A growing number of gay parents are adopting children, census data reveals, despite persistent legal barriers prohibiting same-sex couples from receiving many of the federal benefits afforded to opposite-sex couples:
About 19 percent of same-sex couples raising children reported having an adopted child in the house in 2009, up from just 8 percent in 2000, according to Gary Gates, a demographer at the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law at the University of California-Los Angeles.
“The trend line is absolutely straight up,” said Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, a nonprofit organization working to change adoption policy and practice. “It’s now a reality on the ground.” […]
Most of the legal obstacles facing gay couples intending to adopt stem from prohibitions on marriage, according to the Family Equality Council, an advocacy group for gay families. In most states, gay singles are permitted to adopt.
One of the ironies here is that the legal obstacles are advanced and promoted by the very same people who claim to work on behalf of family values and stronger families. But when it comes to same sex couples and their children, these groups would prefer that they have no legal obligations or protections. It’s a head-in-the sand mentality that pretends that these families don’t exist, when in reality they’re only growing.