April 11, 2011

Whose decision is it anyway?

It is 2011, right? Yet lawmakers of several states continue to fight policy changes that may allow same sex couples to foster or adopt. Many faith based agencies prohibit same sex adoption based on their belief that marriage/parents should be a man and a woman. However, most of these agencies allow single women and men to adopt. But that really isn’t the point. Our agency allows the birth parents to decide on what type of family they want for their child. I would like to think the faith based agencies afford the same to their birth parents. Many of our birth parents specifically request a same sex couple or a single person. It seems that state law or Christian law shouldn’t dictate whether or not this is okay. If the woman placing her baby for adoption is comfortable with a same sex couple, what is there to discuss? An adoption ban in the state of Arkansas that went into effect in 2008 was struck down by the Arkansas Supreme Court calling the ban unconstitutional. Good for Arkansas. There are still states that either have legislative adoption bans on same sex couples or adoption and foster care policies that do not include sexual orientation as part of the anti-discriminatory clause, therefore preventing same sex couples to adopt or foster. Again, the decision regarding what adoptive family a birth mother chooses is not the agencies, it is the birth mother’s and based on the principal of religion, these agencies shouldn’t be allowing singles to adopt either. It is time lawmakers and agencies stop deciding who is adequate to parent and use other measures to determine who should be approved to adopt and leave the decision where it should be, with the birth parents.