Adoption ban targets gay couples, critics say
A new Arkansas law that bars unmarried adults from adopting or fostering children puts the spotlight on same-sex parenting.
Reporting from Fayetteville, Ark. — Anne Shelley and Robin Ross are unwinding after a jam-packed day of ferrying 4-year-old daughter Eva Mae from preschool to ice skating lessons to speech therapy.
"It's pretty much your mundane American family," said Shelley, 46, over a dinner of barbecue at their home near the Ozark Mountains.
But not everyone sees their domestic situation that way.
Arkansas residents recently voted to ban anyone "co-habitating outside of a valid marriage" from being foster parents or adopting children, as did Shelley and Ross, 52.
Child welfare experts say that the initiative was ostensibly written to prohibit any unmarried couples from adopting or becoming foster parents, but that the measure's real objective is to bar same-sex couples from raising children -- even if it means that youths in need of homes have to wait longer.
"We don't have enough quality homes as it is, and now we're going to place more restrictions?" asked Susan Hoffpauir, president of the Arkansas Chapter of the National Assn. of Social Workers. "A lot of us are still shell-shocked by this."
Although the battle over California's gay marriage ban which passed last month, has grabbed headlines, it is same-sex parenting that is heating up as the next skirmish in the nation's culture wars. Last week, a Florida judge struck down that state's decades-old law preventing gays and lesbians from adopting.
Florida had been the only state with a law specifically disallowing adoption by gays, although they were allowed to be foster parents. In Utah, only heterosexual, married couples can adopt. North Dakota law permits adoption agencies to rule out prospective parents based on religious or moral objection.
Conversely, in Illinois, prospective foster and adoptive parents can be single or married, and the state Department of Children and Family Services cannot use sexual orientation as a basis for exclusion.
Still, many Americans are opposed to placing children in gay households, and social conservatives hope the issue will rally voters in the same way that same-sex marriage brought them to the polls on Nov. 4.
In Arkansas, roughly 3,700 children are in state custody -- taken from their homes because of abuse or neglect. Of those, 960 kids, whose average age is 8 1/2 , are immediately available for adoption, said Julie Munsell of the state Department of Human Services. And of the 1,100 foster homes, one-third are headed by single adults.
