Adoption rights: The next frontier for gay Alabama couples two months after marriage ruling

For a handful of Alabama’s family-minded gay couples, first came love, then came marriage, then came bureaucratic headaches, legal bills and months of waiting. Adoption rights are the next frontier for gay Alabama couples two months after marriage ruling.

They’re not looking to become the state’s first gay divorcees, though that milestone is likely not far off if it has not already been reached. These couples are instead looking to take the traditional next step of expanding their families now that their weddings and honeymoons are in the rear-view, and they are specifically interested in adopting a child.

Even a year ago, the idea of gay Alabamian couples embarking on the path toward married parenthood would have been inconceivable for many Alabamians.

But the Supreme Court cleared the path for achieving that goal with its landmark gay marriage ruling less than two months ago, and a number of gay Alabama couples are facing the myriad challenges that all couples seeking to adopt must overcome, in addition to some that are specific to would-be adoptive parents of the same gender.

Newlyweds Clay Jones and Joe Babin are at the vanguard of the small but growing list of gay Alabama married couples seeking to adopt an infant. As of last month the Irondale residents have passed the background checks, screenings, physical examinations, financial assessments and other evaluations required of all couples of any sexuality hoping to adopt, and now they are “just waiting on a baby,” according to Babin.

Jones, 41, and Babin, 39, say that they are at a stage in their lives mentally, emotionally and financially where they are ready to have a child, and that the timing just seems to be right given their circumstances, their age and the political developments of the past year.

“We’re ready to go. We kind of made the decision that we were ready and we knew we financially and mentally had some stability to offer, that we were going to try to do it. So then we were at the point where we can now, and then we got married. So I mean I feel good that it’s going to happen,” Jones said. “[With] what’s happening in the south of the United States and what’s happening in Alabama, it’s time. I feel like it’s time that it will happen.”

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by Connor Sheets, AL.com, August 16, 2015