Joint Gay Adoptions

Joint Gay Adoption

On the Internet, if you Google the phrase "children are the future" and 439 million hits appear. Children's charity commercials bombard us with images of starving children with flies in their noses and on their eyes. From world health organizations and children's aid foundations to images of children scrawling hateful messages on missiles bound for Lebanon, our culture is engrossed with the plight of children around the world. There is a conviction at the core America's ethics: the sacredness of childhood. The idea of rescuing blighted children is a noble one, though Americans seem to do a poor job of it at home. Children are born into poverty, drug-addiction, unwanted homes and abusive situations. The State intervenes on behalf of some of these children, and they are placed in foster care and sometimes even up for adoption. Child Welfare Agencies are bursting at the seams, and with the popularity of international adoption, the system is running low on resources. Although the rhetoric seems to be to seek "what's in the child's best interest," (Johnson, R) thousands of the children in the system could have stable happy homes - except that a large part of the solution is championed as immoral. Thousands of children are denied homes with stable, nurturing households because homosexual couples are the prospective adoptive parents. There is a battle to define "the moral family" in the American consciousness, and homosexuality is at its core. One simple fact is clear. Prohibiting homosexual couples from jointly adopting children in an overrun, truncated system simply prevents the Adoption System from using available resources to fulfill their goal of placing parentless children in secure, appropriate homes, and therefore is immoral according to our own social standards.

Most people agree that children should be given the best possible chance for a normal healthy family life. This is the very same "ideal" touted by George Bush in when asked why he is against homosexuals adopting children. (Musbach) If we lived in this ideal world, Adoption would not even be necessary. However, we do not live in this ideal world, and children in The System do not have a family at all, let alone a normal and healthy one. Statistics show that despite any arguments against it, there is a critical shortage of "ideal," married, heterosexual adoptive or foster couples. There are an estimated 120,000 adoptable children currently in the United States. Only five out of twelve of these children are actually adopted. Seventy Thousand children remain parentless. (Stone) The fact also is that the longer a child is in the adoptive system, the less likely they are to be adopted. Therefore, the hope of finding a safe, permanent home will dwindle for 70,000 children in the past year. The fact is that homosexual couples already do adopt children, but only one person in the couple is a legal guardian, making it a single-family home in Adoption Agencies eyes. Because agencies prefer two-parent households, and homosexual households cannot be designated as such; homosexuals do have the option of applying to adoption agencies under the less preferred, single-family status, and therefore passed over. If a homosexual couple could be defined as stable and committed within the adoption industry, they would be placed in the front lines as prospective parents, alleviating some of the pressure on the overrun adoption system, and, in the end, giving children a home. The prohibition of joint adoption by homosexual parents actually nullifies that child's chance at a good family life by denying that that family can and does exist, destabilizing the family structure. By expanding, the definition of a two-parent household to include devoted and established homosexual families would actually help to fill a moral gap in our country. This would give children a chance for a happy, normal family life.

The fact is that homosexuals have been having and adopting children for a long time, just not as openly as they are attempting to now. Thirty-three percent of lesbians and twenty-two percent of gay men in the US currently have dependents under the age of eighteen living in their homes, many of them biological. (Johnson, R) Some argue that allowing homosexuals to adopt children openly and jointly is

experimenting with children in order to test the validity of a social movement, which is, by definition, incorrect. A social movement is defined as individuals, groups and organizations united by a common goal. (Pearson) Neither homosexuality itself or is having children can be defined as social movements. Allowing joint homosexual-parent adoption is a social movement, although it can hardly be called an experiment, since homosexuals' raising their own children is common, both contemporarily and historically. Moreover, while our laws reflect accepted social standards, and the Judeo Christian structure arguably has little place for homosexuality in the home, our laws evolve to reflect social change. Fifty years ago, homosexuality was considered a mental illness. Some argue that the decision to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness is only an attempt to validate popular culture. Judeo-Christian law allows slavery, and until about one hundred years ago, this country considered male slaves and their descendants were considered three fifths of a person, and slave women were not considered at all. Until the nineteen sixties, African Americans still had little voting power. One could argue that the popular culture of the nineteen sixties changed the status quo, and laws, for the evolution and betterment of our society as a whole. The immoral institution allowing the subjugation of an entire people has been abolished in this county. The immorality of leaving more children parentless and in unstable environments can and should be changed.

By forcing homosexuals to adopt as single parents, we are not only leaving more children in the system, but we are legally destabilizing and penalizing children who have found long-standing, loving homes with their homosexual parents more than we are actually preventing homosexuals from adopting children. The single-parent adoption status in a two-parent household can create difficulties in registering children for school, college or youth programs. The single parent status of the adopter may not reflect the entire household income, making it more difficult for children in these homes to attain the best quality healthcare or insurance. Should the unthinkable occur, the single-parent status may also lead to custodial and inheritance issues. Should the primary parent become injured or pass away, the child's unofficial parent has no legal claim to the child, and the child has

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