The American Academy of Pediatrics has endorsed gay couples being allowed to adopt children. The policy focuses on gay partners where one member is already the legal guardian of children,…
The American Academy of Pediatrics has endorsed gay couples being allowed to adopt children. The policy focuses on gay partners where one member is already the legal guardian of children, but could be extended to gay partners adopting children together.
The AAP cites a large body of research showing no negative outcomes from such families, and notes quite a number of advantages to children in allowing such adoption. These include the ability to get insurance coverage from either partner, the ability of either partner to authorize medical care, and the added family stability that such arrangements would encourage.
“Denying legal parent status through adoption … prevents these children from enjoying the psychologic and legal security that comes from having two willing, capable and loving parents,” the policy says.
Similar positions are held by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the American Psychological Association.
Frankly, it’s about time. Only half the states allow such adoptions at present, while other states, such as Florida, ban any adoption by gays.
While, ideally, there might be some sort of undefined benefit from kids (of either gender) having role models of both genders, huge numbers of families are far from ideal in a variety of ways, yet nobody seriously proposes taking kids out of such settings except in the most extreme situations. Single parent families, families with hostile relationships within them, families where the parents are never around — those fall short of the ideal, too. But they’re all perfectly legal.
If a gay or lesbian couple is committed to each other and the non-parental partner wants to be included in guardianship of the kids involved, more power to him or her for wanting to step up to that responsibility.
(Of course, I also think gay marriage should be legal, so you can write me off as a cockeyed liberal commie heathen or something.)