Sweden's main gay-rights group, the National Federation for Sexual Equality (RFSL), may set up its own adoption agency.
Swedish same-sex couples secured adoption rights in June but continue to be ostracized by the nation's six adoption agencies, RFSL President Sören Andersson told the daily newspaper Metro Dec. 27.
'The adoption agencies have made their views clear,' he said. 'We are now very seriously discussing the possibility of creating an independent adoption agency.'
A spokeswoman for the agencies said the nations that provide babies for adoption in Sweden won't cooperate if children are to be adopted by homosexuals.
'In many countries, homosexuality is illegal,' said Annika Gruenewald. 'Once Sweden is associated with adoption by homosexuals, then the chances of heterosexual couples to adopt children are compromised.'
Some European nations that allow gay adoption restrict gay couples to babies born in that nation, to avoid such conflicts.
Gays who enter a Swedish 'registered partnership' now lack only two rights that are available to married people—access to artificial-insemination technology and access to marriage itself. Only The Netherlands lets gay couples marry under the exact same laws as straight couples.