pete stark

[from the Children's Welfare League of America, Children's Monitor Online 3/14/10]

Congressman Pete Stark (D-CA) sponsored a briefing on Thursday, March 11, on his legislation, the Every Child Deserves a Family Act. The bill, H.R. 4806, prohibits states from discriminating in the placement of foster and adoptive children on the basis of sexual preference and allows federal funding to be cut off if such discriminatory practices are in place.

As part of the briefing, participants heard from several panelists including Martin Gill, an adoptive parent, who along with his partner of more than eight years has been raising two foster children since 2004. In 2008 a Florida court granted the adoption after hearing that it would be in the two children’s best interest. The state of Florida went to court to challenge the adoption and Gill is currently involved in a lawsuit against Florida’s law that automatically denies adoption by gays and lesbians. Gill was featured in the November/December edition of CWLA’s Children’s Voice magazine. Currently Florida is the only state with a statutory prohibition on adoptions by lesbian and gay parents. Gill told how the state had asked to place two foster children in his care six years ago in an emergency. The court case is scheduled for a late August hearing in an appeals court with the case expected to land in the Florida Supreme Court. CWLA weighed in on the earlier case through the filing of an amicus brief.

In addition to Gill, the panel included Leslie Cooper from the American Civil Liberties Union, who has been involved in the suit; Charlotte J. Patterson, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia; Gary J. Gates, senior research fellow at the Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law; and Uma Ahluwalia, director of the Department of Health and Human Services for Montgomery County, Maryland. Ahluwalia talked about the practice in both Montgomery County and the state of Maryland where such discrimination is not practiced. The other panelists refuted some claims that there is psychological and other forms of harm to children placed with gay or lesbian couples, and used research to argue that there is a potentially large pool of prospective adoptive parents available among couples who are gay or lesbian if discrimination is not practiced. Through the end of FY 2007 there were 133,000 children in the foster care system nationally awaiting placement in an adoptive home.