In a new policy statement issued this month, the widely respected American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) formally declared its support of homosexual adoption as a way of protecting the best interest of children living in homosexual families. Citing two decades of studies suggesting that children of gays and lesbians are as psychologically and socially healthy as children of heterosexual parents, the AAP is now advocating that gays and lesbians be given the right to adopt the children of their partners. According to the AAP, children of gays and lesbians should not be denied the right to the “financial, psychological and legal security that results from having both parents legally recognized.”
Studies indicate that as many as 9 million children in the U.S. have a gay or lesbian parent. Legal adoption would provide these children more security by guaranteeing the second parent custody rights if the other parent were to die, ensuring children receive the best possible health benefits from either parent, allowing children to receive Social Security survivors benefits and other appropriate entitlements, and establishing the legal right for children to receive child support benefits from either parent if the parents should separate. Currently, only seven states in the nation permit gay and lesbian adoption.
The American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and National Association of Social Workers have all come out in favor of homosexual adoption.
