Collection Development "Gay Parenting": Building Rainbow Families

Celebrities like Melissa Etheridge, who had children with ex-partner Julie Cypher and sperm donor David Crosby, and Rosie O'Donnell, who adopted, have ushered gay parenting into the popular consciousness and helped it earn relative acceptance.

Only about a dozen states permit single gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered (GLBT) adoption and joint adoption, defined as an unmarried couple's petitioning the court to adopt a child who has been put up for adoption by the birth parent(s) or by the state.

Most states do allow single GLBT adoptions but haven't taken a formal stand on joint adoptions, a situation that makes it hard for gay couples to share legal rights regarding their children. (Florida, for the record, is the only state that has outlawed gay adoption, period.)

With so much red tape on the home front, numerous gay couples resort to international adoption, which can be faster. Still, the future parents in question must remain closeted throughout the entire process because no country will knowingly place a child in a gay household. In other words, only single-parent adoption is available; the other person can file for second-parent adoption after the child is safely in America. Foster parenting also offers gay couples a chance at parenthood, but the state retains legal guardianship.

More than 16,000 adopted children are living with a lesbian or gay parent. Significantly, same-sex couples raising adopted children are older, more educated, and have more economic resources than other adoptive parents. This is fortunate for the foster-care system because an estimated 14,000 foster children are living with lesbian or gay parents, which means that same-sex parents are raising three percent of foster children in America.

As well as providing loving homes for children in need, gay and lesbian parents have a monumental economic impact on society. For instance, a national ban on gay foster parenting could cost the federal government from $87 million to $130 million, which might cost individual states anywhere from $100,000 to $27 million (the figures vary according to state size and the number of children in foster care).

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