Same sex couples + adoption

You raise some excellent points. First off, it is the right of every sovereign nation to make laws that it deems necessary to protect its most vulnerable citizens. Whether you and I like or don't like the laws that a foreign country makes, we do have to abide by them when we deal with that country. You and I might feel that it's better for a child to have a single parent or gay parents or a parent who uses a wheelchair than to have that child grow up in an orphanage. But if the foreign country happens to decree that adoptive parents must be married, heterosexual, and able-bodied, it is the country's right to do so. Agencies and individuals can work behind the scenes to change attitudes -- for example, showing how prosperous single women or lesbian couples can become in our country -- or to advocate in a particular case. They don't have the right, however, to decide that since they don't agree with the foreign laws, they don't have to obey them. Violating foreign laws, or even going too public with criticism of those laws, can also have undesired repercussions. When an American life insurance company aired a TV ad showing two Caucasian women in an airport with an Asian baby, in an effort to court the relatively affluent American gay market, it occasioned much discussion in the media. When the Wall Street Journal -- very insensitively -- actually called the China Center for Adoption Affairs in Beijing to get its opinion of the ad and of adoption by gay and lesbian people, the folks there went ballistic. They opposed, first off, the use of adoption in an ad for insurance, saying that adoption was too "sacred" to be commercialized in this way. But they also made it clear that homosexuality is considered a psychiatric problem and socially deviant behavior in China, and that if they found out that American agencies were submitting dossiers of gay and lesbian people, those agencies would lose their right to place children from their country. When a well known physician, very open about her orientation and specializing in the health issues of internationally adopted children, adopted a son from Vietnam with her female partner, she somehow managed to avoid problems with the Vietnamese government. She has a foundation that assists foreign orphanages, so that may have impressed the government. But when she agreed to an interview in People Magazine, in which she spoke at length about her partner and her son, the Vietnamese government made it very clear that it would NOT allow further adoptions by gays and lesbians. As you said so well, when an adoption program closes or becomes much more restrictive, the people who suffer the most are the children. And we who believe strongly in adoption simply have to remember that, and recognize that trying to circumvent laws for our personal benefit can ultimately harm hundreds or thousands of kids. Still, some agencies do manage to advocate well for gay and lesbian people. And in many cases, they do so without violating laws or sensitizing the foreign government to the issue. As a straight person, I am not particularly tuned in to sources of information in the gay/lesbian community. However, I do know that in most American cities that have a sizeable gay/lesbian population, there are attorneys, social workers, and others who make it their business to help gay and lesbian people adopt. And, nowadays, with the Internet, people who do NOT live in places with a large gay/lesbian community can often find the information they need. I do believe that, as non-Americans and lesbians, your chances of adopting from the U.S. are slim. And most of the countries currently open to adoption are not terribly open on gay/lesbian issues. But the fact is that there are probably options for you, unless your own country forbids you to bring a child into your country. Gays and lesbians DO adopt. Sharon