Twelve-year-old Michael Gulliford-Green just wanted lawmakers in the state of Florida, where he now lives, to know about his family.
That's why, on March 9, he got up early; put on a striped green shirt and docker pants; and flew to the capitol in Tallahassee. There, he read a letter to legislators about his two dads, Buddy Gulliford and Jim Green.
Gulliford-Green's appearance was a passionate plea for the lawmakers to overturn the state law that forbids gay or lesbian people from adopting kids. Florida is the only state that blatantly bans all gay and lesbian people from adopting. But other states have laws that discriminate against gay adoptions.
Mississippi, for example, bans adoptions by gay or lesbian couples. But since it is mute on gay or lesbian singles adopting, that is officially allowed—if you can get an adoption agency and a judge to agree to it. Utah prohibits all unmarried couples from adopting. And since gay and lesbian people can't marry there, they can't adopt.
Meanwhile, there are moves in 16 states to ban gay and lesbian people from adopting. It's one of the hot new fronts on the culture wars.
The right is trying to make the 'protection' of children the issue here, under the rubric of 'family values.'
Russell Johnson, chairman of the Ohio Restoration Project, equates allowing gays and lesbians to adopt to 'experimenting on children.' And the Vatican calls gay adoptions 'gravely immoral.' It even goes so far as to say that allowing gay people to adopt means 'doing violence to these children.'
Allow Gulliford-Green to politely disagree. He was in the New York foster care system before his new dads, Gulliford and Green, took him in. In fact, Michael actually chose his fathers, from their profile in what is called a 'life book,' which allows kids to get a glimpse into their prospective new parents. Gulliford-Green was 8 years old at the time.
The kid knows he is one of the lucky ones. Many spend years languishing in the foster care system before they land with an adoptive family. Others never get adopted at all.
That's why Gulliford-Green was understandably nervous he would be taken away from the family he loves when they moved from New York state to Florida. But even though the state of Florida does not allow gay and lesbian people to adopt in the state, it recognizes out-of-state adoptions. So he is safe.
However, there are thousands of other kids in the foster care system who are not. There are an estimated half million kids in foster care in America without parents.
Of course, gay and lesbian people have always had children and been parents. Most, of course, do it the old-fashioned way, by getting married and having kids through straight relationships. According to an analysis of the 2000 census, there are roughly 250,000 same-sex couples in America raising children.
There has never been any evidence that children raised by same-sex households fare any worse than children raised in other households. Indeed, at least one study suggests that children in lesbian households may have better early development than children in one-mother, one-father households, because two moms may give a child even more attention than the 'standard' family model.
To the long list of studies that show gay and lesbian parents and their children do just as well as anyone else, add a recent study by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. Meanwhile, a study by the National Center for Lesbian Rights ( NCLR ) looked at the situation in Florida. The conclusions were dismal. The situation in Florida should act as a warning to other states that are attempting to invoke this senseless ban against gay adoptions.
According to the NCLR study, Florida has more kids in foster care than the national average, and they stay in the foster care system longer than in other states.
Furthermore, according to a report by the Florida Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, ' [ f ] oster youth typically perform poorly in school, are at higher risk of unemployment, have long-term dependence on public assistance and have increased rates of incarceration.'
Of course, social workers and others who work to find kids adoptive parents have long known that gay and lesbian people can be just as good parents as straight people, too, and most of them care about just one thing: finding a good, decent home for a child to live in.
Even in Florida, some politicians have finally seen the inanity of the anti-gay adoption law, and are trying to ease it, since overturning it would sadly be a political impossibility.
Two proposed bills in the state legislature would allow judges to grant adoptions to gay or lesbian parents if the judge determined it would be in the best interest of the child.
All that preventing gay and lesbian people from adopting will do is reduce the number of loving parents out there for children adrift who need homes.
In this national fight, we should make sure Americans see the clear example and contrast between the sad state of affairs for foster-care kids in the state of Florida, and the ironically happy difference of people like Michael Gulliford-Green.
Windy City Times
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