Gay Marriage

If there are un adopted children  without parents in foster homes, why should we exclude a certain percentage of adopters (gays) from the adoption system. ---MIZZAY

http://www.lifelongadoptions.com/about    LifeLong Adoptions
http://www.lifelongadoptions.com/gay-lesbian-adoption

They are an adoption service that facilitates adoptions. They "work with prospective gay and lesbian parents throughout the United States; however, the adoption process varies from state to state."

"Indeed, LifeLong Adoptions is a place where each client’s individuality, beliefs, religion, ethnicity, nationality, marital status, and sexual orientation are embraced and respected."

They believe:
- every child deserves a LifeLong family.
- each Adoptive Parent should receive the highest quality of service
MAINLY - believe that couples, singles and non-traditional families all have the right to adopt.

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http://library.adoption.com/articles/gay-adoption.html

"New Jersey was the first state to specify that sexual orientation and marital status cannot be used to discriminate against couples who are seeking to adopt."

"According to the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, on September 30, 1999, 127,000 children in the public child welfare system were waiting to be adopted. The median age of children in this group was 7.7 years, and many had spent more than 36 continuous months in foster care. That same year, 46,000 children were adopted from public child welfare agencies. Some were infants. Some were teenagers. Many were Latino. Many more were white or black. Adoptive parents were equally diverse-31% were single women, 2% were single men, and 1% were unmarried couples. Among these adoptive parents were gay and lesbian individuals and partners."

"A limited number of states, however, absolutely preclude gays and lesbians from adopting. Most notable among them is Florida, where a federal judge in August upheld the state's 1977 law banning gay adoption."

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http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/an-end-to-gay-adoption-bans/

"At the moment, three states — Florida, Mississippi and Utah — explicitly prohibit gay couples from adopting, and a similar law is being challenged in the Arkansas courts. Twenty-nine states, plus the District of Columbia, on the other hand, explicitly permit such adoptions, and the remainder have imprecise language in their adoption statutes. The reason most often given by opponents of single-sex adoption is that children do best with a mother and a father."

 "The University of Virginia and George Washington researchers studied preschoolers who were adopted at birth by 27 lesbian couples, 29 gay male couples and 50 heterosexual couples."
          "What did they find? That it’s the quality of the parenting that creates a psychologically healthy child, not the sexual orientation of the parents."