Lawyers for heirs to an Argentine media empire say police raided their homes amid suspicions they were victims of state-organised forced adoption.

The alleged raid took place a day after Felipe and Marcela Noble complied with a court order and gave blood samples.

They were adopted by Clarin media mogul Ernestina Herrera de Noble in 1976.

Campaigners allege that they are the offspring of political prisoners who gave birth while in custody during the country's period of military rule.

They believe the biological parents of the siblings were killed in prisons and their babies were then taken by the state.

Under the country's former regime, babies were often given to families considered loyal to the military. ...

The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo group, which seeks to find some 500 children born to prisoners or abducted along with their parents during the 1976-1983 dictatorship, has demanded that the DNA be collected at the data bank.

Last month, the Congress backed a proposal from the group, allowing the forced extraction of DNA from adults who may be the children of political prisoners - even when they do not want to know.

Labels: adoption, Argentina, forced adoption

posted by Eve at 8:29 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Adoption is arguably one of the Christian social ministries most central to evangelical theology. It has—to a greater extent than church positions on issues such as abortion and marriage—avoided becoming entangled in politics. Until now.

A foster dad's court challenge to a Florida law banning adoption by gays and lesbians has made headlines in recent months. So has a proposed same-sex marriage law in the District of Columbia that the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington warned could force it to cancel its social service programs, including adoption.

At the federal level, U.S. Rep. Pete Stark introduced a bill in October dubbed the "Every Child Deserves a Family Act." The California Democrat's proposal immediately drew the ire of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance (IRF). IRF claims the proposed law could run "roughshod over the convictions of many faith-based adoption agencies" and "require every state to forbid every agency that it licenses from preferring mother-father families over gay families or single parents." ...

On the other hand, voters in Arkansas last year passed a referendum banning unmarried couples from adopting or fostering children—a direct attack on gay parenting. Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat and active member of an Episcopal Church, voiced concern in November that the law hinders the state's ability to recruit qualified parents.

Labels: adoption, Arkansas, Catholic Church, Christianity Today, DC, Florida, gay parenting, Marriage, religious liberty, single parenting

posted by Eve at 5:33 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Catholic Portugal, traditionally one of Europe's most socially conservative countries, is expected to approve the legalization of gay marriage on Friday with a minimum of fuss.

With the governing Socialists and other left-wing parties enjoying a strong majority, the new law is likely to sail through the first reading debate and gain final approval before a visit by Pope Benedict XVI, due in Portugal in May. ...

According to poll conducted late last year by the Eurosondagem institute, while a strong majority (68.4 per cent) of Portuguese are opposed to adoptions by same-sex couples, they are more evenly divided when it comes to gay marriage with 49.5 per cent against, with 45.5 per cent in favour. ...

Deputies are also expected on Friday to vote two other bills submitted by the Green party, the Left Bloc and others which would grant gay and lesbian couples the right to adopt children.

If the gay marriage proposals do pass through parliament, they will the have to go through a parliamentary commission before coming back for the final approval.

Labels: adoption, Catholic Church, gay marriage, Portugal

posted by Eve at 2:57 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

This story beats love at first sight. Two people longed for each other, though they may have never met. They felt connected though they may never have touched. They'd even been given the same first names, though their families were strangers. By the time Meredith Grace Rittenhouse and Meredith Ellen Harrington were finally introduced, love was almost beside the point. Their bond was more mysterious, more fundamental. The Merediths are Chinese fraternal twins who were adopted by two different American families. The girls found each other almost six years ago, when they were 4, and haven't let go since.

Labels: adoption, China, siblings

posted by Eve at 1:12 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Whenever the subject here is adoption, readers point out that while the difficult cases make the news, most adoptive families are happy, and most adopted children are healthy and well adjusted.

Today is the final day of National Adoption Month, and a fitting time to take a look at the report “Adoption USA: A Chartbook Based on the 2007 National Survey of Adoptive Parents,” which was released recently by the Department of Health and Human Services. Based on interviews with parents of 91,642 adopted children, its authors describe the report as “the first-ever survey to provide representative information about the characteristics, adoption experiences, and well-being of adopted children and their families in the United States.”

Among its findings: the overwhelming majority of families whose children came to them through adoption are doing just fine.

Eighty-five percent of the children were described as being in “excellent or very good health,” the same as the general population. Eighty-one percent of the parents described their relationships with their child as “very warm and close,” while 42 percent said those relationships were “better than ever expected,” and only 15 percent said they were “more difficult” than they had expected.

In some categories, adopted children can be considered measurably better off than the average American child. They are, for instance, more likely to be read to daily when they are younger (68 percent compared with 48 percent), to be sung to or told stories every day (73 percent compared with 59 percent) or to participate in extracurricular activities as school-age children (85 percent compared with 81 percent).

That does not mean that there are not bumps and difficulties on the adoption path. ...

Similarly, while “only a small minority of adopted children have ever been diagnosed with disorders such as attachment disorder, depression, attention-deficit disorder or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or behavior or conduct disorder,” the report says, the percentage of each of these appears higher in the subset of adoptive children than in the general population.

Labels: adoption

posted by Eve at 10:49 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Labels: adoption

posted by Eve at 3:28 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

A French court on Tuesday allowed a lesbian woman to adopt a child with her partner after 11 years of legal battle, in what gay rights campaigners said was an unprecedented victory.

French law allows single people to adopt but not same-sex couples, a position that has been criticized by the European Court of Human Rights. ...

DOUBLE STANDARDS

Emmanuelle B. had been fighting to assert her right to adopt with her partner since 1998, when the authorities rejected her first application. She had taken her case to the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in her favor in January 2008.

The Court said France was applying double standards because on the one hand it allowed single people to adopt, while on the other hand it was denying that right to Emmanuelle B. on the basis that there was "no father figure" in her home.

Labels: adoption, Fathers, France, gay parenting, single parenting

posted by Eve at 12:12 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

... I read a paper the other day which makes an interesting contribution here. It’s from the American Sociological Review, February 2007 and is by Laura Hamilton, Simon Cheng Brian Powell. (I’ve linked you to the table of contents the article is not on-line. If anyone wants a copy, you can e-mail me.)

The authors wanted to examine the importance of biological ties for parental investment. They begin by offering several different theoretical approaches and consider what outcomes might be expected under each of these theories. Among those considered are those grounded in evolutionary theory, some of which suggest that people are more likely to promote the well-being of genetic kin than of non-genetic kin.

It’s hard to measure commitment of parents to their children directly–what is the unit of commitment? So the authors concentrate on indicators of parental investment. They look at four types of parent resources–economic, cultural, interactional and social capital. And they look at families with two biologically related parents, two adoptive parents, and various single-parent and step-parent families. (The latter are sometimes referred to as ”alternative families.) Perhaps most importantly, they control for factors like wealth of the family. (This is critical because adoptive families tend to be higher income families, and so if you didn’t control for this, the fact that they spend more money on kids won’t tell you much.)

The authors find that adoptive families show as much and sometimes greater levels of investment in their kids than do the two genetically-related parent families. I am not going to say that this makes them better families (although do recall that the investments measured are not merely financial ones) but it certainly undermines the contention that in the absence of biological ties, parents invest less in their kids.

It is possible that this investment by adoptive families is the result of efforts to compensate for a social context that favors parents who are biologically related. In other words, it’s precisely because people think biologically related parents are better that adoptive parents put in extra effort. That might have interesting implications which I don’t think are discussed in this study.

Labels: adoption, Julie Shapiro, parenting

posted by Eve at 7:56 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...There are a number of different tests you might use to determine who the parents of a child are. Each has strengths and weaknesses, which are discussed elsewhere on the blog. Part of the challenge is that the question arises in so many different situations. ART in particular gives us a whole range of new complications, but there are plenty even without that. ...

Now if you go back over the blog, I think you’ll find instances in which every one of these tests has been deployed. And of course, you can mix and match them. Some people have multiple factors going for them–they intend to have children, they are genetically related to children they give birth to and they act as the children’s parents. Those tend to be easy cases.

The hard cases come when you have competing contestants, or where one person wants to cut another out, as in the new Montana case. One person claims one basis for parenthood, and someone else claims a different one. Or there are cases when no one wants to claim parenthood and we need to find someone. (Not long ago I wrote about a case where a man who had functioned as a father for 13 years sought to sever his relationship with the child by asserting that it turned out he lacked the genetic connection something he apparently knew all along, but never mind that.) How to decide these?

Cases like this seem to me to suggest we have some sort of hierarchy. So, for example, to reach the result the court did in the case I just mentioned (he’s still the father) it had to say that function (and the relationships constructed based on that function) trump biology (by which test he was not the father.) Again, you can look back and find many instances in which one test seems to overcome another.

And I guess this is my present question. Is there some hierarchy and if so, what is it? Actually, I suppose I really mean should there be a hierarchy and if so, what should it be? After all, I’m more concerned with what the law ought to be than with what it is in any particular place (it varies so very widely.)

Labels: adoption, Artificial Reproductive Technology, de facto parenting, donor conception, Julie Shapiro, parenting

posted by Eve at 4:41 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

I DIDN'T plan on seeing my birth mother again. I had already had the dramatic face-to-face reunion. I knew where she lived, understood the broad strokes of her family history, the details of my birth and the secrets she kept from her other children, including my existence. Yet after a couple of years of clandestine contact, she decided our relationship could not work, we parted ways, and in the eight years since I have done my best to accept her choice. ...

Our airport meeting was strained by awkward pauses and unasked questions. Still, I thought there were signs our relationship would work. She took me to her house nearby, introduced me to her husband while her children were away and told me family stories. When I left, she said she would write a letter soon. I had faith we would figure it out.

It took six weeks for that letter to arrive, during which I screamed, cried and swore her off. I had a thousand conversations with her in my mind about the past. By the time I got her kind note about how great I had turned out, I was way ahead of her. Real time was not fast enough to keep up with all I had lost.

Her subsequent letters came at slower intervals: three, then six, then nine months apart. She wrote about pedestrian matters like cleaning her basement and sports rivalries. I described the cherry blossoms in Prospect Park, interspersed with questions she did not want to answer.

Inevitably, our relationship crumbled, piece by unspoken piece. The last letter I got was months after my daughter was born, when she sent an outfit with the kind of obligatory card of congratulations one might receive from a great-aunt. Its last two lines read: "My husband does not think it is good for our family to tell our children about you. Know that I pray for you and your daughter every day."

I was furious. But as I tried to make sense of her choice to walk away again, I knew, holding my own infant daughter, about the fierce love and fear that molds mothers. I knew she loved her children, wanted to protect them from the facts of her life before they were born: how as a young woman she had gotten pregnant by a man twice her age, how her parents had arranged for her to go to another city, where she signed the papers for my adoption hours after labor, and then returned home, leaving me when I was 5 days old.

How was she to tell them that after I was born she erased that part of herself completely? As a mother I understood this struggle even as it pained me. She had only told one other person, her husband, in the 40 years since it happened.

Yet as my finger hovered over the Facebook search button that night, I fantasized that this history could be overcome. I thought if only she were to see my profile, my passion for hula-hooping, my joy in eating coffee fudge ice cream every Friday afternoon with my daughter -- her granddaughter -- she might change her mind.

Labels: adoption, motherhood

posted by Eve at 3:59 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

The push is on to bring happy endings to many more African-American orphans.

They make up more than 30 percent of the children in foster care.

As CBS 2's Derrick Blakley reports, a new ad campaign urges black parents to open their hearts.

Of the 510,000 in foster care, 32 percent are African-American, even though African Americans only make up 15 per cent of all U.S. kids.

The same study also shows that black kids in foster care, especially older ones, are less likely than white kids to be adopted.

"A lot of the older teenagers give up on that hope of finding a forever family or a permanent home," Kirsten Ahlberg, of the Childrens Home and Aid Society, said.

To attack that imbalance, a nationwide TV campaign debuts this fall encouraging African Americans to adopt. Even a lack of bar-b-q skills or inability to pack a lunch doesn't mean you can't adopt.

And being a single parent is no barrier, either.

Labels: adoption, race, single parenting

posted by Eve at 4:33 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

A study to be published by Columbia University will examine how a state’s percentage of Catholic residents affects its opinion of gay marriage.

A similar survey by Mark Silk of the blog Spiritual Politics suggests that in issues related to marriage, adoption and civil unions, a conservative majority would win. However, when presented with issues concerning hate crimes, health benefits and job protection, research shows Catholics typically sympathize with civil rights causes despite guidelines passed down from Vatican City.

Labels: adoption, Catholic Church, civil unions, gay marriage, homosexuality, religion

posted by Eve at 10:56 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Conservative leader David Cameron has been accused of contributing to the closure of Roman Catholic adoption agencies in order to win homosexual voters.

In 2007 Mr Cameron voted for new ‘gay rights’ laws forcing adoption groups to consider gay couples as potential adopters without any protection for religious agencies.

Newspaper columnist Gerald Warner says the Conservative leader had “calculated that it was worthwhile insulting Catholics (8 per cent of the electorate) to please homosexuals (0.8 per cent) because he believed (correctly) that the former do not constitute a bloc vote and imagined (incorrectly) that the latter do”.

The new laws have now seen most of these agencies – known for their work with ‘hard to place’ children – either cut ties with the Roman Catholic Church or drop out of adoption work.

Labels: adoption, Catholic Church, discrimination law, religious liberty, United Kingdom

posted by Imapp Staff at 7:11 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Wendy Duren thought she did everything right.

She broke off relationships with men who didn't want to settle down. She refused to get pregnant out of wedlock. She prayed for a child.

Duren's yearning for motherhood was so palpable that her former fiancé once offered to father a child with her. But he warned her that he wasn't ready for marriage.

"I get bored in relationships after a couple of years," he told her, she recalls.

Those events could have caused some women to give up their dreams of motherhood. But Duren, a pharmaceutical saleswoman, didn't need a man to be a mom. At 37 years old, she decided to adopt. ...

Marriage and motherhood -- it's the dream that begins in childhood for many women. Yet more African-American women are deciding to adopt instead of waiting for a husband, says Mardie Caldwell, founder of Lifetime Adoption, an adoption referral and support group in Penn Valley, California.

"We're seeing more and more single African-American women who are not finding men," Caldwell says. "There's a lack of qualified black men to get into relationships with."

The numbers are grim. According to the 2006 U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, 45 percent of African-American women have never been married, compared with 23 percent of white women.

Yet the decision to adopt isn't just driven by the paucity of eligible African-American men, others say.

Toni Oliver, founder and CEO of Roots Adoption Agency in Atlanta, Georgia, says her agency sees more single African-American women adopting because of infertility issues. ...

Some single African-American women deal with another challenge: criticism for bringing another African-American child into a single-parent household.

Kaydra Fleming, a 37-year-old social worker in Arlington, Texas, is the mother of Zoey, an adopted eight-month-old girl whose biological mother was young and poor.

"Zoey was going to be born to a single black mother anyway," Fleming says. "At least she's being raised by a single black parent who was ready financially and emotionally to take care of her."

Yet there are some single African-American women who are not emotionally ready to adopt an African-American child who is too dark, some adoption agency officials say.

Fair-skinned or biracial children stand a better chance of being adopted by single black women than darker-skinned children, some adoption officials say.

"They'll say, 'I want a baby to look like a Snickers bar, not dark chocolate,' " Caldwell, founder of Lifetime Adoption, says about some prospective parents.

"I had a family who turned a baby down because it was too dark," she says. "They said the baby wouldn't look good in family photographs."

Labels: adoption, motherhood, parenting, race, single parenting

posted by Eve at 9:40 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

San Francisco didn't cross into constitutionally forbidden territory of government hostility to religion when the Board of Supervisors denounced a Vatican order to Catholic Charities not to place adoptive children with same-sex couples, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The 2006 resolution condemned the Vatican's "hateful and discriminatory rhetoric" and urged local church officials to defy the order by Cardinal William Levada. The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights sued, contending the city was expressing hostility toward Catholicism in violation of the Constitution.

A federal judge threw out the suit, a decision that the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld Wednesday. It said the supervisors had acted for a legal secular purpose - to protect gay and lesbian couples from discrimination - and not to express the city's disapproval of Catholicism.

"The board's focus was on same-sex couples, not Catholics," Judge Richard Paez said in the 3-0 ruling. Promoting equal treatment for those couples in adoptions isn't anti-religious, he said, "regardless of whether the Catholic Church may be opposed to it as a religious tenet."

Judge Marsha Berzon, in a separate opinion, said the resolution was close to the constitutional boundary and might have been invalid if it contained binding regulations or was part of a "pervasive public campaign" against the Catholic Church. ...

In response, Catholic Charities of San Francisco stopped placing children for adoption, the same step it has taken in Massachusetts and other areas with similar nondiscrimination policies, said Brian Rooney, a lawyer at the Thomas More Law Center, which sued San Francisco on behalf of the Catholic League.

Labels: adoption, California, Catholic Church, religion

posted by Eve at 7:54 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

I found out the ruling was handed down on Tuesday when a colleague friend of mine logged onto SFGate and said, on a shuddery exhale, "Huh - so they didn't divorce me. Am I supposed to be grateful?" As the day passed, I learned that her elementary-school-aged son had been furious for weeks that the state could even consider taking such a violating step against his moms. Then I found out from another professional friend that her three kids (also all young elementary-school aged children) asked tearfully in the car, "Are we still married?"

Labels: adoption, children, gay marriage, Proposition 8

posted by Eve at 1:43 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Renee Siegfort broke the news to her three teenagers on Mother's Day last year: She was pregnant.

She really wanted the baby. Her kids did, too. Her on-again, off-again boyfriend of three years did not.

"I talked to God a lot, asking what does this mean. What am I supposed to do?" she recalls. She was working long hours as an office manager at a chiropractic firm and just making ends meet. She would need to take on a new expense: child care.

"We live simply," says Renee, 36, looking around the living room of her three-bedroom town home. "There wasn't much more we could simplify in our lives." As much as she wanted the baby, she says, "I didn't want to hurt my children."

So after giving birth Dec. 30, she nursed Josephine Olivia Renee for six days. She then did something she would not have imagined nine months earlier: She gave her child to another family. ...

As parents struggle to raise children in a weak economy, a half-dozen large adoption agencies are reporting that more women with unplanned pregnancies are considering placing their babies for adoption rather than keeping them.

Many of these women are in their 20s and already have at least one child, says Joan Jaeger of The Cradle, the Chicago-area agency that placed Joie. She says 30% more women are inquiring about placing a child for adoption than a year ago.

"The economy has made them take a second look at adoption," says Scott Mars of American Adoptions, a private agency in Overland Park, Kan. In the past year, he's seen a 10% to 12% increase in women inquiring about placing a child for adoption and a 7% to 10% increase in actual placements, as strong demand for healthy infants continues to outstrip the supply. ...

The bond between the two families reflects a trend toward openness in adoption. In up to 90% of domestic infant adoptions, Pertman says, adoptive parents maintain some contact with birth parents.

Labels: adoption, economics

posted by Eve at 4:17 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

A couple's sexual orientation determines whether or not they prefer to adopt a boy or a girl. Gay men are more likely to have a gender preference for their adopted child whereas heterosexual men are the least likely. What's more, couples in heterosexual relationships are more likely to prefer girls than people in same-gender relationships, according to Dr. Abbie Goldberg from Clark University in the US. ...

Among those who expressed a preference, gay men were the most likely to have a preference and heterosexual men were the least likely. Couples in heterosexual relationships were less likely to prefer boys than couples in same-gender relationships.

The study participants provided a range of reasons for their preferences for girls. The most common reason among heterosexual women was their inexplicable desire for a daughter, whereas heterosexual men most frequently listed a combination of their inexplicable desire to have a girl, their ideas about father-daughter relationships and their perceived characteristics of girls. Men felt girls would be easier to bring up, and more interesting and complex than boys, and less physically challenging than boys. Lesbians tended to focus on their perceived inability to socialize a child of the opposite gender, and gay men most frequently cited concerns about boys being more likely to encounter harassment than girls.

The most common reason for preferring boys among heterosexual women was an inexplicable desire for a son, whereas heterosexual men's preference for a son reflected patriarchal norms, including keeping the family name going and gender identity considerations i.e. their own masculine interests. When explaining their preference for a boy, lesbians most frequently mentioned their own atypical gender identities, including the fact that their own interests tended to be more masculine and tomboyish, whereas gay men most often highlighted that they felt more confident about their ability to raise and socialize boys.

Labels: adoption, gay/straight differences, gender

posted by Eve at 4:31 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Four Ohio state legislators who represent residents of Butler County, Ohio have encouraged Butler County’s three commissioners to reinstate an adoption policy that gave preference to intact married families when placing children for adoption.

Butler County Commissioners Donald Dixon, Greg Jolivette and Chuck Furman suspended the policy in early March after it came under attack by the local chapter of the ACLU and homosexual activist organizations. The commissioners asked for a legal review by the county prosecuting attorney, Robin Piper.

The subject policy, which had been placed in effect by retiring Butler County Children Services Director Mike Fox, simply stated that the county’s preferences in the adoption matching process were, in order of preference: (1) relatives of the child, or someone who the birth mother designates as a potential adoptive parent for her child; (2) married couples; (3) foster parents; (4) other adoptive parents.

Labels: adoption, Ohio

posted by Imapp Staff at 4:55 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Married lesbian couples in New York City can now be listed as parents on birth certificates as soon as their children are born.

Before, the women would have to go through an adoption process to be listed as the official parents. ...

The city says married male couples still will need to adopt their children in order to be officially declared their parents.

Labels: adoption, gay marriage, gender differences, New York

posted by Eve at 9:34 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

The results of an official investigation into the effects of gay adoption in Scotland will not be made public, the Scottish Government has said.

Laws allowing same-sex couples to adopt were passed in 2006 and the Scottish Government now wants to allow gay fostering.

Ministers instigated an investigation into the effects of gay adoption on children last month.

It has now emerged that the results will not be published, sparking concerns that they may contain findings which would alarm the public.

The Scottish Government claims the findings are for ‘in-house’ use and therefore do not need to be disclosed. ...

The issue of gay adoption returned to the fore last month after Edinburgh City Council told a couple who protested against their grandchildren being adopted by two gay men that they would not see the children again unless they dropped their opposition.

Labels: adoption, United Kingdom

posted by Imapp Staff at 4:20 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...To that mix, here's one that's equally controversial: Is it time for federal and state governments to consider legal rules and boundaries for the fertility industry? A new research-based report by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, "Old Lessons for a New World," suggests that the answer may finally be "yes."

The report points out that adoption and assisted reproductive technology have much in common as "nontraditional" means of forming families, and that adoption's far-longer history of research, experience and evidence-informed policies therefore could help to improve practices in the world of assisted reproduction.

The report's recommendations include such applicable adoption issues as the problematic effects of secrecy, the need for a child-centered focus and the impact of market forces. Most pointedly, the Donaldson Institute suggests that the legal and regulatory framework for adoption provides a model that assisted reproductive technology could utilize. Thoughtful guidelines on a broad range of activities in assisted reproductive technology - how many embryos should be implanted, how much egg donors should be paid, etc. - already have been promulgated, and there is every reason to believe most clinics try to adhere to these identified "best practices." ...

The organizations working to promote good practices deserve credit for their efforts and their successes. But their guidelines are not mandatory, and as the evidence before our eyes clearly shows, not everyone in any industry - including adoption - follows voluntary standards.

Labels: adoption, donor conception, fertility treatment

posted by Imapp Staff at 12:54 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...As I am a straight, married woman, and my husband is a straight, married man, it never occurred to either of us that--after the volumes of paperwork we had to complete as a couple, the copies of marriage certificates we had to supply, and the hours and hours of Partnerships in Parenting classes we had to complete as a couple--we would yet have to again affirm our heterosexuality so that we could have the rights to adopt our foster children as our own.

Page 5, section G. of our adoptive home application reads (with check boxes for Yes and No):

Section 63.042(3), F.S. states that "no person eligible to adopt under this statute may adopt if that person is a homosexual."

I am a homosexual. Yes No

Husband (Man)

Wife (Woman)

I am a bisexual. Yes No

Husband (Man)

Wife (Woman)

Labels: adoption

posted by Eve at 2:43 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

For 14 years, since the D.C. Court of Appeals affirmed that gay adoptions are legal in the In re M.M.D. case, the law's scope has slowly expanded as hundreds of new cases have been filed. The District is now, through new legislation, steadfastly attempting, once and for all, to tie up all the loose ends associated with same-sex-couple adoptions.

Included in the text of the legislation is a line "to provide that a child born to parents in a domestic partnership is born in wedlock." And with that, the purpose of this legislation becomes clear: The D.C. Council is establishing a disposition favoring a gay
marriage policy in the foreseeable future, if not directly in the here and now.

Labels: adoption, gay marriage

posted by Imapp Staff at 6:40 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

The state Supreme Court has ruled that a lower court judge erred in granting a lesbian joint custody of her former partner's adopted daughter. ...

The Supreme Court held that, under Delaware law, a person who is considered a 'de facto' parent of a child does not have the same rights as a legal parent, and thus is not entitled to custody.

Labels: adoption, de facto parenting

posted by Eve at 11:36 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT