With marriage now equal in 32 states and the District of Columbia, a lingering question remains, "should same-gender parents be allowed to adopt"?
While the arguments against gay adoption seem only limited to religious dogma, that is: homosexuality is inherently immoral, children need both mother and father to be socially well-adjusted, and children raised by gay parents are more likely to 'become' gay, the facts compellingly tell a different story.
Apart from the fact that all the gay people I have known have had heterosexual parents...
♧ Here are some other interesting facts in support of gay adoption:
♡ An estimated two million LGBTQ people are interested in adopting.
♡An estimated 65,500 adopted children are currently living with a lesbian or gay parent.
♡ More than 16,000 adopted children are living with lesbian and gay parents in California, the highest number in the U.S.
♡ Gay and lesbian parents are raising four percent of all adopted children in the United States.
♡ Adopted children with same-sex parents are younger and more likely to be foreign born.
♡ There were an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 gay and lesbian biological parents in 1976. In 1990, an estimated 6 to 14 million children have gay or lesbian parents.
♡ Research suggests that sexual identities (including gender identity, gender-role behavior, and sexual orientation) develop in much the same ways among children of lesbian mothers as they do among children of heterosexual parents.
♡ There is no reliable evidence that homosexual orientation, per se, impairs psychological functioning. Second, beliefs that lesbian and gay adults are not fit parents have no empirical foundation.
♡ There is no conclusive evidence that homosexuality is linked to one's environment. In other words, growing up in a gay couple household will not "make" a child gay.
♡ Most children in the United States do not live with two married parents. In fact, according to the 2000 census, only 24% of homes were composed of a married mother and father with children living at home.
♡ Studies have shown that children are more influenced by their interactions with their parents, than by their sexual orientation.
♡ States and regions which explicitly allow for adoption by same-sex couples include California, Connecticut, Washington D.C., Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Vermont.
♡ In states allowing gay individuals to adopt, Colorado, Ohio, Nebraska and Wisconsin have laws preventing second-parent adoptions.
♧
How many children are waiting to be adopted?
Way too many! 397,122 children are living without permanent families in the foster care system. 101,666 of these children are eligible for adoption, but nearly 32% of these children will have to wait over three years in foster care before being adopted.
♧
How many same-gender couples want to adopt children?
According to a 2007 study more than half of gay men and 41 percent of lesbians want to have a child.
♧
How has recent gains in marriage equality across the world and most relevantly in the U.S. affected adoptions by same-gender couples?
A U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the number of same-gender couples who adopted children in the past decade have more than tripled, from 6,477 couples in 2000 to 21,740 in 2009.
♧
How has public opinion evolved on gay adoption?
Public support for allowing gays and lesbians to adopt children has steadily increased. While in 1999, only 38% favored gay adoption and 57% opposed it, in July 2012 52% favor gay adoption, while 42% were opposed, in a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.
♢
With some states prohibiting gay couples from jointly adopting or making it illegal for a partner/spouse to adopt the child/children of their spouse/partner, it must be painfully clear to us that much work needs to be done to match countries like Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, South Africa, and Spain, to name a few, where full joint adoption by same-gender couples is currently legal. The staggering chasm between children that are in dire need of adoption & the millions of gay couples waiting to adopt in the U.S. represents not only a broken system, but also an antiquated approach to foster care here at home. We simply cannot afford for our children to languish away in our foster care system while we stand idly by on the wrong side of history.
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