My Mother's Day wish is for an end to unfair adoption laws

by Akilah Monifa
This year, my partner and I will celebrate our second Mother's Day together, and we are grateful to our daughter, to each other and to our families. We adopted our daughter as a simultaneous same-sex adoption. We are fortunate to live in California where such adoptions are allowed.Unfortunately, many lawmakers and others in our society discriminate against lesbian, bisexual and transgendered mothers. Some women find it more advantageous to stay in the closet about their identity rather than risk losing, or being threatened with losing, parental rights. Some fear never being able to become parents at all because of unfair adoption laws.Florida, Utah and Mississippi currently ban same-sex adoptions, while only six states and the District of Columbia expressly permit them. The remaining states have no express laws regarding same-sex adoptions, although some states deny anyone who is not legally married the right to adopt.Participation in foster care is similarly off-limits in many states and counties, which place limits on who can be a caregiver based on identity, rather than competency. While hundreds of thousands of children nationwide await placement through a foster-care or adoption system, they are prevented from entering loving homes because of laws fueled by ignorance and bias.These laws fail to recognize that millions of children are being raised by so-called nontraditional families, including single parents, unmarried couples and extended families, as well as by gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered people, according to the recent census.Good news recently emerged when the American Academy of Pediatrics, the nation's largest pediatricians' group, called for legislation that would allow gays and lesbians to adopt their partner's children, known as second-parent adoption. The academy estimates that more than 9 million children in the United States have at least one gay or lesbian parent.What's more, the American Psychological Association recently published a report saying that "there is no evidence to suggest that lesbians and gay men are unfit to be parents, or that psychological development among children of gay men or lesbians is compromised in any respect relevant to that among offspring of heterosexual parents."This confirms what I already know. We are proud mothers who are also lesbians. For us, what really matters is our family, and that our family is protected under the law.This Mother's Day, like every day, we will celebrate being together and refuse to live with the fear that unfair laws could one day pull us apart.
May 2, 2002