For gay parent Dan Cutler, trips to the mall sum up a major challenge for raising his daughters.
“They are twins. They are not same race as us, and we are two men. We got a lot of questions like: ‘Are they yours?’ And my reaction, but I normally don’t say is, ‘No, I stole them.’ I am like, ‘What do you mean, are they yours?’” said Cutler, director of learning communities for student affairs at Syracuse University and the adoptive father of African-American twin daughters.
Gay adoption has long been legal in New York tate. But it has returned to the national spotlight as the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether same-sex couples are entitled to same legal benefits to the same legal benefits as male-female couples in marriage. The Court is expected to rule on the issue in June.
Critics of gay marriage often raise questions about the welfare of children in families with same-sex parents. Supporters of gay marriage, and many adoptive gay parents, argue that children in gay families are no different than those in straight families. Instead, many gay partners and their supporters call for changes in law and culture to improve the lives of gay families.
“There are different types of family. It is more about how you are going to love, raise your children and support them,” said gay parent Cutler.
Consider these facts about gay adoption:
- Nationally, 65,000 children lived with same-sex parents, according to 2010 United States Census Bureau.
- 53 percent U.S. citizens support gay adoption, while 39 percent oppose it, according to pollingreport.com, an independent, non-partisan research organization focusing on American public opinion.
- Gay couples and their families are not entitled to the same tax breaks as traditional male-female couples and families, which is at the heart of the cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
- Only two states – Utah and Mississippi – still make gay adoption illegal.
Matthew McKeon is the president of OutLaw, a LGBT law and policy group at Syracuse University. He, like many other supporters of non-traditional families, paints a stark choice in what to do for children. “Regarding adoption, I would say that people change their mind once they understand that most kids in the foster care system simply want a stable home and parents who love them,” said McKeon.
Some birth parents prefer to have gay couples adopt their children, said, Shannon Whalen, a social worker adoption specialist at Adoption Star, an adoption agency in Buffalo, N.Y. She has helped match nearly ten gay couples with adoptive children, she said.
Sometimes a birth mother chooses gay male couples, she said, to maintain her own sense of connection to the child. In families of gay male couples, there is not a female to replace the birth mother, she said. That allows the birth mother, said Whalen, to think “she is still the mother.”
For Dan Cutler and his husband, adopting their children took a lot of patience and false starts. They spent almost a year trying to become foster parents and finally started thinking of adopting a child instead.
Cutler still remembers their first adoption try in Cortland. The adoption agency declined to match up children for them, saying that birth mothers from the small town will not consider to give their children to same-sex couples, Cutler said. The agency recommended trying in bigger cities. After waiting for almost 18 months, Cutler and his husband were successfully matched up with a 15-year old birth mother though Adoption Star in Buffalo.
“My husband and I, we always envisioned our life having kids eventually,” said Cutler. “Adoption is the only way to have a baby.”
(Ruth Jingnan Li is a graduate student in magazine, newspaper and online journalism.)
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