Doctors support gay adoption

Pediatrics group urges new laws

By Jeremy Manier
Tribune staff reporter

February 4, 2002

Same-sex couples make good parents and should have full rights to adopt children, the American Academy of Pediatrics says in a sweeping report that brings the influential doctors' group into a stormy social and legal debate.

The report, which appears in Monday's AAP journal Pediatrics, is based on studies that show children whose parents are gay or lesbian fare as well as children raised by heterosexual parents, according to experts with the Elk Grove Village-based group.

The group is recommending that its 55,000 pediatricians advocate for laws allowing gays and lesbians to co-adopt with their partners, which opens the door for children to gain certain medical and legal protections.

An escalating battle over adoption by same-sex parents has been brewing in many states, including a federal court ruling last year that upheld Florida's ban on such adoptions. An Illinois law that would give preference in adoptions to heterosexual couples was killed in committee last year.

Groups that oppose such adoptions condemned the AAP's position, saying it injects politics into the question of children's welfare. Yet in Illinois and other states that do not prohibit such adoptions, experts say the issue has moved beyond politics as gay and lesbian parents inch closer to the mainstream.

The report maps new territory for the AAP, whose widely followed recommendations include childhood vaccinations and the proper sleeping position for infants. The main reason for the new policy is to seek stability for children who have homosexual parents, said Dr. Barbara Howard, a pediatrics researcher at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the committee formulating the report.

Most states do not have laws that address adoption by homosexuals, leaving their children vulnerable, Howard said. In some states, it is difficult for gays and lesbians to adopt the children of their partners--leading to possible custody battles if the legal parent dies.

Besides resolving custody matters, adoption by a co-parent ensures the child of support payments if the couple separate and health benefits if one parent is laid off.

"Our intent is to safeguard the rights of children who happen to have a homosexual parent," Howard said.

Conservative leaders who disagree with the report said it ignores the benefits children get from growing up with a mother and a father.

"This is part of a campaign to normalize homosexual relationships and accord them a status equivalent to marriage," said Ken Connor, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council. "Children should not be pawns in a political shell game."

Experts say the number of adoptions by same-sex couples has increased in recent years as many state courts have removed legal barriers. The AAP estimates that between 1 million and 9 million children have at least one homosexual parent, though exact figures are elusive because states such as Illinois do not track adoptions by same-sex parents.

For Miriam Pickus and Jane Jarcho, a Chicago couple with two adopted daughters, the decision to start a family was very personal.

Pickus and Jarcho, both lawyers who have been together for 12 years, said they talked about having kids for years before finally adopting their first daughter, Becca, now 5, from an orphanage in China. By the time they adopted 3-year-old Jodie two years ago, their lives had gained a new focus, built around comforting routines of diaper changes and bedtime stories.

"In many respects we are just like heterosexual families with their children," said Pickus, who works with the Chicago Commission on Human Relations. "Before having kids, one way I identified myself was as a gay person. Since then, I think of myself primarily as a parent."

Becca described her unconventional family in ordinary terms.

"That's my sister Jodie, that's my mom Pick and that's my other mom Jane," Becca said, lifting her head briefly from a coloring book.

`No significant difference'

Until the last decade, few studies had tracked how children fare with homosexual parents, experts said. But recent research on more than 300 children from such homes shows that they have normal intelligence, mental health and social skills, Howard said.

"There appears to be no significant difference between children raised by homosexuals or heterosexuals, even in sexual preference," she said.

One psychiatric journal's 1997 study of young adults with lesbian mothers showed that they were more likely to have at least a brief same-sex relationship than those who had heterosexual parents. "But in each group, similar proportions of adult men and women identified themselves as homosexual," the AAP report said.

Such studies do not resolve what Connor considers a central flaw in adoptions by homosexuals: the lack of a mother and father who can be role models and guide a child's development.

"Fathers masculinize their sons, mothers civilize them," Connor said. "It's a mistake to minimize their roles."

No study has found confusion about gender identity in children from same-sex households, the AAP report said.

Pickus and Jarcho were surprised by how easily their daughters picked up traditional feminine behavior.

"These two want to wear dresses and tights every day, and they want to be Cinderella," Jarcho said. "Anyone who's a parent can tell you there's nothing you can do about those sorts of things."

"We probably didn't have a stitch of pink clothing in this house before the kids came, and now it's everywhere," Pickus said.

Some studies suggest that same-sex households may confer some advantages on children, such as more tolerance of diversity, according to the AAP report. One study found that teachers perceived children of lesbian parents to be especially protective of younger children.

Howard conceded that many of the studies suffered from small sample sizes and the possibility of biased results--unhappy families seldom agree to take part in such research. Still, she said, "Most research on parenting doesn't have much better evidence than this."

Florida's law upheld

The question of whether homosexuals could care for children as well as married heterosexual couples could was central in last year's federal court ruling upholding Florida's ban on gay and lesbian adoption.

Florida's law dates from 1977, when singer Anita Bryant launched a campaign against homosexuality called "Save Our Children." Last August, U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King denied a challenge to the law by several gay foster parents, including a couple who won a foster parenting award from the agency that placed their children.

The plaintiffs plan to file an appeal in the case on Feb. 13, said their attorney Michael Coles, head of the American Civil Liberties Union's lesbian and gay rights project.

Coles said a consequence of the law is that it denies stable homes for children who may be difficult to place with heterosexual couples. Two of the three foster children being raised by Coles' clients, Steven Lofton and Roger Croteau, are HIV-positive.

Connor of the Family Research Council said the answer is to encourage adoption by heterosexuals.

"I can't think of any circumstances where it's in the best interests of a child to support or promote adoption by homosexuals," Connor said.

Only two other states prohibit same-sex adoptions. Mississippi bans same-sex couples from adopting children, and Utah limits adoptions to married heterosexual couples. New Hampshire lifted its ban on same-sex adoptions in 1999.

An Illinois Appellate Court in 1995 ruled that unmarried couples have the same adoption rights as other parents. Pickus and Jarcho were among the first of many same-sex couples spurred by the ruling to co-adopt.

"There are enough stresses on any family, gay or straight, without having to worry about legal wrangling if one of us died," Pickus said.