US gay couples struggle to adopt

BOSTON, Sep 13: When Richard Smith and Rob Tan decided to adopt a child, the San Francisco couple looked to Guatemala rather than battle a US system that gay-rights advocates say discriminates against same-sex couples.

And even then, Smith and Tan had to hide their sexual preference to adopt a child.

Adoption is an arduous process for all prospective parents but same-sex couples say it is even tougher for them. Some are forced to lie about who they are. Others are only allowed to adopt older or troubled children who are hard to place.

Smith, a former Catholic priest who left the Jesuit order to pursue life as an openly gay man, temporarily went back into the closet and sought approval to adopt as a single parent to avoid being disqualified based on his sexual orientation.

Tan only became the child's second father in the eyes of the law after they brought the child to San Francisco and registered with the state of California.

The number of gay couples parenting children is growing. US Census data shows there were more than 161,000 families with children headed by gay couples in 2000 -- the first year such statistics were tracked.

Those figures fail to include single gay parents like David Christian Hamblin of Rochester, New York. It took him four years to persuade sceptical social workers to let him adopt as a single, gay parent.

When he finally won them over, they placed him with a particularly challenging case: Matthew, a child of a crack addict who was still wearing diapers at age 5, having been neglected by overburdened social-service agencies.

Hamblin embraced the child, setting up a home office so that he would be around when the boy came home from school.

''He has become an amazing young boy -- the light of my existence and the reason I get up every day,'' says Hamblin.

ADOPTING AS A COUPLE

Leigh Powers and Laura Patey exchanged vows in 1995, affirming their love in a Holy Union ceremony before a church congregation. They were legally married in 2004, when Massachusetts became the first and only US state to legalise same-sex marriage. By then they were seasoned parents, having adopted two children, Jessie and Alex, both when they were age 11 and had spent years in foster homes.

Massachusetts is one of a handful of US states that let gay parents jointly adopt. Others include California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and the District of Columbia.

The process was relatively easy for the couple, they say, because they were adopting older children who spent years in foster care.

''The thing that we always found most ironic is that people comment that gay and lesbian couples were not fit to be parents.

But the kids they direct us to are the ones who are most difficult to care for,'' says Patey.

''We don't think that being a gay or lesbian family is all that special,'' adds Powers. ''The neat part is being in a position to be a part of a young person's life. To be a mentor, a guide along the journey.'' Smith and Tan say their adoption was worth the trouble.

''When we went into this it was sort of a cerebral thing. It was 'This is a good thing to do. Lots of kids need homes,''' says Smith. ''What kind of blew me away was just how much fun it would be and how much joy it would bring.'' Those living the life say gay families are really not much different from those with heterosexual parents. But that is disputed vehemently by some social conservatives.

''Same sex unions deny children the vital relationship of either a mother or a father. That our public policies would sanction that position as the norm ... is unconscionable,'' says Evelyn Reilly of the Massachusetts Family Institute.

An article in July's journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics dismisses such assertions, citing medical and academic research studies conducted since the 1970s as showing that children raised by gay parents fare just as well as those raised by heterosexuals.

Ellen Perrin, a professor at Tufts University Medical School who helped write that article, says gay families will continue to move into mainstream American society.

''It isn't about whether these families will continue to exist,'' Perrin says. ''It is really about whether these families have all the protections that other families are afforded.''

Reuters