In the wake of Arkansas's ban on gay foster and adoptive parenting and Miami-Dade's ruling against Florida's similar ban, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) launches a new adoption "awareness" campaign to increase opportunities for children who need them to find permanent homes by expanding opportunities for glbt people to foster and adopt.
As an adoptive mom who puts myself into the public view as such, I am sometimes approached by would-be adoptive parents (not necessarily queer ones) who want to know how to vet an adoption agency's ethics. One tip I offer is to find out how open the agency is to working with queer prospective parents. Whether you are a single lesbian or a heterosexual couple legally married for ten years, it's just a good sign when an adoption agency welcomes both sorts of parents equally.
Why?
Because it's an indication that the agency is more concerned about finding a family for babies than it is to procuring babies for a certain type of "customer." Opening adoption to any and all qualified parents is a child-centered attitude towards adoption and that is the only ethical attitude, in my opinion. For me, opening adoption to glbt parents is not about anyone's right to parent. It is about every child's right to a family.
Ethica, an organization dedicated to increasing ethics in child placements agrees with me and has a statement to that effect on its website. The jury has been in on this for a while in fact, numerous professional organizations have endorsed glbt parenting for years.
The HRC has some helpful documents at their site including guidelines to adoption agencies for making themselves more welcoming to glbt parents, a short list of agencies officially participating in the campaign (not an exhaustive list of glbt-friendly agencies), letters of support for the campaign from interested organizations and other great tools.
Of course nothing can be done for the children deprived of permanent families by draconian laws like the one recently passed in Arkansas. But the more we advocate for children who need homes, the more the ethical bankruptcy of such laws will become apparent.
Image: Donita Jacobson Photography
