American Academy Of Pediatrics Backs Gay Marriage & Adoption

Joe.My.God. reports:

The New York Times reports the big news: 

The American Academy of Pediatrics declared its support for same-sex marriage for the first time on Thursday, saying that allowing gay and lesbian parents to marry if they so choose is in the best interests of their children. The academy’s new policy statement says same-sex marriage helps guarantee rights, benefits and long-term security for children, while acknowledging that it does not now ensure access to federal benefits. When marriage is not an option, the academy said, children should not be deprived of foster care or adoption by single parents or couples, whatever their sexual orientation.

From the group’s abstract:

Extensive data available from more than 30 years of research reveal that children raised by gay and lesbian parents have demonstrated resilience with regard to social, psychological, and sexual health despite economic and legal disparities and social stigma. Many studies have demonstrated that children’s well-being is affected much more by their relationships with their parents, their parents’ sense of competence and security, and the presence of social and economic support for the family than by the gender or the sexual orientation of their parents. 

Lack of opportunity for same-gender couples to marry adds to families’ stress, which affects the health and welfare of all household members. Because marriage strengthens families and, in so doing, benefits children’s development, children should not be deprived of the opportunity for their parents to be married. Paths to parenthood that include assisted reproductive techniques, adoption, and foster parenting should focus on competency of the parents rather than their sexual orientation.

Suck it, Mark Regnerus.

Here’s why Joe Jervis mentions Mark Regnerus (from ThinkProgress):

Mark Regnerus’s “family structure” study has been a hot topic since it was released in June, namely becauseeverysingleanti-gayconservativeorganizationhas cited it as evidence that same-sex couples are inferior parents. An internal audit by the academic journal that originally published it found the conclusionsto be “bullshit”because Regnerus’s criteria was whether a kid’s parent ever had a same-sex relationship, regardless of how long it lasted or what role in played in parenting. In anew interview with Focus on the Family— a group invested in continuing to cite the study to oppose LGBT equality — Regnerus admits that the foundation of his study is too weak to draw the conclusions that many have made:

• REGNERUS: I got taken to task for leaning on young adults’ assessments of their parents’ relationships. I didn’t ask them whether they thought their mom was a lesbian or if their dad was gay. Because, in part, self-identity is a different kind of thing than behavior, and lot of people weren’t “out” in that era. I think we can all think of moms and dads when we were growing up that we either knew or suspected were gay or lesbian, but never “came out of the closet,” so to speak. So, I didn’t want to make the assumption that these young adults would identify their parents as gay or lesbian, so I kept the focus on relationship behavior. […]

And when pushed, a lot of people who were critics of mine will say: “Yeah, we know that, obviously, family structure matters,” and then they’ll complain, “Why didn’t you find many stably coupled lesbians?” Well, they just were not that common in the nationally representative population. There were two cases where they said the mom and her partner lived together for 18 years. There was another several who lived together for 15 or 13 years. So, stability in the sense of long-term was not common. And frankly, it’s not all that common among heterosexual population. I take pains in the study to say this is not about saying gay or lesbian parents are inherently bad. […]
I’d be more careful about the language I used to describe people whose parents had same-sex relationships. I said “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers,” when in fact, I don’t know about their sexual orientation; I do know about their same-sex relationship behavior. But as far as the findings themselves, I stand behind them.
So, Regnerus’ study was not about parents who openly identify as gay or lesbian. It was not about same-sex couples in long-term relationships raising children together. Regnerus even admits “this is not about saying gay or lesbian parents are inherently bad,” because he knows has no foundation on which to make such a claim. This was a study about unstable couples, possibly in sham marriages, who may have dabbled in same-sex relationships outside of their original marriage at a time when there was no recognition for same-sex couples anywhere in the country. In others words, the study’s results havezeroimplication for conversations in 2012 about out, committed same-sex couples who are already raising children.
Focus on the Family may be invested in the fraudulent portrayal of Regnerus’s study, but by conducting this interview to draw more attention to it, the anti-gay organization managed to prove that the research has no applicability to the marriage equality and same-sex adoption debates to which it has been applied.

So yeah. Suck it, Mark.

Dan Savage On Gay Adoption

France: Gay Marriage & Adoption Bill Backed By Cabinet

BBC News reports:

France’s Socialist government has approved a bill to legalise same-sex marriage and allow gay couples to adopt.
The bill, opposed by more than 1,000 mayors and the Catholic Church, will be debated by parliament in January.
France already allows civil unions between same-sex couples, but it was a campaign pledge of President Francois Hollande to extend their rights.
It is one of the most divisive issues he has faced, correspondents say.
Mr Hollande told his cabinet that the bill would mean “progress not only for individuals but for the whole of society”.
But at the weekend the head of the French Council of Bishops, Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, described gay marriage as “the ultimate deceit”.
And an opposition senator in the conservative UMP, Serge Dassault, said: “It’s the end of the family, the end of children’s development, the end of education - it’s an enormous danger to the nation.”
More than 1,000 mayors have signed a petition against the proposed changes, there have been protests in 75 towns and cities, and one opposition politician has even suggested that legalising gay marriage could lead to polygamy, says the BBC’s Maddy Savage in Paris.
Some in the government argue that the law should go even further by offering state funding for artificial insemination for gay couples.
At present only married couples - not civil union partners - can adopt in France.
A number of European nations, including Germany, Sweden and the UK, already allow gay adoption.

United Kingdom: Invisible Parents

Israel: Gay Dreams Of Equality

According to a YouTube commenter, the text at the end reads: “There are still dreams that are not legal to fulfill here. How much longer will we dream?”

(Via Joe.My.God.)

France: PM Jean-Marc Ayrault Says Marriage Equality & Adoption Laws To be Introduce “Quickly”

PM Jean-Marc Ayrault, who took office earlier this month after François Hollande won the Presidential elections, went on a TV show and when asked about the Marriage Equality issue he promptly responded that bills regarding Gay Marriage & Adoption will “quickly” be introduce.

Yagg reports:

Jean-Marc Ayrault was the guest on Friday morning by Jean-Jacques Bourdin on RMC and BFMTV. The Prime Minister, during the questions from listeners, said the opening of marriage and adoption to same-sex couples will be done “quickly” and that the project was “ready”, Homosexualities and Socialism (HES) reports in a statement. This commitment is one of 60 taken during the presidential campaign of Francois Hollande. Before the formation of the government and the day after the election of Francois Hollande, Gilles Bon-Maury, president of HES, stated in an interview that Figaro.fr Bill “could be presented to Parliament before the fall for there to be discussed calmly. “This is the first time since he became Prime Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault said that the draft is ready.

Slovenia: Citizens To Vote On Adoption Rights For Gay Couples 

RIA NOVOSTI reports:

Slovenia will vote on Sunday in a national referendum on amendments to the Family Code adopted in June of 2011 and granting gay married couples almost the same rights as to their married, heterosexual counterparts.
Under the current legislation, same-sex married couples have no right to adopt children from a third party, but it allows gays to adopt children of their partners.
The Civil Initiative for Family and Children’s Rights movement has been arguing that homosexual married couples should not receive adoption rights at all. By February, the group with the support of the Catholic Church secured over 40,000 signatures necessary for a national referendum on the issue.
Some 1.7 million people are expected to take part in the referendum. Opinion polls show that Slovenians are likely to vote in favor of the amendments to the family law and deprive same-sex married couples of all adoption rights.
Slovenia, which joined the European Union in 2004, is relatively tolerant to gay couples and starting from 2006 the state permitted them to officially register their relationship.

VIRGINIA: Anti-Gay Adoption Rule Passed By State Lawmakers 

The Huffington Post reports:

Virginia legislators have passed a bill allowing private adoption agencies to deny placements that conflict with their religious or moral beliefs, including opposition to homosexuality.
The state House voted 71-28 to pass the legislation Friday. Earlier in the day, a Senate committee endorsed its version of the Republican-backed measure on an 8-7 party-line vote. Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell is expected to sign the bill.
Supporters say the measure protects religious freedom. Opponents argue that the government, which contracts with dozens of private, state-licensed child placement agencies, should not sanction discrimination.
The Virginia Board of Social Services in December adopted regulations allowing discrimination by private agencies based on factors including gender, age, religion disability, sexual orientation and family status. The bill would convert those regulations into state law.

Virginia: Senator Adam Ebbin Proposes Adoption Nondiscrimination Bill 

The Advocate reports:

A Virginia state senator has introduced legislation that would prohibit the state from contracting with adoption agencies that discriminate against prospective parents on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Adam Ebbin, a Democrat from Alexandria, in northern Virginia, introduced the bill last week, the Associated Press reports. It also covers other characteristics, including race, religion, sex, family status, national origin, and disability.

The move comes after the state’s Board of Social Services last month declined to enact guidelines that would prohibit anti-LGBT discrimination in adoption.

“One major issue is whether charities that receive tax dollars should be able to discriminate,” Ebbin said Friday. “Adoption is a public act that goes through state courts, and no government agent should engage in discrimination.”

Competing legislation has been introduced in the Senate and House of Delegates that would allow agencies to deny adoption or foster care placements that would go against the agencies’ religious tenets, essentially writing the Board of Social Services guidelines into law. 

The state has 120 local departments of social services, and there are 77 state-licensed private agencies with which they can contract for adoption and foster care services.

The issue of discrimination by private, religious agencies has come up recently in other states. In Illinois, for instance, the state ended its contracts with Catholic Charities agencies for adoption services when the groups refused to serve gay parents in civil unions, as required by a law that went into effect last year.

Colombia: High Court To Hear American Gay Adoption Case 

The Advocate reports:

Colombia’s highest constitutional court has agreed to hear the case of an American gay man whose adoption of two boys in the country made international headlines after Colombian officials blocked him from returning to the United States with his legally adopted sons.

The fight over Jose and Angel Pinto Sierra has been an epic one. On March 30, 2011, Chandler Burr, a journalist and former perfume critic for The New York Times, was barred by an official with theColombian Institute of Family Welfare (ICBF) from traveling to the U.S. with the boys, now legally named Brian, 13, and Joseph, 9, after he disclosed that he is gay. The boys had been abandoned by their biological parents and had been transferred into state custody a few years earlier.

After Burr had already finalized the adoption paperwork and received the adoption decree, he urged the official, Ilvia Ruth Cárdenas, who heads the institute’s adoption division, to rethink the country’s position forbidding LGBT parents from “giving these kids the homes and love they need.” 

Despite a 1995 Colombian court decision finding that sexual orientation may not be used as a criterion for a prospective parent’s suitability to adopt, the government’s de facto policy has been to categorically deny adoption to gay individuals, whether Colombian or foreign. 

“I said, ‘You know me, you know I’ll be a good parent. I’m gay,’” Burr recalled of his conversation with Cárdenas. “And she immediately freaked out. … I assumed, naively in retrospect, that since the boys were legally mine and she couldn’t take them away legally, even if she was very upset, she wouldn’t break the law. This is exactly what she and ICBF did.”

Cárdenas called the U.S. Embassy and demanded that the boys’ adoption emigration visas be canceled (American officials complied). She then asked an ICBF attorney to initiate an investigation of fraud and perjury by Burr in his adoption process.
But in the ensuing months, Burr fought back, suing the ICBF with the help of the civil rights legal group Dejusticia. He lost in both district and appeals courts, but a family court judge eventually kicked the case back to ICBF, demanding it be resolved. 

National debate over the case raged after Burr was interviewed by CNN on December 1 about his attempts to bring his sons to the U.S. Colombian bishop Juan Vicente Córdoba fumed in the press over the prospect of a gay man adopting boys, telling El Tiempo last month that Burr’s “disorder of sexual identity” is troubling because “he will receive two children at an age when they may be attractive to him, which could be a temptation.”
On December 12, an ICBF attorney returned the boys to Burr in an administrative decision — much to his astonishment. Burr returned to the U.S. with Joseph and Brian a day later. The family lives in South Orange, N.J. 

But Colombian adoption officials continue to fight for the return of the boys on procedural and administrative grounds. 

Rodrigo Uprimny, Burr’s lead Colombian attorney with Dejusticia, said the Constitutional Court will consider the following questions during oral arguments on a yet-to-be-announced date:

-Can a gay person adopt in Colombia?
-Must a potential adoptive parent disclose his or her sexual orientation? 

Uprimny told The Advocate via e-mail, “Our position is that it would be discriminatory to forbid a gay person to adopt in Colombia, and that it would violate the rights of many abandoned children in Colombia to obtain a family, via adoption by a gay person or a gay couple.” 

“Sexual orientation should not be a [criterion] to decide about the suitability of a person to be a father,” Uprimny added. 

If the Constitutional Court decides to render a decision via a three-judge panel, an opinion would likely be issued within three or four months. Full consideration of the case by the court’s nine justices would take longer, Uprimny said. Either way, the court’s decision would be final. 

Meanwhile, the Colombian equivalent of the U.S. Attorney General’s office could be pursuing a criminal investigation against Burr for fraud and perjury…

VIRGINIA: State Board Allows Adoption Agencies To Discriminate Based On Sexual Orientation 

The Washington Post reports:

Board chairwoman Bela Sood noted before the decision that while society considers a mother and a father “a normal parenting unit,” scientific evidence doesn’t support some religious and conservative groups’ claims that they make better parents than same-sex couples do. “There are discussions and arguments that can be made on both sides,” she said before casting the lone dissenting vote. Virginia allows married couples and single people to adopt or become foster parents, but bars unmarried couples from doing so. Then-Gov. Timothy Kaine’s Democratic administration added the anti-discrimination provision in 2009, but it didn’t become a flashpoint for public debate until this year, when conservative legislators and groups complained.

Switzerland: Homophobe Politician Christophe Darbellay, Compares Gay Adoption With Legalizing Cocaine 

The Advocate reports:

Just because a number of gay people already parent children does not mean the law should be changed to facilitate adoption by couples, said a leading Swiss politician, who compared the issue to legalizing the popular drug cocaine. 

According to English-language Swiss news source The Local, Christophe Darbellay, leader of the center-right Christian Democrats, made his comments last week in response to a vote in the legal committee of the Council of States, the upper house of parliament, to change the law to make it easier for same-sex couples to adopt. Currently, single gays and lesbians can adopt children, but same-sex couples cannot adopt, and neither can a same-sex partner adopt the other’s biological child. 

Speaking to Le Temps newspaper, Darbellay said the growing reality of adoption by same-sex couples hardly justified a legal modification, where after all, the fact that many people use cocaine was no reason to legalize the drug.

“I wouldn’t suddenly legalize cocaine just because half a million people consume it,” he said. 

The Local reports that his comments have generated an uproar, with LGBT groups including the Association for Rainbow Families calling the remarks an “insulting” and ill-conceived comparison. 

Darbellay, 40, defended his statement on Monday. He told 20 Minuten, the German-language Swiss daily, that, “I simply wanted to say that just because something exists, does not mean that it has to be legalized.”

Despite the nod from the Council of States, the proposal to allow same-sex couples to adopt could face an uphill climb in the National Council, the lower house that previously rejected a petition for equal adoption rights for gay and lesbian couples, according to The Local. 

President Obama Mentions Gay Parents In National Adoption Month Proclamation

USA: Sen. Gillibrand Pushes Federal Adoption Bill

The NY Daily News reports:

Between New York’s same-sex marriage act and the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, the momentum is there for the needed reform, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said.
“This legislation would open thousands of new foster and adoptive homes to children ensuring they are raised in loving families,” Gillibrand said of her “Every Child Deserves a Family Act.”
New York, particularly New York City, has led the nation in allowing gay individuals, and now married gay couples, to become foster and adoptive parents.
But 11 states currently ban gay individuals and same-sex couples from adopting. Some conservative groups have fought the idea, arguing homosexual parents cannot provide a sound family.
“Both of my parents were, obviously, straight, but they abused me, made me feel like I was nothing,” said Arelis Keane, 25, a veteran of New York City’s foster care system, who was eventually adopted by her gay foster mother, Mary Keane.
“What could be so wrong with being with someone who makes me feel like my life matters?” Arelis said of her adoptive mom.
Mary Keane, now 63, said she went through something of a midlife crisis around age 50 and volunteered to be a foster parent.
“My kids are amazing,” said Keane, who has 12 foster kids, ages 22 to 40, adopted five of them and plans to adopt five more.
“It’s tough. They push you away, but you hold on. It’s like a rollercoaster ride. You can’t jump off, so you hold on, scream sometimes, and at the end say, ‘wow, that was a cool ride,’” she added. “My being gay was never an issue for them.”
Adoptive daughter Anni Keane, 28, couldn’t agree more.
“My birth family is very religious. Homosexuality is not at all accepted,” she said.
“I had to put my foot down and say this ‘homosexual’ person saved my life! They had to accept it. And if they have problems with it, well, at least they don’t say it to my face.”

USA: Adoption Rights By State