“No person eligible to adopt under this statute may adopt if that person is homosexual.”
So states, in oddly plain and blunt legislative language, the law of the State of Florida. Last month, a Miami-Dade judge declared the law “unconstitutional on its face” and unrelated to the best interests of the child. She appointed custody of an infant (removed from home almost immediately) to a family member who is a lesbian in a committed relationship. Florida’s Department of Child and Family Services filed its appeal last week. The state’s argument and the spirit of the 1977 law boil down to the idea that adoptive parenting by homosexuals is so obviously harmful to children that prohibiting it is “rationally related” to a legitimate state aim. The idea is that heterosexuals are, by definition, better parents. This claim, wherever it asserts itself, is more than baseless and bigoted toward homosexuals. It is tragically shortsighted and remarkably cruel to the roughly 100,000 American children (about 7% of them in Florida) waiting to be adopted out of the foster care system.
Several gay friends of mine refer to straight people as “breeders.” And indeed, breed we do. Heterosexuals, generally by definition, produce millions of children each year. And a disturbing percentage of us rip our own children apart like dogs with a chew toy. In two very different cities where I served as an ADA, I encountered fathers who sexually abused their children over years, beginning before the children were in first grade. I saw mothers who literally starved their children to death, or pimped them out for drugs, rent or just extra cash. I saw toddlers pressed against heating grates by one or both parents as if in a waffle iron. I saw fathers who shook infants to blindness and epilepsy, their ribs snapping like dry twigs in the process. In one particularly brutal shaken baby case I prosecuted in the Bronx in 2006, the mother sided with the offending father (a drug dealer) and refused to cooperate with me even while her son languished in a NICU on the edge of death. The people who did these things came from a broad diversity of racial, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds and circumstances. In fact, there were only two things common to every one of the most brutal physical and sexual abuse cases I worked on:
1. The children involved, if they survived, needed new homes and new parents.
2. The biological parents, whether perpetrators or accomplices, were all heterosexual.
I’m not claiming that homosexual parents, adoptive or biological, can’t or don’t abuse their children. I’m just saying I’ve never seen it. Not in nearly 15 years. The point is not that homosexuals are perfect. The point is that they’re human, and when they are successful, compassionate, loving and stable adults who want to improve the life of a child without a home, they should be considered as adoptive parents.
Opponents of homosexual adoption often try to point to non-religious, “objective factors” to support their arguments. They never get far. No reputable scientific evidence supports a single claim that homosexual parents will be less successful or even that they will somehow foster a homosexual lifestyle on the part of their children. One of the last legislative pushes to prove that homosexuals are naturally disordered and dangerous as parents came from a particularly despicable Virginia legislator in 2004 (to my eternal shame, he represented my hometown of Sterling Park for seven years). The bill he finally got passed in the House of Delegates would have required social workers to investigate whether perspective adoptive parents were homosexual. The rationale, that homosexuality was related to increased levels of child molestation among other things, was based largely on junk science spewed by a single discredited and religiously biased sociologist. The bill, and the sociologist, were eventually routed in the Virginia senate, thanks in good measure to courageous Republicans who called this effort out for the rank bigotry that it was.
Although Biblical views of homosexuality (and similar non-Judeo-Christian religious tenets) are the primary force behind laws like Florida’s and efforts like Virginia’s, I won’t engage in a wholesale bashing of these religious views. There’s enough of that going on, and bigotry against religious people is as bad as bigotry toward anyone. To hold strict religious views is a private and sometimes difficult choice, and I know many decent Christians (among other religious) who struggle to reconcile the doctrines of their faith with their common experience as compassionate people. I draw the line, though, when positions based solely on religious doctrine become law in a pluralistic society. And I draw it in red when children- discarded, debased or destroyed by the supposedly “sexually healthy” people who created them, are languishing in a far too often chaotic, uncertain and flawed foster care system.
© 2010, Roger Canaff. All rights reserved.
Absolutely spot on post Roger. Thank you for sharing. As an adopted mother and adoptee, this is beyond me why this is STILL an issue. Grrrrrr.
Roger, I take your point that sexual orientation and psychological health are mutually exclusive. How do we evaluate people to determine if they are healthy/balanced or whatever to adopt? I ask because that evaluation seems to have a lot of religious component. If one doesn’t like the way I discipline my kids they might find me ineligible.
Great question, Jon. To be frank, I do believe (given the evidence before me and the knowledge I have of the subject, which is limited) that yes- sexual orientation and psychological health are mutually exclusive. In my view, a person can be homosexual and completely psychologically healthy and normal. This is also the view of the greater psychological community (at least as that body speaks through the DSM, where as you know homosexuality is no longer categorized as a disorder).
So, I do not believe that homosexuality on the part of a perspective adoptive parent should be considered automaticallyas a negative factor in determining eligibility to adopt. That doesn’t mean I think it should never be considered, however. I’ve gotten some feedback on this piece already suggesting that I communicated a belief that the sexual orientation of a perspective parent is as relevant as their hair color. I don’t believe that, although admittedly I come close. I think there are situations where the sexual orientation of the parent could come into play in determining whether the best interests of the child would be served by adoption by that parent. However, I think those situations are very, very limited. For instance, consider a situation where a homosexual couple seeking to adopt a young boy (say 11 years old) lived in a very small, insular and religious community (not necessarily Christian) where homosexuality was reviled and where homosexuals were considered outcasts. Or consider a situation where the extended family of the boy (assuming they were unable to adopt him, but would still maintain close contact with him) was similarly and strongly predisposed against homosexuality for religious and/or cultural reasons. In those two cases, because of the hostile environment the boy would likely live in, I’d have to consider the sexual orientation of the would-be parents. Does what they can offer the child in terms of love, stability, etc outweigh what he is almost certainly going to endure because of his community’s or extended family’s views of his parents? It’s a fair question, even though it’s certainly not reflective of a flaw on the part of the would-be gay parents.
To be clear, though, I think these scenarios are very rare. There is an oft-cited concern on the part of opponents of gay adoption that children adopted by them will suffer bullying and cruelty because of the lifestyle of the parents. For the most part, I think this is a canard. In most communities, particularly as time marches on, I don’t think children of gay parents suffer significantly because of how other kids view their parents, or at least not to the extent that the positive aspects of their placement with the gay parent(s) are outweighed by that suffering. Children of interracial couples, after all, can be ostracized because of that fact. I can’t imagine any reasonable person seeking to deny an interracial couple the opportunity to adopt simply because of the possibility that the kids might be picked on because of that circumstance.
I don’t want to convey the idea that gay perspective parents are always or almost always appropriate and should be approved without question. Obviously, a gay man seeking to adopt who has multiple sex partners in and out of his home, loud parties every night, a problem with alcohol or drug use, etc, is not a good candidate to be an adoptive parent. But a straight man (or woman) with a similar life style is equally inappropriate.
The bottom line for me is that objections to gay adoption appear to rest ultimately on religious doctrinal opposition to homosexuality itself. While I don’t agree with these views, I’m not mocking them either. But, since I find no objective, scientific support for arguments against allowing gay people to adopt, I cannot support laws that restrict gay adoption on that basis alone (this evokes the discussion we’ve had before on the philosophy of some who believe that a “solely-secular” reason must exist in order for some act to be prohibited by law). My position becomes even more hardened when I consider how many children are left to languish without stable homes. When the balancing test is done, for me it’s a very easy question.
Great job Roger! Did you see the recent news story about the adoption by two gay men in NY of a baby born in LA? They requested a birth certificate with both their names on it, and Louisiana refused since unmarried couples can’t legally adopt here. The men have won a federal appeals court ruling, and Louisiana, shockingly enough, is going to appeal that decision. Which I think is an awesome use of our state tax dollars in a state that provides NO state funding for sexual assault crisis centers. (sigh)
It’s sad, Judy, but this kind of dogma seems to drive decision making in government on many levels- victims of sexual violence must take a back seat to moralizing on balance. Makes you wonder why we try, doesn’t it?
what I don’t understand is… if Florida truly believes that adoption by homosexuals is harmful to the child, why do they allow gay people to foster children?
doesn’t the very basis of their arguement fall apart? not that it has any base in fact in the first place. For that matter, I guess Florida doesn’t see any need in looking at cases in other states where gay people can adopt. Bigotry doesn’t tend to mix well with facts.
In the end, some Florida politician will start a petition to remove this judge.
No reputable scientific evidence supports a single claim that homosexual parents will be less successful or even that they will somehow foster a homosexual lifestyle on the part of their children.
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BTW, I always love this arguement. As everyone knows, heterosexual parents ONLY have heterosexual children… so it stands to reason that gay parents would only have gay children, right?
Good enough to plug a foster care gap, never good enough to provide a permanent, stable home. The inconsistency and shortsightedness is stunning. Thanks for the comment, Jeff.
totally agree!