New Adoption Law Helps Gay Families

(Washington, D.C.) President Bush signed legislation Tuesday expanding government incentives that promote adoption, a move one LGBT advocacy group says will help gay families.

The law expands on 1997 legislation which pays a state $4,000 in federal money per child that is adopted, provided the state passes their placement requirements. Under this new expanded law, the state can receive an additional $4,000 for every child adopted over the age of 9, but again only if the state has met their adoption finalization numbers.

"In just five years, from 1998 to 2002, the states placed more than 230,000 children in adoptive homes, about the same number that had been adopted in the previous 10 years,'' the President said.

The law has received praise from Families Like Ours, a Seattle-based nonprofit group that advocates for gay and lesbian adoptive parents. Since the law will encourage more placements, it has the potential of being good news to gay and lesbian adoptive families, the group said.

“President Bush has been very good with his policies toward adoption relation issues in general,” said David Wing-Kovarik, Executive Director of Families Like Ours.

“Overall, this reauthorization will help place more children in families -- regardless of their structure—including those headed by gay or lesbian parents. Provided a state can meet the Federal Adoption Guidelines, this could be a long-term boost to the ailing foster care system. It does not however address the current needs of budget cutbacks and overworked caseworkers.”

According to a recently released study by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, Adoption by Lesbians and Gays, today public agencies are 83.3 percent more likely to place a child with a gay or lesbian family than they have been in the past. (story)

However even in the more progressive states, some workers are still finding non-traditional families to be unsuitable for the children on “their” caseload, Wing-Kovarik said. Some states have enacted protections prohibiting discrimination in adoption placement with gay and lesbian families. New York, New Jersey and California, for example have been very progressive making it illegal for public agencies to reject adoptive parents based on sexual orientation.

Currently there are more then 500,000 children in the foster care system nationally with as many as 126,000 awaiting adoption. While adoptive family placements have increased – including those to gay and lesbian families, the number of foster families available for children has seen a reduction.

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