Family Equality (Civil Rights / The Progress Report)

[pinto]

Web original has links to numerous stories / reports on the issue. ~ pinto

Family Equality
by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Zaid Jilani, and Alex Seitz-Wald
April 26, 2010

Every year, thousands of children in the United States remain in foster care, looking to be adopted into loving families. In FY 2008, there were 55,000 adoptions, but another 123,000 children were still waiting. Many qualified, caring couples are eager to adopt but unfortunately banned from doing so -- because they happen to be in a same-sex relationship, making them unfit to be adoptive parents in some areas of the country. Florida is the only state to explicitly bar same-sex couples from adopting, although other states -- like Arkansas, Mississippi, and Utah -- have restrictions that attempt to keep children away from same-sex families.

Fortunately, in recent months, the tide has been turning as judges, parents, and professionals speak out against this immoral discrimination. As the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute has also pointed out, allowing same-sex couples to adopt is smart policy. The adoption of children from foster care saves between $3.3 and $6.3 billion nationally each year, and already, at least 4 percent of adopted children live with same-sex parents. Another 2 million gay and lesbian individuals may be interested in adopting, but "less than one-fifth of adoption agencies attempt to recruit adoptive parents from the GLB community."

Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) introduced the Every Child Deserves a Family Act in October 2009 that would ban entities receiving federal child welfare funds from "denying or delaying adoption or foster care placements based solely on the prospective parent's marital status or sexual orientation," and punish states and child welfare agencies that fail to end discriminatory practices.

http://pr.thinkprogress.org/

[TexasObserver]

1. Unfortunately, there are monetary reasons for keeping foster care high.

In some states, there are relationships between those who provide services on contract and those in the state or county who grant such contracts. It's a reason some foster homes stay in business and some don't. Like private prisons, they have beds to fill, and lobbying government gets those beds filled.

We need more adoption. Every kid deserves a home and a loving caregiver, one that is more than the foster child relationship provides.