Gay Parent Adoption: Their Perfect Family!

Here’s How These Two Dads Created Their Perfect Family, a Story of Gay Parent Adoption

I guess you could consider it just another average slice of American life when Ted, a screenwriter and game developer (gamers take note, Ted was a senior developer for the seminal “Elder Scrolls” series) from Ohio, and his husband, Ian, a merchandiser from England, attended a recent potluck lunch celebrating cultural diversity at kindergarten with their adopted, multiracial child, Mikey.

What was their contribution? Well, how exactly does one best represent Ohio/England/African American ancestry? Why, casserole, of course, says Ted. A blend of noodles, chicken and vegetables seems an appropriate choice for this potpourri of a family. You could make the argument that such families are appropriately representative of new wave multiculturalism in America — a country once famous for its open doors.

Food is somewhat central to this story. Ian and Ted met at a friend’s dinner party in Venice Beach in October of 2005. They had their commitment ceremony with about a hundred friends at their place in April of 2007, and they were married just last year.

They talked about being parents very early on and investigated ways to make that happen — including gay parents adoption, gay parents adopting, gay parent adoption, adoption for gay parents, surrogacy. Ultimately, they felt that the process was overly expensive and that their own DNA was not that precious when there were kids in foster care that needed parents.

Additionally, Ian and his sister were adopted and Ian was very comfortable with not needing “blood” relations. They met Robyn Harrod and Sylvia Fogelman at the Southern California Foster Family & Adoption Agency (SCFFAA) and started to take all of the required classes. Those initial classes, Ted explained, were somewhat therapeutic for Ian. Going through the thoughts and planning that his adopting parents went through gave him a fuller understanding of the love and commitment given to both him and his sister.

Click here to read the entire article.

 

By JAmesMichael Nichols – HuffPostGay via @raiseachild – September 11, 2015

There are all kinds of kids in the foster system. This Huffington Post Gay Voices RaiseAChild.US “Let Love Define Family®” series installment presents one child whose sweet nature and quick wit adds a lot of spice and laughter to the lives of his two dads. RaiseAChild.US contributing writer David Humiston shares the story.

in Family Stories / Foster Parenting / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Same Sex Families Foster Parenting Victory

Same Sex Families Foster Parenting Victory in Nebraska

Yesterday, a Nebraska District Court ruled that a discriminatory policy that barred same sex families from becoming foster parents was unconstitutional. The two-decade-old policy, Memo I-95, barred same sex families from obtaining state foster parent licenses.

This change will finally allow child welfare agencies to expand the pool of foster and adoptive families for Nebraska’s children.
“Nebraska’s motto of ‘Equality before the Law’ rings out more truly for all of us on this thrilling day,” Danielle Conrad, Executive Director of ACLU of Nebraska, said in a release. “This is a special victory for thousands of children in Nebraska who now have more options to find loving and stable
homes.”
Earlier this year, Nebraska child welfare officials announced they would stop enforcing the law.
Click here to read the entire article.

 

HRC.org, by Hayley Miller, August 6, 2015

in Foster / Foster Parenting / In the News  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Breaking down barriers so foster kids can find a family

Seattle (CNN) — David Wing-Kovarik and his partner, Conrad, were ready to adopt a child.

They moved through all their requirements smoothly, even completing an orientation and training course for prospective parents.

Then they were confronted with their first real stumbling block.

“Our adoption agent said, ‘Well, you both look the same on paper, so who’s going to be the parent?'” Wing-Kovarik recalls.

In Arizona, where the couple lived at the time, only individuals and legally married couples may adopt from the U.S. foster care system. But because a same-sex couple cannot legally marry in the state, only one parent can be granted legal rights to the child.

“We saw (it) as a disadvantage to the child,” said Wing-Kovarik, 47. “We, frankly, got very angry about it when we thought about everybody else that was in the (training) class. None of them were asked this question. And it came down to the fact that we were a male couple. This was when we first experienced how being that gay couple just adds to the complexity of the whole process. It makes it much harder.”

In 18 states and the District of Columbia, same-sex couples can jointly petition to adopt a child. But in the other states, such as Arizona, the law either restricts joint adoption or is unclear.

That only adds confusion and frustration to what is already a “mind-numbing” adoption process, Wing-Kovarik said.

“It makes your head spin with the questions that are asked of you, with the forms that you have to fill out,” he said. “And then you have on top of that the fact that your family might not be that mom-and-dad home. You’re that gay or lesbian family … and the questions begin to change.”

To read the complete article, click here!

in Foster Care / Foster Parenting / Parenting / Personal Stories  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Arkansas court skeptical of reasons for banning unmarried couples from adopting or fostering children

Thursday, March 17, 2011 – Nancy Polikoff –
Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage

It’s always risky to predict the outcome of a case based on oral argument. Nonetheless, I’ll predict that the Arkansas Supreme Court will affirm the decision of a trial judge in Cole v. Arkansas Dept. of Human Services that the state’s ban on adoption and fostering by anyone living with a nonmarital partner violates the state’s constitution. The ban was enacted by voters in 2008. You can watch the argument on the court’s website here. Although a lawyer for the state did argue briefly, the lawyer who primarily argued for upholding the ban represented the intervenors, the Family Council Action Committee, the Arkansas group behind placing the matter on the ballot in 2008. The plaintiffs are represented by the ACLU, which has once again done a top notch job.

Before the US Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that its criminal prohibition on private consensual sex in the home violated the state’s constitution. The importance of that case, Jegley v. Picado, played a large role in today’s hearing. The trial court found the ban a violation of the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights as articulated in Jegley. The appellants disagree, arguing that the ban is nothing like the intrusion of criminalizing behavior in the home. The justices did not appear to buy it. They repeatedly returned to the fundamental right articulated in Jegley and expressed skepticism that the ban was anything but a direct and substantial burden on the exercise of that right.

If the ban violates the fundamental right of the plaintiffs then it cannot stand unless it is narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling state interest. But if there is no fundamental right at stake, then the ban survives as long as it has a “rational basis.” The intervenors and the state argued that the rational basis test allows the generalization that, as a group, the homes of “cohabiting” couples are less stable and more volatile than other homes, and that therefore an individual review of each applicant in such a situation is not required, even though some of those homes would be suitable.

When one of the justices asked the lawyer for the intervenors if he conceded he would lose if the court applied “heightened scrutiny,” he said no. He said the “life” of the child was at stake (that’s how he characterized the state’s interest on several occasions) and that the state couldn’t be required to place children in the “riskiest” and “poorest performing” home environments.

In what was perhaps the most astonishing part of the argument by the appellants, both lawyers asserted that the state’s screening process is not good enough to weed out unsuitable applicants. They called the process “imperfect” and “not foolproof” and said that mistakes are made. When one of the justices responded that the lawyer for the agency was acknowledging his system to be a failure, the lawyer said the Department of Human Services was doing the best it could but that people lie and “slip through” their process. He later backpedaled and said he had misspoken, but in the process he asserted the problem was everywhere and that caseworkers are overworked and the agency does not have sufficient funding.

So this is what it’s come to. There is no response to the assertion of the plaintiffs, echoed by judges on the court, that no one is allowed to foster or adopt a child without first going through an agency or judicial approval process. So apparently to justify excluding an entire category of applicants from the opportunity to show that a placement in their home is in the best interest of a child, the government lawyer must argue that his agency is not capable of doing its job properly. I find it impossible to imagine that the Arkansas Supreme Court will base its decision on such reasoning.

The lawyers for the plaintiffs reiterated the individual process each applicant goes through. He said that any studies about groups of children are irrelevant because of that, but he did further argue that whatever correlation there may be between “cohabitation” and child outcome does not demonstrate that the cohabitation causes the problems. He also told that court that it could not rule against the gay and lesbian plaintiffs without overruling the court’s decision in Howard. In that case a unanimous court struck down an administrative regulation preventing a gay person or anyone living with a gay person from being licensed as a foster parent. The authors of both the majority and concurring opinions in Howard remain on the bench.

One of the court’s newest justices, Courtney Hudson Henry, asked the lawyer for the intervenors the last question of the argument. She noted that a gay person living alone with multiple sexual partners is eligible to adopt, as long as that person doesn’t live with a partner. (I wish she has left the qualifier “gay” off her statement, as it is true for a heterosexual with multiple partners as well). The response she received was that the ban is concerned with the dynamics and volatility of cohabiting relationships and break ups and there are a variety of reasons an individual might be denied the ability to adopt or be a foster parent.

And so it has come to this. The same state that cannot be trusted be weed out cohabiting couples whose homes are not good for children can be trusted to weed out single applicants who sleep around (without having police go snooping in their homes, which everyone agrees Jegley does not allow). Of course, that’s not the point. In fact, the point of the ban has nothing to do with children and everything to do with stigmatizing both same-sex and unmarried different-sex relationships. I don’t think the Arkansas Supreme Court is buying it.

in Adoption / Foster Care / Foster Parenting / In the News / Legal  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Politicians refuse to act after churches win right to discriminate against gay foster parents

The Australian – December 27, 2010

BOTH the NSW government and opposition have ruled out any changes to the state’s anti-discrimination laws in the wake of a ruling that charities could bar gay couples as foster carers on religious grounds. In a decision that will open the way for other religious charities to refuse gay couples access to their services, the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal ruled that Wesley Mission’s foster care arm, Wesley Dalmar Services, had proved an exemption under the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act allowing it to discriminate against homosexual couples, reported The Australian. Wesley Mission, part of the Uniting Church assembly, argued that providing foster care services to gay couples would put at risk its financial and volunteer assistance from members of the mission who adhered to the doctrine that a monogamous heterosexual partnership was “the norm and ideal of the family”.

The decision overturned a ruling that ordered Wesley Mission to take steps to eliminate unlawful discrimination after refusing services to a gay couple.

NSW’s Anti-Discrimination Act – along with similar acts in most states – provides a series of exemptions for religious bodies. The exemptions apply specifically to the ordination and training of priests and ministers.

However, an extremely broad, non-specific exemption also applies to “any act or practice” of a religious body that conforms to that body’s doctrines.

The Administrative Decisions Tribunal described the ability of a religious group to prove an exemption to the act as “singularly undemanding” and noted that “this may be a matter which calls for the attention of parliament”.

However, a spokesman for NSW Attorney-General John Hatzistergos said yesterday that the legislation struck the right balance between protection from discrimination and the right to religious freedom.

“It is not envisaged that there will be changes to the current exemptions in relation to religious institutions,” the spokesman said.

NSW Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell also ruled out yesterday any move to push for legislative change on the issue if the Liberals win government next March.

Religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws are also being tested in Victoria in an appeal before the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, which must decide whether it was lawful for the Christian Brethren to refuse to allow a gay youth suicide prevention group accommodation at the Christian Youth Camps’ Phillip Island Adventure Resort.

NSW passed laws earlier this year that allowed gay couples to legally adopt children, but allowed church adoption agencies the right to refuse to provide services to gay couples without breaching anti-discrimination laws.

in Foster Care / Foster Parenting / In the News  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Obama Recognizes Gay Dads

  • By Candace Chellew-Hodge – 6.21.10

  • When President Obama issued his statement this past weekend in recognition of Father’s Day, he mentioned one class of fathers that no other president before him has acknowledged: gay dads.

    Nurturing families come in many forms, and children may be raised by a father and mother, a single father, two fathers, a stepfather, a grandfather, or caring guardian.

    His acknowledgement of the labor of love two men may put into their relationship with their children drew quick reaction from the “pro-family” but anti-gay set. Christian Broadcasting Network White House Correspondent David Brody tsk-tsked the president, warning he’s alienating religious folks:

    First of all, by putting “two fathers” in your proclamation you are really running the risk of alienating networks of pastors and church goers who may buy into the President’s overall but draw the line when it comes to traditional marriage. You put these normally supportive pastors in a tough situation because the fact of the matter is the whole ‘two fathers’ scenario DOES NOT play well in most Churches in America. And that is completely understandable.

    My first reaction to that concern was, “welcome to our world.” The LGBT community has been alienated from most of the world for the majority of history, so pastors and churchgoers who balk at the president’s words can enjoy, just for a moment, our reality. Alienation is something we’re familiar with — kicked out of our families, kicked out of our churches, fired for being who we are, denied housing for being who we are, denied the rights and responsibilities of marriage. You want alienation? Mr. Brody, the line starts behind me.

    Of course, Brody’s reaction is tame compared to Peter LaBarbera over at Americans for Truth about Homosexuality who gives his usual rant about how gay men are promiscuous (because no straight men are, right?).

    But even if two homosexual men keep their disordered relationship “faithful,” homosexual parenting would not be worthy of celebration, LaBarbera said: “It is wrong to force children into a situation where they have two men modeling immoral behavior — condemned by God and all major religions — as the most important role models in their lives.”

    Aside from the “scare quotes” around the word “faithful,” LaBarbera makes no sense here. What “immoral behavior” is he talking about? Does he really believe gay dads have sex in front of their children? Do LaBarbera and his wife do “immoral” things in front of their children? Or, perhaps, LaBarbera believes it’s immoral for kids to see their gay dads go to work every day, take out the trash, and instruct their children to clean their rooms and make their beds. What horrible fathers!

    There is not a shred of proof that gay men are worse fathers than

    straight men. In fact, a recent study, quoted in the Advocate, showed that “gay fathers were more likely to scale back their careers in order to care for their children. Another difference was that gay fathers also saw their self-esteem and relationships with their extended families greatly improve when they had children.” Far from being “immoral” it seems that fatherhood is good for gay men, just as it is for straight men. But, LaBarbera and his “pro-family” cohorts won’t ever let facts get in the way of a good scare tactic.

    Even if President Obama has, by and large, disappointed our community since his election with his foot-dragging on issues like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), it feels good to be acknowledged, even in a boiler-plate proclamation. It feels good to have the leader of your country acknowledge not just your existence, but your humanity — your extreme normalness.

    If that makes the religious right feel alienated, it really shouldn’t. It simply means that we finally have a commander-in-chief who can acknowledge the reality of the American family and see the humanity of everyone, even if politics prevents him from fully enacting a fairer agenda.

    A belated Happy Father’s Day, Mr. President.

in Adoption / Foster Parenting / Legal / Legislation / Second Parent Adoption / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Lesbian couple appeals order removing their foster child

Lesbian couple appeals order removing their foster child
By 365gay Newscenter Staff
03.11.2009 4:39pm EDT

(Charleston, West Virginia) The West Virginia Supreme Court was asked Wednesday to overturn a lower court ruling that removed a child they had reared from birth because the judge wanted the child placed with a married, opposite-sex couple.

Fayette Circuit Judge Paul Blake originally agreed to allow Kathyrn Kutil and Cheryl Hess be foster parents for the infant girl, following a positive assessment by the Department of Health and Human Resources.

Court records show that the little girl was born to a drug addicted mother and the baby had cocaine, opiates and benzodiazepines in her system. Shortly after birth, the baby went through drug withdrawal. The father was unknown.

The Department placed the child with Kutil and Hess, who had been approved as foster parents, when it could not find any blood relatives of the mother.

But nearly a year later, when the couple applied to adopt the little girl, both the Department and Judge Blake balked. Last year in his ruling, Blake ordered the child, removed saying the baby should be permanently placed in a home where the parents would be a married opposite-sex couple.

The ruling said that he had agreed to allow the women to foster the child because it was the best option at the time. But he never intended it to be permanent.

“I think I’ve indicated time and time again, this court’s opinion is that the best interest of a child is to be raised by a traditional family, mother and father,” Blake’s ruling said.

In their appeal to the sate Supreme Court, the women argue that Blake exceeded his authority and violated their constitutional rights. The appeal argues that Blake is “setting a dangerous precedent” for discriminatory treatment of non-traditional families.

A different judge recently approved Kutil’s adoption of a 12-year-old girl whom she’d been fostering for over two years, the appeal notes.

West Virginia law allows either single individuals or married couples to adopt. It says nothing about same-sex couples.

The Supreme Court, when the notice of appeal was filed, issued a stay on implementing Blake’s removal order and the child remains with the couple pending a final ruling by the high court.

The justices gave no indication when that might be.

in Foster Care / Foster Parenting / In the News / Legal / Legislation  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Same-sex couples find options in adoption and foster parenting

Just Being Parents
Same-sex couples find options in adoption and foster parenting
http://www.justout.com/news.aspx?id=4
by Heather Cassell

Since the ’90s, visibility has been given to the gay community’s slice of the American dream—the lavender house with two kids strapped into the eco-friendly SUV, headed on the queer family vacation package.

“I’ve been extremely impressed by the caliber of parenting I see from our gay and lesbian clients,” said Shari Levine, executive director of Open Adoption & Family Services in Portland.

Approximately 40 percent of the organization’s prospective parents are gay or lesbian, said Levine, and Open Adoption & Family Services allows an open relationship between adopted children and both their birth and adoptive parents. Levine added that both hetero and same-sex couples can expect a 10- to 11-month adoption period through her agency.

Many same-sex parents don’t view themselves as different from other parents, but others speculate that gay parents may raise their children with a greater awareness of diversity.

“Being a gay parent hasn’t been defined as being gay, but as a parent,” said Tyler Silver, who has two children with his partner of five years, Joel Schudde.

Carrie Adamson-John added, “I think that we would parent the same if we were straight…sexuality is a separate issue from parenting.” She is raising 2-year-old Dakotah with her partner, Shanon. “If you have a child and they are small, you can be encouraging, nurturing and respectful of their spirit no matter what. We parent him with respect and love.”

This is a reoccurring theme among same-sex parents, and none seemed concerned about their children having problems at school because they have same-sex parents.

Trish and Jan Calvin’s voices resonate with pride when they talk about their oldest daughter, Sarah, not being afraid to stand up to other kids when she gets grief for having gay parents. The parents said that Sarah sometimes gets tired of explaining her unique family to other kids but that she typically doesn’t have any problem talking about her two moms and brings books such as And Tango Makes Three and Heather Has Two Mommies to school for the teacher to read to the class.

According to the Williams Institute—a sexual minority think tank at University of California, Los Angeles—more than half of gay men and 41 percent of lesbians want to have a child. The research organization published those statistics in Adoption & Foster Care by Lesbians & Gay Men in March 2007.

According to the report, an estimated 65,500 adopted children live with a gay or lesbian parents and 2 million gay and lesbian people are interested in adopting. The institute estimated that of 23,901 adoptions in Oregon, 1,232 are by gay and lesbian parents. It also estimated that 14,100 foster children are living with gay or lesbian parents nationwide, including about 250 in Oregon.

Fertility experts are noticing a rise in sexual minorities looking at reproductive technologies as an option in their family planning.

Oregon Reproductive Medicine—formerly the Portland Center for Reproductive Medicine—has been helping gay couples and individuals with their reproductive needs for many years, “not just lately because it’s become in vogue,” said Jonathan Kipp, a spokesman for the center. Kipp, a gay man, said he has noticed an increase in queer clients at the center from as far away as France.

“There is a wide range of options for the gay community now to be able to create their families,” said Stuart Miller, co-founder and chief executive officer of Growing Generations. He estimated the agency has seen a 20 percent increase in mostly gay male clients with a few lesbian clients annually.

The trend hasn’t escaped the American Fertility Association, a New York-based reproductive technologies organization, either. For the third consecutive year, the organization hosted a queer-specific tract at its Family Matters Conference, where Miller and John J. Weltman, president of Circle Surrogacy, were presenters in San Francisco in February. This was the first year the conference was held on the West Coast.
Silver and Schudde, 38-year-old gay men, chose to have biological children. Their first two children, William, 4, and Bryn, 2, were born using Silver’s DNA and a surrogate through Growing Generations.

Silver, who has a graduate degree in family and children counseling and is retired, said he chose to use reproductive technologies because it “felt comforting to have my genetic history involved.”

Schudde, a former public administrator and now a stay-at-home dad, is attempting to have a child using his DNA and a surrogate.

While reproductive technologies are an emerging option for gay family planning, it’s expensive, and infertility issues can enter the picture.

“I wanted to be pregnant for as long as I could remember,” said Shanon Adamson-John, who was diagnosed with unidentified infertility. “My life without a child wasn’t an option.”

She and Carrie looked into adoption through Open Adoption & Family Services, and within three weeks, they adopted a son. The Adamson-Johns were unusually lucky.

Trish Calvin had difficulty conceiving when she attempted to have a second child. She and Jan, a couple of 19 years, not only added Alison, 4, to their family, but they also acquired two gay godfathers and a godson in the process.

Ed Lazzara, 48, and Kurt Garcia-Ottens, 45, were already in Open Adoption & Family Services’ adoption pool when they met the Calvins, who were exploring adoption. At the men’s suggestion, the Calvins joined the pool and adopted Alison before Lazzara and Garcia-Ottens adopted their son, Leo, 3.

“It was a blessing,” said Trish, recalling that Alison became Lazzara’s and Garcia-Ottens’ “practice child, because they really had no clue how to change a diaper.”

Lazzara and Garcia-Ottens, a couple of 17 years, explored family planning options and decided adoption felt right for them.

Christian Hetchinson, 40, and his partner of 19 years, Timothy Kirchner, 42, weren’t quite ready to adopt, so they opted to become foster parents as a “beginning step” into parenthood.

Hetchinson said they weren’t sure if they would even be allowed to be foster parents, but with the help of a private child service organization, they have been foster parents to three boys between 12 and 15 years old for the past eight months.

“We thought it would be fun being foster parents, and it’s been much more fun than we ever expected it to be,” said Hetchinson, who is now a full-time foster parent while Kirchner manages a retail store.

Other than spoiling the boys, Hetchinson, who plans on having a “steady flow of kids coming through our house,” said the best part of being a foster parent is something significant: “We are able to give back to these kids something that maybe they didn’t have in their homes or their personal history.”

For more information visit www.oregonreproductivemedicine.com, www.openadopt.org, www.boysandgirlsaid.org and www.fyi3.com/fyi3/states/oregon.cfm .

in Adoption / Foster Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments