves to children in need are heroes. They’re people to be celebrated — and supported, to the full extent that law and communities can. Just sayin.
(Also too: Yglesias has a good bit up today on another example of GOP love of the family whilst hating, you know, actual families — this time on the subject of actually feeding children in need.)
Factio Grandaeva Delenda Est.
Image: Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of Jan Pellicorne and his son Caspar, c. 1634
Gordon Guano
You know who needs to be kept from adopting? Woody Allen.
aimai
There’s a pretty good discussion in the thread at Ygleisias’s place. On the subject of adopting we should, of course, be spending more money on good social services for foster care and adopted children, not less. Providing good free health care costs to adoptive families so that the additional burden on a family/individual private health care isn’t so great, and etc…
I’m continually astounded at the whole penny wise/pound foolish quality of right wing thinking–although I blame the fractured and fragmented polity and the incompetence of our major media. Every now and then it will be reported, for example, that we could spend X dollars on food and education and dental care for all kids now, and have a happy, healthy, non criminal population of educated workers paying taxes and voting. Or we could refuse to spend X now and spend X +++ later in prisons, emergency rooms, police and fire bills, and emergency social services and foster care. But generally speaking those two halves of the tax burden are never fully explored.
aimai
WereBear
This is one of those things that REALLY gets me steamed; it should be well known how detrimental short-term, frequently interrupted foster care is, yet it continues until we can throw the child in prison or out on the street.
While adoptive parents are tormented for love.
PhoenixRising
Appreciate the shout-out. However, I’d dispute the notion that we should be treated with respect and dignity because we’re doing something difficult and expensive that helps needy kids. We’re raising kids because we wanted to, not as an act of charity–and our families deserve respect from the state because our kids deserve fairness in childhood and in inheritance, if any.
It’s also important to note the “Republicans are liars” aspect of this story’s timing. While I’m resistant to pushing these stories, and there are a LOT of couples like these guys, I’m afraid there is no alternative politically.
In last night’s debate alone, Bachmann asserted, and Santorum agreed, that man+woman is “best” for all kids. This was her answer to “what’s your position on marriage for gay couples?” Ruh-roh.
Studies show no association between the gender of the parents and successful outcomes (as measured in the few ways we can all agree are success, “postponing first sexual activity until marriage” does NOT count). On the other hand, the number of the parents–that is, are there two or more adults cooperating in raising this child–has a huge correlation with outcomes, the ideal n=more than 1. Pretty intuitive, the more help you have the easier it is to do the hard things well and the easy things in volume.
Now, keeping in mind that everyone making the assertion “kids need moms and dads” is aware of this research: in the 3 states where they have had the option to test this talking point, they’ve found that it is the ONLY place to leverage voters’ visceral discomfort with gay men raising kids. It works. (So you’ll be seeing it a lot more. Brace yourself, Minnesota.) As a result, the only way we have to push back is to lead with the ‘heroic white people save brown children’ story.
I’m conflicted. I’m not parenting for praise from strangers, but if the best way to get more kids into stable adoptive families and keep them there is to be an attention-seeking homosexual, there’s a pragmatic issue.
dpcap
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The best way to provide marriage equality is to eliminate state-sanctioned marriage altogether. Its a ridiculous anachronism and really should have no part in a modern government. If people want to get gov’t recognized protections then there are plenty of partnership agreements that can fill that void.
Plus the beauty of this plan is that the Catholic Church will stop bitching because then they have their precious Marriage without any government interference.
Win-win.
Of course people just love interfering with other people’s lives so this’ll never happen.
Crashman
Ah, the Christian right. They’ll do anything to keep you alive in the womb, but couldn’t care less about you once you’re out.
Bud
Two friends of mine, both men, recently adopted a foster girl. I love the way they do it now – the child is not simply told they are being adopted. Instead, the fathers met her and showed her the room they had prepared for a little girl and told her they could use it until they got one. They spent time with her for weeks, and then everyone sat back and waited for the girl herself to say that she wanted to be their little girl. My friends were warned this could take up to six months for the child to make the connection. It took her about six weeks before she asked if she could be their little girl.
She was just old enough to understand that she went from being a foster kid in a house full of parentless kids just like her, to becoming a little princess and today she is one of the happiest little girls you will ever meet.
Both her dads have beards and the first time I met her, she hugged me around the knees (I have a beard). I assumed she would be startled to look up and realize that I wasn’t one of her dads, but instead she looked up into my face and gave me a huge smile while squeezing harder.
That little girl is so lucky. My friends are lucky to have her. Why anyone thinks that this is bad for the child is beyond me.
burnspbesq
Gay couples should be able to share fully in all experiences that comprise being a family. Including those wonderful feelings that arise at 12:30 a.m. when a kid who just got his/her license, and was told to be home at 11:00, isn’t home and isn’t answering his/her cell phone.
Why should we straights have all the fun?
Roger Moore
@aimai:
Not surprising. Somehow the cost of imprisoning people is never well explored. People love their three strikes laws and then are shocked, shocked when their prisons are expensive. Of course, instead of adequately funding those prisons, they’d much rather run them as inhumanely as possible.
Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory
The rich need poor people to take care of their lawns, and it’s much more convenient if they speak English.
Jack the Second
I’m not going to spend too much time on this, since I don’t know Woody Allen, and so I don’t really know if he should be defended, but I’d like to point out that he didn’t actually adopt Soon-Yi. Soon-Yi was adopted by Mia Farrow and her then-husband Andre Previn, and has stated that she has always considered Andre Previn her father. As far as that goes, it looks like mostly the straight-up assholery of sleeping with a woman and her mother, or daughter, or sister, with the (more than?) slight weirdness that he did presumably meet her when she was 10.
If you want real freakiness, consider the 22nd & 24th President of the United States, Grover Cleveland. He was his wife’s goddamn godfather, having known her from birth, and was the administrator of her estate after her father died when she was young. Or Johnny Freakin’ Appleseed, who adopted a girl for the express purpose of raising her to be the perfect wife. (She never married him, disappointing him by choosing instead to marry a man her own age, who wasn’t a creepster.)
Tom Levenson
@burnspbesq: My particular favorite (so far) is the 3 a.m. howling youth/potential ear infection. Nothing like the local e.r. at that hour…
Amanda in the South Bay
Well, this weekend I got a copy of my court order for a gender change in the mail-last month the judge didn’t grant me a fee waiver, so I pretty much gave up on it. Apparently, the judge signed off on it anyways, and Saturday the court sent me a copy of the signed and filed court order. So, I just need to go down this week and get a couple of certified copies to send away to get my birth certificate changed.
All this is my long winded way of saying that I’m a trans woman, and once I get my BC changed, I’ll be legally allowed to have a heterosexual marriage with a guy that has a male birth certificate. Which has been foremost on my mind as of late, since (thankfully he doesn’t read this blog) I have a bf/partner that, well, maybe later this year I’m thinking of popping the question of marriage to. I don’t know, we’ll see. Its weird, though-as soon as my BC is changed, who I can legally marry instantly changes.
Amir_Khalid
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Congratulations! Do keep us informed on the relationship front, and the best of luck with that too.
aimai
I’d like to point out that the discrimination here also affects biological kids of lesbian and gay parents–there are certainly potentially plenty of those too. If a lesbian woman can’t get married to her partner and the partner remains legally unrelated to the woman’s child what happens to that kid in the event of the death of her biological mother? These anti-gay marriage laws are, in effect, potentially denying a child the right to another legal guardian in the event of the death or incapacitation of the biological parent. In fact this is what is happening, I believe, in the case of a lesbian woman who has breast cancer–she isn’t “married” and doesn’t have a live in lover but her ex husband is suing for control of the children on the grounds that she is too sick to care for them. This kind of thing doesn’t happen to heterosexual women with second husbands or heterosexual men with second wives who are custodians for their children.
aimai
Ash Can
Here in Illinois, Catholic Charities, to its inestimable discredit, is raising a stink about the new civil unions law, which basically forbids adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples. CC is suing, it wants an exemption, blah blah. But it’s also started doing something of which I heartily approve — getting out of the business. A couple of its branches have stopped arranging adoptions and foster care altogether. Hopefully, if CC continues to insist that it can’t live with the new law, all of its offices will cease these activities. If Catholic Charities is unable to put the welfare of children and families first and foremost, it shouldn’t be involved in adoption and foster care at all.
Clark Stooksbury
” Arizona, for example, continuing its campaign to supplant Mississippi as the most benighted state in the union”
And without having produced a Jimmy Rogers, Faulkner, Percy, the Delta Blues, Marty Stuart, etc.
Gromit
@dpcap:
This comes up every time this subject is discussed. We already have a civil, secular partnership arrangement. It is called marriage. It is the churches that want a piece of the action, not the state. The churches can refuse to marry whom they like, thanks to the first amendment. What some churches want is to stop an entire class of people from attaining civil recognition of their relationships, no matter where they are to be married, and stripping the civil institution of the name “marriage” will only bolster the otherwise ludicrous claim of the bigots that marriage equality advocates are trying to destroy marriage.
So, it is, in fact, a lose/lose.
Chris
@Ash Can:
Fuck that shit.
No law will ever force the Catholic Church to perform marriages that are contrary to its principles, but if you’re going to provide a public service, you provide it for THE PUBLIC. Not just for people who pass your litmus tests.
I’m with you on the “unable to put the welfare of children and families first and foremost.” The sad thing is that this will have real repercussions – religious charities are HUGE in helping to fill gaps in the safety net.
dpcap
@Gromit:
If it’s really just semantics, then just don’t call it marriage. That’s what the Church claims is an “attack” on their institution. The problem is that people are hopelessly confused at the difference between a secular marriage and a non-secular marriage. Thus it will expose the true colors of the bigotry you mention.
Church and state should not share the same semantics.
aimai
@Gromit:
Gromit is correct. The right thing to do is to move government out of the business of recognizing religious marriage. All marriages, to be legal, should be civil first and sacred second or not at all. And actually that’s largely the case–you can get married in a Nepali ceremony to the Bel tree but unless you get a marriage licence with your state its not a real legal ceremony and has no legal force. That is already the case with sacred marriage in this country–the Catholic priest is licenced by the state to perform his ceremony. Under new, relaxed laws, you can hire bozo the clown or any person who fills out the paperwork to “officiate” at your wedding and sign the certificate of marriage. But absent the civil contract their officiation is null and void.
We should do what they currently do in England (more or less) and have all legitimate marriages performed at registry offices. If the couple wants a sacred marriage as well, in the church of their choice, they do that separately but it has no legal force. As, indeed, it doesn’t in the US. The Catholic Church doesn’t recognize divorce, for example, but you can still get a divorce and get remarried in America even if your first marriage was Catholic. They can’t order you to continue to sleep with your ex husband or own property in common once you have initiated divorce proceedings in a court of law.
aimai
Roger Moore
@Jack the Second:
It’s more than assholery. According to Leviticus 20:14, sleeping with a woman and her daughter is wickedness and is supposed to be punished by all three (the man, mother, and daughter) being burned to death.
jonas
@Gordon Guano: Just to be clear, Soon-Yi Previn was Mia Farrow and Andre Previn’s adopted child; Allen never formally adopted Farrow’s children from her previous relationships.
Gromit
@dpcap:
You are basically telling me I should start calling my relationship by a new name (to say nothing of untangling all the references to civil marriage in existing law, and completely changing the way we talk about relationships in the broader culture) all to placate some bigots? Bigots who will, in fact, not be placated by the move, but rather inflamed?
Why not? What problem does changing the name solve?
Xenos
@dpcap:
Then the churches should butt out. Nobody is making them take on the job, and there is no marriage in paradise in any case. The system prevalent in most of Europe, where only the state can marry people keeps everything clear regardless of semantics. There is marriage, and then there is the sacrament of marriage – different events often on different days, sometimes weeks or months apart from one another.
karen marie
@Chris: It’s my understanding that CC gets federal money to subsidize its adoption/foster work. Let them go to a state that allows discrimination (fortunately, a shrinking pool), and let the federal money go to organizations that are not imposing their narrow beliefs on others.
Stefan
@aimai:
Yeah, well, I stopped commenting at Yglesias’ place ever since they linked their comments to Facebook. I have no desire to use my real name and reveal my job, school, etc. to everyone there.
Stefan
@Ash Can:
If Catholic Charities is unable to put the welfare of children and families first and foremost, it shouldn’t be involved in adoption and foster care at all.
Hear hear.
Lol
One of my pet peeves is “pro gay rights” straights who would rather blow up the entire institution of marriage for everyone than risk the gays enjoying its benefits.
Origuy
Mormons would disagree with you. That’s how Joseph Smith justified polygamy.
The problem with renaming marriage is that there are a lot of laws, regulations, and private practices that apply to married people, from adopting children down to renting a car. If you want to rent a car and have your partner on the contract, they have to come to the counter and show their license. Your spouse doesn’t have to do that.
aimai
I’d like to point out that this isn’t simply a question of Catholic Charities or any other organization discriminating against the rights of potential adoptive or foster parents. What on earth are they doing discriminating against the right of gay children to have parents who are not prejudiced against them, or going to treat them as though they have some kind of disease or inherent sin? So far, I take it, the adoption agencies and foster care agencies have simply chosen (or been forced) to sweep this issue under the rug by pretending that children and teens don’t have sexuality or gender identity issues or by privately arranging to foster or adopt out children to suitable parents without barring the unsuitable (highly religious) from adopting or fostering.
I’d say that a gay or straight but atheist child is at more risk from foster or adoptive care from a religious bigot than that a gay or straight child is at risk from adoption by loving gay couples. I think a (sadly) good case could be made for barring religiously orthodox or rigid couples from adopting outside their own community, or any child whose sexuality or gender identity isn’t fixed an in compliance with the adoptive parent’s heteronormative ideas.
I’ve known great gay parents who went out of their way to make sure they respected and loved their (african american) girl child’s hair needs and skin care issues but I’ve read some pretty grievous stories about heteronormative religious bigots rejecting their biological kids.
aimai
kay
I was glad to see the article, and it’s a fine article, but there’s a basic lie behind the conservative opposition to gay couples adopting, and it’s this: lots and lots of people who are not one man and one woman who are married, act as legal guardians to children.
The combinations are amazing. A grown half-brother and his much younger half-sister. A friend of mom while mom is incarcerated. Grandparent(s). Step-grandparents. Unmarried teenage parents with a shared parenting plan that includes both sets of grandparents.
The common sense objective (which I heartily approve of) is to put together some combination of loving adults to care for the child. This is done ALL THE TIME in abuse neglect and dependency scenarios. It’s preferred over foster care.
I have never heard a peep out of family values conservatives over any of those less than conventional parenting arrangements, although many are “permanent”, in practice, if you define “permanent” as “the child’s life as a child”.
If they were honest, they would admit they aren’t looking for a two parent, man-woman, married “traditional” home. They’re specifically barring gay people from what is an ordinary practice, because ordinary practice is NOT all that conventional.
gex
@aimai: They don’t care about outcomes. They demand that policy conform to certain ideological constructs. So if their policies leave a lot of unwanted children in adoption agencies and orphanages, that’s fine. So long as we don’t encourage teens to practice safe sex, allow women to have abortions, or allow gays to care for the children.
That’s what pisses me off about conservatives. They gladly cheer on making the world a worse place so long as it follows their authoritarian belief system.
Friend of mine just quit his job to move to Vegas. Desk job checking people into a clinic. The job was posted for one day and got over 80 applications. That’s how they like it – needy desperation from the little people.
More serfs to drive down labor costs. More children for priests to pick and choose from.
Grrrr.
Chris
@gex:
This is an accurate summary of the GOP’s SOP when faced with just about any given situation. Although, what those ideological constructs are varies from time to time, depending on what the movement’s leaders have decided will be the flavor of the month. (To quote a 1980s spy novel set in the USSR, the Party is never wrong, but it certainly changes its collective mind a lot).
HL_guy
At the Mass I attended last Sunday, the deacon who happened to be preaching tried to portray the RC Church as the “victim” in the Illinois adoption shamefest. If you are stable enough to turn your back on $30 million in state money and quit the biz, you aren’t a victim, you’re a power player.
Mr. Misguided Deacon also claimed that Catholics are the last group in America “whom it’s ok to be prejudiced against.” Oh my goodness, I did NOT know that! Does that Catholic majority on the Supreme Court know? They might want to take up one or two of the many anti-Catholic-bias cases gumming up the courts. Personally, as a Catholic and a teacher in a union, I’ve been feeling a lot more heat for the latter.
The victim-fu is strong in that one. I will beware.
PTirebiter
You tell me how anyone rationalizes inflicting pain on innocents?
The religious right’a absolute truths and unquestionable beliefs have to become, in reality, a little fungible. They just become even more fervent and hope nobody notices.
Last night, when Michelle Bachman was asked for her position on exceptions for rape, incest and a mother’s health in bills outlawing abortion, she prefaced her non-answer with an intense proclamation of her unshakable belief that every life is sacred and constitutionally protected. She ended with a quiet dismissal of those who might focus on these exceptions because, they were, in essence, statistically insignificant.
All life is sacred, but apparently in His wisdom, God makes some lives just a little bit more sacred than others.
RalfW
In a world where family values wasn’t a carbon-steel wedge meant to drive voters apart, but rather had meaning beyond Orwellian sloganeering, Crazy-eyes Bachmann would be lovin’ big time on that gay family. She and her Marcus-man adopted/fostered 20 bazillion kids and they would understand the impetus to be that weird. (OK, I really admire the gay couple, but it is a bit culturally weird to have 8 kids these days, octamom notably included).