Gay adoption ban coming into play in race for attorney general

Jun. 05, 2010

BY LEE LOGAN
Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau

When voters choose from among five candidates to be Florida’s next attorney general, their decision could have a profound effect on some of the state’s most highly charged issues, from gay adoption to healthcare reform.

Florida’s unique gay adoption ban underscores how the state’s chief legal officer can use the position to advance a personal philosophy while adhering to the duties of the job.

Attorney General Bill McCollum has come under fire recently for advocating the use of an expert witness who has been discredited while defending the state’s ban on gay couples adopting children.

Three Republicans seeking the post — Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp, former state healthcare secretary Holly Benson and former Hillsborough prosecutor Pam Bondi — all say they would continue to uphold the adoption ban.

“The best home for any child is a two-parent home with a mother and a father,” Benson said.

But both Democrats, state Sens. Dave Aronberg and Dan Gelber, say Florida has spent enough defending an antiquated law.

“I don’t think as a lawyer I can make a straight-faced argument that the ban is constitutional,” said Gelber of Miami Beach.

The challenge comes from a North Miami man who wanted to adopt two foster children that are living with him and his partner. A Miami judge ruled the law unconstitutional in 2008. The state’s appeal of that ruling is pending.

McCollum is defending the ban on behalf of the Department of Children and Families. He personally pushed to hire psychologist George Rekers as an expert witness. Rekers was found to have gone on a European vacation with a gay escort.

In public appearances, Bondi refused to say if she would take the case to the Supreme Court if the state loses the appeal. In an interview Friday, she clarified her position: “I will continue with General McCollum’s appeal. If [the Supreme Court] can legally hear it, yes, I will appeal.”

The Supreme Court must first agree to hear the case before any candidate can appeal.

At a Tiger Bay forum in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, Bondi said that as attorney general, she would support whatever law is on the books.

At a May 18 event in Miami Lakes, she mentioned two gay friends before saying that the adoption process as a whole needs reform.

`FIRST DUTY’

“I have friends in Tampa who are in law enforcement who have adopted from overseas, who are in a loving, committed same-sex relationship,” Bondi said.

Former attorney general Bob Butterworth, a Democrat who held the post for 16 years, said Bondi’s earlier comments have some precedent.

“If the Legislature passes legislation, your first duty is to defend it,” Butterworth said. “I’ve handled cases over the years that I didn’t quite agree with, but that’s not my decision.”

Butterworth said he personally disagrees with the law and that judges should decide if a couple is fit for adoption. When the law was first challenged, Butterworth was the head of DCF.

He asked McCollum to defend the suit because he was focused on “turning around” an agency beset by repeated troubles and didn’t want to pick a fight with the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Aronberg, of Greenacres, said the attorney general has wide discretion on appealing cases and that “we have wasted enough taxpayer money” on defending the ban.

A department spokesman said Florida has spent $383,000 on defending the ban, half of which is for attorneys fees. The other half is for general expenses, including $120,000 to Rekers.

The attorney general candidates also split on whether to continue McCollum’s challenge to the new federal health care law.

Republicans have said they will keep Florida as the lead plaintiff in the case, which will likely stretch well beyond November’s election.

“I believe that law is unconstitutional on a number of grounds,” Benson said.

Calling the lawsuit “frivolous,” Democrats said they would take Florida off the list of 20 states listed as plaintiffs. McCollum spokeswoman Sandi Copes noted that even if Florida dropped out of the case, it would continue and another state would take the lead.

UNITED FRONT

One issue did unite all five candidates in opposition — the ballot initiative known as Hometown Democracy, or Amendment 4. An effort to reign in unchecked growth, the amendment would place changes to a local comprehensive plan on the ballot.

The initiative faces strong opposition from business groups and the building industry.

All of the candidates said it would take power away from local officials.

“It would ensure that the only changes to comprehensive plans would be development funded by expensive campaigns,” Aronberg said.

The candidates also are united in supporting the death penalty.

But other issues split the candidates along party lines. Democrats support the Fair Districts amendments that say lawmakers cannot draw political districts with the intent to favor or disfavor a party or incumbent. They also argue the Legislature’s companion amendment is “intentionally confusing” to voters.

Republicans oppose the citizen amendments — Nos. 5 and 6 on the ballot — but support lawmakers’ Amendment 7.

Most Republicans came out against the April 2007 move by Gov. Charlie Crist to simplify the process of restoring civil rights to former felons.

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Surrogate twins’ father gets go-ahead for paternity test

By Tomer Zarchin – May 18, 2010

www.haaretz.com – There are no legal obstacles to a paternity test that would establish whether Dan Goldberg is indeed the father of twins Itai and Liron, the Jerusalem District Attorney’s office informed Family Court judge Philip Marcus yesterday. The statement came in response to a request by Marcus for the district attorney and the twins’ court-appointed guardian to clarify their position on the test.

The District Attorney’s office told Marcus there is no obstacle to issuing a court order for the test, which would allow the twins to receive Israeli citizenship and enter Israel, even without a special court hearing on the matter. The order would be subject to the twins’ guardian’s agreement. The guardian has not yet stated his position on the test.

The twins were born to Goldberg and a surrogate mother in India. In March, Marcus rejected Goldberg’s request for a paternity test, claiming he lacked the authority to order one. Goldberg appealed to the Jerusalem District Court against the decision. The District Court upheld the appeal, returning the case to Marcus to be reconsidered once the twins have been appointed a legal guardian.

Meanwhile, the Rainbow Families group – an umbrella organization for gay families – held a demonstration in support of Goldberg in Tel Aviv yesterday. The demonstrators called upon Interior Minister Eli Yishai to allow the twins to come to Israel.

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Portugal’s Gay Marriage Law Excludes Adoption

By Carlos Santoscoy
Published: May 18, 2010Portugal’s gay marriage law specifically forbids married gay and lesbian couples from adopting children.

On Monday, Portugal’s President Anibal Cavaco Silva announced he would ratify the gay marriage bill approved by lawmakers in January, making Portugal the sixth European nation to grant gay couples the right to marry.

The president lamented his decision, saying he was only doing so because Social Democrats – led by Prime Minister Jose Socrates – were certain to overturn his veto.

“Given that fact, I feel I should not contribute to a pointless extension of this debate, which would only serve to deepen the divisions between the Portuguese and divert the attention of politicians away from the grave problems affecting us.”

“There are moments in the life of a country when ethical responsibility has to be placed above one’s personal convictions,” he added.

Cavaco Silva, however, might have decided differently if the law allowed gay adoption. Earlier, the president attempted to derail the law by forwarding four out of five of the bill’s articles to the nation’s Constitutional Court. He said he did so because he doubted the bill’s constitutionality. But he set aside the article that bans gay adoption, a clear signal he wanted to ensure it remained in the final legislation should the court vote in favor of the bill. The court’s major found the bill to be constitutional.

The seventy-year-old president announce his decision in a nationally televised address.

“We feel that we’re experiencing a memorable, emotional moment,” Vitalinos Canas, a Socialist government MP, told Euronews. “It’s a huge step for civilization, taken by our country.”

The president’s signature comes just days after Pope Benedict toured the Roman Catholic stronghold of Portugal. Speaking in the city of Fatima, the pope called for a greater defense of what he said were “essential and primary values of life,” among which he included the family. He said the family was “founded on indissoluble marriage between man and woman.”

Abortion – legal in Portugal since 2007 – and gay marriage were “among some of the most insidious and dangerous challenges facing the common good today.”

The pope has taken a similar hard line in neighboring Spain, where Socialists legalized gay marriage in 2005.

Social conservatives in Mexico have denounced a gay marriage law approved by Mexico City lawmakers because it lifted a previous ban on gay adoption. The federal government has appealed to the nation’s Supreme Court, saying it has a responsibility to protect children. In Argentina, a gay marriage bill that includes the right to adopt has won the approval of the country’s lower chamber of Congress, but faces an uncertain future as debate begins in the Senate.

In both countries, adoption by gay and lesbian couples has stirred the most controversy.

Gay marriage is also legal in five European countries: Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Norway and, most recently, Sweden.

Iceland is also considering legalizing gay marriage.

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Lesbian Couple Sue Iowa Officials Over Birth Certificate

Advocate.com May 15, 2010
By Advocate.com Editors

A lesbian couple are suing Iowa state officials for printing on their daughter’s birth certificate that she has only one parent and was born out of wedlock.

Heather Lynn Martin Gartner, 38, and Melissa McCoy Gartner, 39, filed suit against two state health department officials on behalf of their daughter Mackenzie, who was born in September, because her birth certificate lists only Heather as the mother.

The Iowa Department of Public Health rejected the couple’s request for a birth certificate with both their names in March, according to the lawsuit, claiming Melissa had not legally adopted Mackenzie and was not biologically related.

Though same-sex marriage is legal in Iowa, birth certificate laws “expressly recognize the biological reality that women and men each play a distinct but equally necessary role in human reproduction and have corresponding rights, duties and obligations to their child,” according to the Department of Health letter cited in the lawsuit.

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Archdiocese Of Boston Welcomes Children Of Gay Parents In Schools

By G. Jeffrey MacDonald
Religion News Service

(RNS) The Archdiocese of Boston says that children of same-sex couples are welcome in its schools, after a local school rejected a student with lesbian parents.

Superintendent of Catholic Schools Mary Grassa O’Neill said the archdiocese will develop a policy to eliminate any misunderstandings about its openness to children of gay parents.

“We believe that every parent who wishes to send their child to a Catholic school should have the opportunity to pursue that dream,” O’Neill said in a statement released Thursday (May 13).

Press reports earlier this week quoted an anonymous woman who said administrators at St. Paul Elementary School in Hingham, Mass., had denied admission to her 8-year-old son because his parents’ relationship was “in discord with the teachings of the Catholic church.”

O’Neill said she spoke Thursday with the Rev. James Rafferty and principal Cynthia Duggan, who oversee St. Paul Elementary School, about their decision. She then contacted one of the child’s parents, who according to O’Neill indicated that she would consider sending her son to a different Catholic school in the upcoming school year.

Whether to enroll schoolchildren of same-sex parents is a matter of some debate among the nation’s Catholic dioceses. The Sacred Heart of Jesus School in Boulder, Colo. refused to re-enroll a child after they learned the child has same-sex parents last winter. The Archdiocese of Denver supported their decision.
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“Parents living in open discord with Catholic teaching in areas of faith and morals unfortunately choose by their actions to disqualify their children from enrollment,” said a March statement from the Archdiocese of Denver.

Gay rights advocates applauded the Boston archdiocese’s policy announcement.

“We agree 100 percent with that decision” to welcome children of same-sex couples in Catholic schools, said Pam Garramone, executive director of Greater Boston PFLAG, a gay rights education and advocacy group.

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No Bar to U.S. Adoptions From Russia

May 5, 2010 – New york Times – by CLIFFORD J. LEVY

 

MOSCOW — After nearly a month of contradictory signals, a senior Russian official is now making clear that the government has not halted the adoption of Russian children by Americans.

The official, Andrei A. Fursenko, the education and science minister, whose agency oversees adoptions, said Tuesday night that the Russian government had not formally put in place a legal suspension of these adoptions.

Mr. Fursenko appeared to contradict the assertions of Russian foreign ministry officials, who said last month that there would be no adoptions until the United States and Russia reached an agreement on new regulations. But Mr. Fursenko’s comments would appear to carry more weight because of his agency’s role in the adoption process.

The Russian government had insisted on new adoption rules in response to the case of Artyom Savelyev, who was sent backto Moscow on his own last month, just before his eighth birthday, by his adoptive mother in Tennessee.

The mother said that the boy, Artyom, had severe behavioral difficulties and that the Russian orphanage had lied to her about his condition when she adopted him last year. Russian officials said there was nothing wrong with him.

His plight caused an outcry in Russia, and top Russian officials, including President Dmitri A. Medvedev, spoke out about the need for new regulations.

The State Department said last week that it had never received formal notification from the Russian government that adoptions were frozen. American officials in Washington and Moscow said this week that adoptions were continuing, though some Russian officials may be slowing down procedures because they are unsure about their government’s stance.

Mr. Fursenko indicated that neither his agency nor the foreign ministry had the authority to halt adoptions by Americans.

“A suspension of adoptions is possible only by a law of the Parliament or by an act of the president,” he told reporters, pointing out that neither had addressed the issue.

Mr. Fursenko’s comments should end the confusion over Russian adoption policy and offer some solace to American families who are in the middle of the process, which can be time-consuming, costly and emotionally difficult.

An American diplomatic delegation was recently in Moscow to negotiate a new adoption agreement, and both sides said they hoped to have one signed relatively soon. Russian officials were said to want assurances that there would be more independent monitoring of Russian children after they have begun living in the United States.

Russia was the third leading source of adoptive children in the United States in 2009, with 1,586, after China and Ethiopia, officials said.

More than 50,000 Russian children have been adopted by United States citizens since 1991. The adoption rate peaked at 6,000 in 2003, and then declined as bureaucratic and legal hurdles mounted.

While most adoptions turn out well, cases where adoptive Russian children have been harmed or killed in the United States have drawn widespread attention in Russia. Russian officials said that of the 18 Russian adoptive children who have been killed abroad since the Soviet collapse in 1991, 17 were in the United States.

Mr. Fursenko noted that he was just in Washington, where he discussed the overall adoption issue with Russia’s ambassador there, Sergey I. Kislyak.

“Recently, the ambassador had a gathering in the embassy for adoptive children and their parents,” Mr. Fursenko said. “He said that these are happy families. Moreover, a significant number of these children are sick. They found normal families. The parents emphasize that the children are Russian, which is why they brought them to the Russian Embassy, to show that even though they now live here, their roots are Russian.”

Mr. Fursenko said Mr. Kislyak believed that it would be a mistake to ban Americans from adopting Russian children.

“This is in the interests of the child,” Mr. Fursenko said. “This should never be used to manipulate.”

He added that while there have been instances of Russian children being adopted by “inadequate” families abroad, there have been more in Russia itself.

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N.Y. Court Expands Rights of Nonbirth Parents in Same-Sex Relationships

May 4, 2010 – New York Times – By JEREMY W. PETERS

ALBANY — New York State’s highest court somewhat expanded the rights of gay and lesbian parents on Tuesday in a narrow ruling that said nonbiological parents in same-sex relationships should be treated the same as biological parents.

But the high court, the Court of Appeals, declined to resolve two cases involving lesbian parents and instead sent both back to lower courts, saying that the question of whether nonbiological parents should be given full parental rights was up to the State Legislature.

In one case, the court found that a lesbian who had given birth while in a committed relationship was entitled to seek child support in Family Court from her former partner. The ruling was 4 to 3.

In the other case, which legal experts said had broader implications, the court ruled that a woman seeking visitation rights from her former partner, who gave birth to a child conceived by artificial insemination after the two had entered into a civil union in Vermont, was a legal parent of that child.

The decision, by a 7-to-0 vote, said the woman, identified in court documents as Debra H., could ask a court for visitation and custody rights because New York confers parental rights to both parents in a same-sex relationship if the couple has a civil union.

Though the court did not specifically address the parental rights of gays and lesbians who are not birth parents but have other legally sanctioned unions, like a marriage performed in a jurisdiction that allows same-sex couples to wed, the case provides them a legal claim to parenthood.

“In many ways this is a real breakthrough in New York,” said Susan L. Sommer, who argued the case before the Court of Appeals and is senior counsel and director of constitutional litigation for Lambda Legal, a gay-rights advocacy group.

“But there’s also a lot more work that needs to be done, because the decision stops short of bringing New York into line with the growing trend in other jurisdictions,” Ms. Sommer added.

Some legal experts said they were dismayed by the ruling because it effectively established two sets of standards for children of same-sex couples: one set for those born to couples with a legally recognized relationship, and another for those born to couples without legal recognition.

“A distinction between whether one is a parent or is not a parent based on whether a couple is in a civil union or not in a civil union — that should not matter,” said Nancy Polikoff, a law professor at American University. “From the child’s point of view, he or she has two parents.”

The court declined to establish criteria for parenthood in relationships in which one partner or spouse is not the biological parent, saying a more flexible standard could invite claims of parental rights by people who have no business raising them.

“Parents could not possibly know when another adult’s level of involvement in family life might reach the tipping point and jeopardize their right to bring up their children without the unwanted participation of a third party,” Judge Susan P. Read wrote in the opinion.

Other jurisdictions have amended their laws to grant nonbiological parents broad legal rights. Colorado, Indiana, Minnesota, Texas and the District of Columbia have all established criteria under which people other than biological parents can claim to have parental rights.

The Court of Appeals said nothing prevented the Legislature from following that lead.

Sherri L. Eisenpress, the lawyer for the biological mother involved in the case stemming from the Vermont civil union, who is identified only as Janice R., said the case was never about broader issues. Instead, Ms. Eisenpress said it was about following established family law in New York, which states that anyone who is not a biological or adoptive parent lacks standing to seek custody or visitation rights.

“Her goal in this case was never to establish some precedent or to make any broader statement other than that she expressly declined to allow this woman to adopt her son because she did not want to co-parent with this person,” Ms. Eisenpress said.

Though the case presents a twist on the traditional American family, in one sense it is conventional. Explaining why she entered into a civil union, Janice R., according to the decision, said, “to put an end to (Debra H.’s) nagging.”

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Sen. Harry Reid’s Immigration Proposal Includes Gay Families

By Carlos Santoscoy
Published: April 30, 2010

An immigration reform “framework” proposed Thursday by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and fellow Democrats includes gay families. The inclusion is likely to anger social conservatives and major immigration allies.

Included in the “framework” are key provisions of the Uniting American Families Act. The legislation was previously offered as a standalone bill by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont in the Senate and Representative Jerrold Nadler in the House.

The measure would allow gay Americans to sponsor an immigrant partner for citizenship.

“Today’s inclusive framework is an historic step forward for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender binational families,” Rachel B. Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality, a group that lobbies on behalf of binational gay and lesbian couples, said in a statement.

The UAFA has already proven controversial.

When Democrats attempted to tuck the measure inside California Representative Michael Honda’s reform effort last summer, social conservatives cried foul. And the action drove one major partner to withdraw its support from the House version.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, a major ally in securing immigration reform, called inclusion of the gay provisions “contrary” to its position on marriage.

“[Including the gay provisions in the immigration bill] would erode the institution of marriage and family by according marriage like benefits to same-sex relationships, a position that is contrary to the very nature of marriage, which pre-dates the church and the state,” the bishops wrote in a letter to Rep. Honda withdrawing their support for his bill.

Speaking to POLITICO, the Reverend Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Leadership Conference, another reform ally, called inclusion of the UAFA a “slap in the face to those of us who have fought for years for immigration reform.”

Openly gay Congressman Barney Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts, is already on record as disagreeing with the strategy.

“You got two very tough issues – the rights of same-sex couples and immigration,” Frank told the Washington Blade. “You put them in the same bill, and it becomes impossible. We just don’t have the votes for it.”

Tiven said her group would lobby for inclusion of the UAFA’s provisions.

“We will fight to ensure that the Uniting American Families Act is an indelible part of the immigration reform bill,” she said.

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Finding a Gay-Friendly Campus

April 8, 2010
New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

The scene was similar to one that plays out thousands of times a year in gyms and auditoriums around the country: a college fair. The folding tables, the school banners, the admissions officers with a student representative or two, and the brochures and tchotchkes laid out. The only thing that might have made this one appear out of the ordinary was the preponderance of handouts with rainbow designs, and the fact that the fair was being held at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in Greenwich Village. This college fair, and several like it around the country, was devoted to recruiting gay students.

“Actually going out and recruiting a gay student — that’s a very new thing for colleges,” says Shane L. Windmeyer, the co-founder of Campus Pride, a national organization that promotes safe college environments for gay students and sponsored the event.

While Ivy League schools are often represented, the fairs also attract lesser-known institutions like Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Scott A. McIntyre, associate director of admissions there, says that his university attends some 500 fairs each year, and that including one for gay students made sense.

“The more I can help my institution be open to diversity of all different kinds,” he says, “it’s just going to make us a stronger university, and it’s going to make our student body be more robust.”

All this is good news for the young gay applicant. Of course, being gay does not lend an advantage, and the embrace is not universal inside admissions offices, and out. While much of the stigma of homosexuality may have eased over the years, harassment and even violence are still real concerns around campus — Matthew Shepard, after all, was an undergraduate.

Students are looking for colleges where they will feel comfortable and safe, Mr. Windmeyer says. Also, he says, “straight students who have gay family members want to find a campus that is welcoming,” so, for example, two moms can show up for parents weekend without a ripple. “They don’t want to pick a college that’s not going to be accepting of people they love.”

Although many young people say they do not feel the anguish about coming out that has burdened past generations, the fact is that adolescence is a time of strong pressures to conform, and being different in any way can cause intense inner turmoil.

Life’s conflicts can make for compelling narratives — the stuff of memorable college essays. And students are working the story of their sexuality into their admissions essays. “Students are finding out that not only are they not being discriminated against for revealing their orientation in their applications, it may be an extra,” says Rachel Pepper, a co-author of “The Gay and Lesbian Guide to College Life.”

As with all essays, the value is in what you actually say. Being spurred to found an organization or join one could show the positive attitude and leadership abilities that colleges look for, Ms. Pepper says. “Students who are out in high school and are comfortable enough to put this in their essay are probably leaders.”

Another reason for a student to be up front about sexual orientation: scholarships and other financial help have emerged from such groups as the Point Foundation, the League Foundation at AT&T, and Colage (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere).

The University of Pennsylvania made waves this year when the online publication Inside Higher Ed reported on the university’s new outreach policy: applicants whose essay identifies them as gay are put in touch with gay students and organizations on campus. Eric J. Furda, the dean of admissions, told the publication that it was doing for gay applicants what it has long done for other groups. “We are speaking to students on the areas they are most interested in,” he says.

To some admissions officials, Penn was taking risks with students’ privacy. S. Caroline Kerr, the senior assistant director of admissions at Dartmouth, says that sending gay-themed information to students can be delicate. “A lot of them aren’t out to their parents or might have only come out to some friends,” she says. “We’re more concerned about how we approach them with information than I perhaps am with different students. If someone talks about involvement with the gay student alliance in their essay, I’m not adding them to the list.” But Dartmouth is, for the second year, sending information about gay life and organizations to students who specifically request it on forms asking about their interests.

Ms. Kerr says that “I have gotten some raised eyebrows” from alumni, who have been surprised to find that there are special recruiting efforts for gay students and have asked, “Do you mean to tell me you are admitting someone based on this?” She counters: “That is not the case. You’re not admitting anyone based on a single aspect of their candidacy.”

The University of Southern California, too, reaches out to applicants who identify themselves as gay or transgender. Prospective students can have a “Rainbow Floor Overnight Experience” — a night on the gay floor of a residence hall and a day visiting their host’s classes and student organizations.

Derek Pooley, an admissions counselor at the State University of New York at Potsdam, manned a booth at the New York college fair this past fall. “The first person I had come up to me was a drag queen,” he says. “I thought that was fantastic.”

He says, though, that not many in attendance expressed a strong interest in Potsdam, perhaps because it doesn’t have a reputation as a gay haven. Mr. Pooley, who is gay and graduated from there last year, let a lot of people know “I had a great experience; not once did I ever feel uncomfortable there.”

Ms. Pepper has served as program coordinator for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies at Yale, which is known for its curriculum on gay issues. She says that while some institutions, including Yale, get reputations as a gay school, “you don’t want to just take any school on its reputation.”

Campus Pride’s Web site serves as a virtual college fair for gay-friendly colleges, and provides a sense of the activities and services geared to various interests. Its “campus climate index” ranks colleges based on programs and policies, including identifying those with strong ones to protect gay students — say, explicitly including them in their declarations against discrimination.

Another clue to an institution’s commitment: whether staff members serve as advisers to gay student groups, and what accommodations are made. Transgender students, Ms. Pepper says, would want to know if the health center provides hormone shots as part of the health plan.

The Princeton Review, which surveys 122,000 students on a variety of topics for its “Best 371 Colleges: 2010 Edition,” has come out with a ranking of colleges where the gay community is “most accepted.” (New York University was No. 1.)

That approach, however, drew criticism from Mr. Windmeyer: asking the overall population whether gays are accepted on campus — “Oh, gay people, I love ’em!” he mocks — “is not the way to assess how gay students feel.” Campus Pride is working on its own survey, which Mr. Windmeyer says he hopes to publish in September.

Mr. McIntyre, the admissions officer from Indianapolis, says that a welcoming environment is only part of what makes a campus right for a prospective gay student. “It’s important that when students are looking for colleges, it’s not, ‘What’s the best college I can get into?’ but ‘What’s the best fit for me?,’” he says.

Mr. McIntyre represented his university at a Campus Pride fair earlier this year at the University of Southern California. He took his 17-year-old son, Anderson, who had come out to him two years ago. Mr. McIntyre says he saw the trip as an opportunity for his son to explore campuses’ attitudes and acceptance.

But Anderson was not so much impressed by whether a college was gay friendly as its focus on his areas of interest. “That’s great,” he told his father, “but do they have photography?”

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Russia Suspends Adoptions by Americans

April 15, 2010
New York Times
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

MOSCOW — Russia formally announced on Thursday that it would suspend all adoptions of Russian children by Americans, responding to the case of a 7-year-old boy who was sent back to Moscow alone last week by his adoptive mother in Tennessee. The case of the boy, who was named Artyom in Russia before he was adopted last year, has caused widespread anger here, and Russian officials said new regulations had to be put in place before adoptions by Americans could proceed.

The announcement by the Russian Foreign Ministry gave no indication about how long the suspension would last. The State Department in Washington is sending a high-level delegation to Moscow to hold talks on reaching an agreement, and both countries have expressed hope that the matter can be resolved quickly.

“Future adoptions of Russian children by citizens of the United States, which are now suspended, are possible only if such an agreement is reached,” a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Andrei Nesterenko, said at a briefing on Thursday.

Officials at the United States Embassy in Moscow said they had not received official notification of a suspension and were seeking more information from their Russian counterparts.

More than 250 American families have nearly completed the adoption process and were poised to pick up their Russian children, but their cases will not be allowed to conclude until the new rules are approved, Russian officials said.

In all, some 3,000 American families have begun the adoption process, according to the Joint Council on International Children’s Services. Russian officials said they would continue to accept applications and process paperwork from potential adoptive parents.

Russia was the third leading source of adoptive children in the United States in 2009, with 1,586, after China and Ethiopia, officials said. More than 50,000 Russian children have been adopted by United States citizens since 1991, according to the United States Embassy.

Artyom, who was named Justin by his adoptive American mother, arrived in Moscow last week after flying by himself from Washington. He presented the authorities with a note from his adoptive mother in which she said she could no longer handle him.

The mother, Torry Ann Hansen, a registered nurse from Shelbyville, Tenn., said the boy was “violent and has severe psychopathic issues.” She added that she “was lied to and misled by the Russian orphanage workers” about his troubles.

The authorities in the United States are now investigating her conduct.

Russian authorities, who now have custody of the boy, have said he behaves normally and have harshly criticized Ms. Hansen for sending him back.

Cases of children adopted from Russia being harmed in the United States have received intense publicity here. Fourteen Russian children have died of abuse or neglect at their hands of the adoptive American parents since 1996, Russian officials said last year.

Last Friday, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, calling Artyom’s case “the last straw” and said he was proposing the suspension.

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