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NEWS and REPORTS
New Report Analyses Cost of Prohibiting Adoption
Families Lobby Legislators to Expand Pool of Adoptive Families read
Adoption Coalition Calls on Legislators to Put Well-Being of Children Ahead of Personal Prejudice 4/8/06 read
Study: Same-Sex Parents Raise Well-Adjusted Kids
By: Linda Little, WebMD Medical News (read)
State Should Quit Denying Children Loving Homes
By ADAM PERTMAN, Executive Director
Published: Feb 13, 2006
It is an intuitive truth and an explicit goal of our nation's laws and practices: Every child deserves to live in a permanent, loving home. read
COALITION FOR FAIR ADOPTION ANNOUNCES LAUNCH
Celebrates National Adoption Day Around the State 11/19/04
(Tampa, FL) Child welfare, social justice and faith organizations today announced the launch of the Coalition for Fair Adoption, a coordinated effort to repeal Florida’s anti-gay adoption ban—the only such law in the country. The new coalition represents 20 local, state, and national organizations working together to educate the public and the legislature about the harmful affect this law has on children.(more)
Florida Adoption Ban Must Be Repealed
Equality Florida calls on state to end 26 years of discrimination
Florida's anti-ga
y adoption ban is a national disgrace, a daily insult to gay Floridians, and a harm to the thousands of children whose prospects for adoption are threatened because bigotry eliminates qualified parents. (take action!)
Study: Teens adjust well with gay parents
PlanetOut Network Monday, November 15, 2004
Teenagers raised by two moms develop as well as teens raised by opposite-sex parents, according to a groundbreaking new study published in the journal Child Development. (more)
Anita Bryant Lives: Florida's Continuing Assault on Gay Adoption
By JOANNE MARINER, Monday, Feb. 02, 2004
Remember Anita Bryant, the Miss America runner-up turned orange juice tout turned anti-gay campaigner? Though she long ago faded from public view, her legacy survives in Florida. (more)
New Hampshire Formally Repeals Gay Adoption Ban
Tuesday, May 4th 1999 datalounge.com
CONCORD, N.H. -- New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen signed a law Monday repealing the state's 12-year-old law banning gay couples from adopting and being foster parents. Florida is now the only state in the country with a similar legislative ban in place.
The New Hampshire Senate voted last month 18-6 to erase both bans. The House voted 226-130 to allow adoptions and 233-123 to allow foster parents. The repeal takes effect July 2.
"New Hampshire will now be able to judge foster and adoptive families based on their fitness, without making prejudicial assumptions," said Gov. Shaheen. "For too long, too many qualified families have been denied the opportunity to provide a child in need with a healthy, loving environment. This law will allow more children to be with supportive and nurturing families."
Durham Democrat Sen. Katherine Wheeler, a sponsor of the repeal, said lifting the ban will immediately benefit needy children in the state. "Because of this ban, children have been forced to remain in group homes," she said, adding she was "horrified and ashamed" when New Hampshire imposed the ban in 1987. "Being a good parent does not require being heterosexual," she said.
"Being a good parent does not require being heterosexual."
Though New Hampshire and Florida were the only states with legislative prohibitions against lesbian and gay adoptions and foster home eligibility, at least two other states -- Arkansas and Utah -- use state agency rules to prevent lesbian and gay heads of household from adopting.
A bill pending in the Texas Legislature would prohibit gay men and women from adopting children in the custody of the state's Child Protective Services agency. A similar bill is pending in Oklahoma.
But Jack Lightfoot, executive director of the non-profit Child and Family Services, said the state of New Hampshire is no longer in the business of imposing unnecessary barriers to finding loving homes for needy children. The message to families -- straight or gay -- is simple, he said: "We want you. We need you."
-- C. Barillas, Editor
Psychosocial Adjustment, School Outcomes,
and Romantic Relationships of Adolescents
With Same-Sex Parents,
Jennifer L. Wainright,
University of Virginia;
Stephen T. Russell,
University of California, Davis; and
Charlotte J. Patterson,
University of Virginia (download/view pdf)
Regret plagues King after Schiavo vote
The Senate president says he bowed to pressure to pass a
law that would reinsert Terri Schiavo's feeding tube.
By ADAM C. SMITH, Times Political Editor,
Published February 10, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - The phone calls and e-mails
flooded into state Senate offices so fast and furious last
year they crashed the phone and computer systems.
Their message: Save Terri Schiavo.
(download/view pdf)
Children's Voice Article, January 2002 Gay Adoption
by Kristen Kreisher
Until the 1950s and '60s, adoption was predominately used to place healthy white babies in the homes of middle class, married couples. In the decades since, adoption practices have changed dramatically, and adoption has become a way for increasingly diverse populations to form families. (download/view pdf)
ADOPTION BY LESBIANS AND GAYS: A NATIONAL SURVEY OF ADOPTION AGENCY POLICIES, PRACTICES, AND ATTITUDES
Funded by the Rainbow Endowment, David M. Brodzinsky, Ph.D. and the Staff of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. David M. Brodzinsky is Associate Professor of Clinical and Developmental Psychology at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He also is on the Board of Directors of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. (download/view pdf)
New Position Statement Adopted by the American Psychiatric Association (APA)
Adoption and Co-Parenting of Children by Same-Sex Couples, December 2002
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American Psychiatric Association Board of Trustees and Assembly in
November approved a position statement on Adoption and Co-Parenting of Children by Same-Sex
Couples. The statement was drafted and proposed by the APA’s Committee on Gay, Lesbian, and
Bisexual Issues and supported by APA’s Council on Minority Health and Health Disparities. (download/view pdf)
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