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Gay Adoption - A Pro Stance

In the late 1970s, being homosexual was viewed as part of the sub-culture. Our country was still reeling from the turbulent times of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, which had death grips on the United States from the late 1950s up until the early 70s.  Many groups were classified during this time period as being part of the sub-culture for their variant behaviors in pursuing their rights as Americans. Groups that pursued violence as a means to get rights, such as the Black Panthers, and groups that promoted free love, like the hippies and various commune movements, were all classified as public enemy number one by the United States government.

By the late 1970s, the sub-culture identity had died down and America was looking to the future and to move forward. These groups began to die away as our civil liberties, civil rights, and our other various freedoms increased in the United States. However, homosexuality was still being viewed as a sub-culture and was not greatly benefited by the civil rights movements. Yes, America became freer and yes, minorities made major headway and gained many new and exciting rights and further integrated into American society, but homosexuals were left behind.

Now flash forward to the 1990s and the years in the new millennium. The increase of homosexuals coming out of the closet and fighting for their rights is at its pinnacle. Instead of being written off as part of the sub-culture, homosexuals and the movement for greater freedoms and rights for homosexuals cannot be ignored. That is where the movement on homosexuality stands today. Homosexual interest groups, partners, and individuals are fighting to defeat stereotypes (like all gay men have HIV/AIDS), and many more are fighting what some call unfair court rulings and laws that prevent same sex couples from marrying and/or adopting. Let’s look at the issue of adoption.

In the United States, many prospective parents seek to adopt healthy infants, often of an ethnic background similar to their own. In the United States, a relatively small percentage of healthy, Caucasian infants are placed up for adoption and most Caucasian infants available for adoption are placed through adoption agencies and independent or private adoptions. African-American, Hispanic, and mixed-race infants are two to three times more likely to be available for adoption both through public and private adoption agencies. This does not include the growing numbers of children being put up for adoption from international sources.

Bi-racial male homosexual couples, closely followed by Caucasian male homosexual couples, are the most common couples within the gay and lesbian community that seek to adopt. Typically, they have no preference as to the ethnicity of the child. For straight (and predominately Caucasian) couples seeking to adopt, ethnicity plays a large role. Some couples prefer to stay on waiting lists for multiple months, even years, to get a child of the same ethnic makeup as themselves, and are even willing to go outside of the United States and ignore the roughly 56,000 children up for adoption within the United States today (many of whom are African-American, Hispanic, or mixed-race children).

The fact of the mater is that children in this country need to be adopted and taken into good homes. Many homosexual couples are available to love and provide for children in need. However, certain state laws as well as large amounts of prejudice and bigotry prevent gay and lesbian couples from adopting.
Many make the argument that same sex parents should not be allowed to raise adoptive children because the child/children have emotional issues that are deep seeded and feel very rejected and detached from society because they were given up or left behind by their biological parents. They argue that these feelings are further added to when the children are thrown into a home that is not nuclear, or that has a different ethnic makeup than that of the child. The Multiethnic Placement Act, passed by Congress in 1994, made it illegal for US states to hold up adoptions solely in order to match racial or ethnic background of the child. Though this helps to put some resolution to this argument, the argument still exists and is often used as an underlying factor to find other reasons to prevent children from being placed in homosexual parenting situations.

I feel that preventing adoption based on trans-ethnic parenting to be not only sad, but outrageous. I would like to know who would be better to understand and help someone cope with being detached from society than a homosexual person. Homosexuality in America is still viewed as wrong, looked down upon, called sinful, and considered in some circles to be of or in the sub-culture. Homosexuals typically, though not always, have had bad relations with their parents at some point in their lives, and have the same feelings of rejection and unwantedness that their adoptive children may be feeling.

Some would also further argue that children that are adopted by homosexuals are being converted into being gay. This, I feel, is misleading and false.  Homosexuality is a part of life for someone who is gay. Persons that are gay, in my opinion, are born that way. Being gay is not a choice. Scientists, when looking at other animals, have found homosexuality in dogs, cats, chimps, and other animals.  How do these animals have a choice to be gay? This is the classical argument purely over nurture versus nature, and some still say that nurture brings a person to be gay. Again, I disagree and feel that a child raised by homosexual parents is likely to, gay or straight, turn out to be a person that will be an active and productive member in society.

Couples seeking to adopt go through stringent background checks, visits by social workers, and in some cases, random drug tests, lie detector tests and other much more invasive procedures. If a couple is willing to do this, why should they not be allowed to adopt? Instead, we are resigned to allowing a child to be locked away in a foster home, possibly being abused by neglectful foster parents or older children in the system, and having a greater chance to commit crime, drop out of school, and not become a productive member of society because there were people willing to adopt them, but they were not allowed to because they were gay. This is the wrong argument, in my opinion.

Children in the United States are our future. Why shouldn’t we be giving them every possible advantage to grow, prosper and succeed in life? Instead of adopting outside the borders of the United States, shouldn’t want-to-be parents be searching within the United States? Shouldn’t parents be regarded as two people willing to devote their lives physically, mentally, economically, and emotionally to raise, nurture, and help the child or children in their care to succeed? If homosexual couples are willing to bring these attributes and attitudes toward childrearing to the table as well as take on children from diverse backgrounds, why should they be prohibited from adopting?