Same-Sex Parents Lobby Congress For Equal Rights
NPR.org by Jennifer Ludden 5.17,2012
On the edge of the National Mall on Thursday, dozens of moms, dads and kids pose for a group photo framed by the U.S. Capitol. They’re just some of the approximately 700,000 same-sex families across the country, despite laws in some states that make raising children difficult for gay couples. Now, they’ve come to Washington to ask lawmakers to make their lives a little easier.
“Today in the United States, there’s kind of a patchwork of state laws,” says Jennifer Chrisler, herself a same-sex parent and executive director of the Family Equality Council, which organized the lobbying day. Chrisler says public policy toward same-sex families is out of sync with reality.
“The 12 states where [same-sex] couples are most likely to be raising kids are states like Mississippi and Montana and Kentucky and Louisiana,” she says. “And those are the states that actually have some of the worst policy.”
In fact, the highest share of same-sex couples is in Mississippi, which bans gay adoption altogether.