Donaldson Institute Promotes Gay Adoption

The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute is a well respected authority on adoption issues which has provided unbiased research in this area for decades before the issue of gay adoptions came to the fore. It reports the consensus figure that 119,000 children are in the foster care system who are candidates for adoption and about 20,000 of these are being matched with potential adoptive parents.

As the Donaldson Institute summary states:

It is a mantra of political rhetoric, a guiding principle of professional policy and practice, and an explicit goal of our nation's laws and practices: Every child deserves to live in a permanent, loving home. Yet tens of thousands of boys and girls remain mired in the foster care system, unable to return to their original families and without realistic prospects of being adopted.

The summary continues:

At the same time, agencies and attorneys report the number of gay and lesbian adults expressing an interest in adopting these children is growing. This reality raises hopes among many child welfare professionals and policy-makers, who see a new pool of prospective parents for children who need them. But it also generates controversy and criticism among others, who are concerned about the consequences of permitting adoption into families headed by gay or lesbian parents.

Among its principle findings, the report concludes:

Against a backdrop of increasing public acceptance, social science research concludes that children reared by gay and lesbian parents fare comparably to those of children raised by heterosexuals on a range of measures of social and psychological adjustment.

Laws and policies that preclude adoption by gay or lesbian parents disadvantage the tens of thousands of children mired in the foster care system who need permanent, loving homes.

The full report can be found here (pdf file).