November is National Adoption Month, and the Family Equality Council has launched the “Allies for Adoption” campaign to raise awareness of a very simple thing we could do to help more children in foster care find forever homes: remove the barriers that prevent qualified LGBT people from adopting children.
Michigan legislators on the state House Committee on Families, Children, and Seniors have passed three bills that would give taxpayer-funded adoption agencies the right to deny an adoption placement based on that agency’s moral or religious beliefs. This is an anti-LGBT bill, no doubt about it — but it is the children needing homes who will suffer the most. . Here’s what you can do to help stop these bills from going any further.
Three same-sex couples yesterday challenged Nebraska’s ban on gay men and lesbians becoming foster parents. One of the couples — and the five children they adopted out of foster care in California, where they previously lived — were the subject of a documentary a few years ago. Read my interview with the filmmaker and see a trailer after the jump, and learn more about the dads who are clearly continuing to do good for their family and others.
The New York City Administration for Children’s Services has launched a new, citywide campaign for adoptive and foster parents, including LGBT parents and those affirming of LGBT youth.
A new study from the U.K. found that gay and lesbian adoptive families are as successful as straight ones—another piece of “we could have told you that” research, perhaps, but nevertheless invaluable for convincing those who need further convincing about these things.
Any Day Now, the new feature film starring Alan Cumming and Garret Dillahunt as a gay couple in the 1970s who foster a teenager with Down Syndrome, is a refreshing reminder that LGBT families have a long history of coming together in unexpected ways, against the odds. Other recent fictional portrayals of LGBT parenting have focused on upper-middle class families, deliberately becoming parents and secure in their parental rights. Not so here.
Foster children do equally well no matter the sexual orientation of their parents, a new study has found. While many of us might have guessed as much (or known from the evidence of our own lives), research like this continues to provide necessary hard evidence to convince courts, politicians, and others that our families deserve to be treated with equal respect and legal recognition.
Lots of good stuff this week, including some great personal stories as well as much-needed research on LGBT families of color. Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Conceiving Family, a documentary that follows five same-sex couples in Canada along the path to parenthood, is ironically named—all of the couples adopt, rather than biologically conceive, to bring children into their families.
Over 100,000 children in the U.S. are awaiting foster or adoptive homes. The non-profit RaiseAChild.US wants to help them. On March 27, the organization announced it is partnering with the Human Rights Campaign Foundation on a pilot project to recruit LGBT foster and adoptive parents.
