Why Courts Are Adopting Gay Parenting

[rodeodance]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/10/AR2006031002031.html
Why Courts Are Adopting Gay Parenting

By Dahlia Lithwick
Sunday, March 12, 2006; Page B02

A heads-up to those of you still fretting about the alleged evils of gay marriage: The parade has moved on. Try as you may to vote, or legislate your way out of a country that solemnizes such relationships, committed gay couples are already giving birth to, adopting and fostering children. Whether or not same-sex marriage becomes widely legal in America, same-sex parenting is a done deal.

Around the country, courts are increasingly recognizing that reality, with more generous notions of what "parenting" and "family" mean. Critics are launching the predictable counterattack: deriding gay parenting with the same claims they use to attack gay marriage and dismissing any judge who recognizes such relationships as an unprincipled liberal activist. But there's a crucial legal difference between claims that liberal judges are inventing a right to same-sex marriage and inventing a right to same-sex parents: Judges who do the latter are adhering to a bedrock principle of family law.

The Delaware Supreme Court found last week that a gay woman could retain joint custody of triplets she co-parented with their biological mother. That makes Delaware one of a growing number of jurisdictions unwilling to reflexively downgrade involved gay parents to third-party interlopers. According to the 2000 Census, 34 percent of female same-sex households and 22 percent of male ones include children. The Lambda Legal Defense Fund estimates 6 million to 10 million gay parents are caring for 6 million to 14 million children.

Adoption laws vary widely by state. Most states allow adoption by single parents, including gay parents. Only Florida categorically prohibits gay parents from adopting, although Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Utah and North Dakota do so as a matter of practice. Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio and Missouri are now considering constitutional amendments or laws banning gay adoption. Three states (Arkansas, Nebraska and Utah) prohibit gay people from even serving as foster parents.

These legislative bans fly in the face of both necessity and truth. There are 119,000 children waiting to be adopted in this country, about half of them racial and ethnic minorities. There are about 588,000 children in foster care. Legislators -- like a clutch of Ohio Republicans -- pushing bans on gay adoption and fostering must argue that it's better for these children to languish in state custody, or bounce from foster home to foster home, than be raised by gay parents.......

[Warpy]

1. Gay couples have traditionally adopted the kids nobody else wants

They've adopted the special needs kids who take the most physical care. They've adopted kids with emotional problems who need the most emotional support. They've adopted kids who have the double whammy of being "old" and nonwhite, meaning they're school age or older with brown skin.

Ending gay adoptions will do these kids a great disservice, but the unchristian right would rather see kids die of neglect in a badly policed foster care system than get two loving parents of the same sex.