The majority of Brazil's gay boys and girls won't be adopting any time soon:

Brazil's lower house of Congress has rejected part of a pending adoption law that would have allowed gay couples to adopt children.

A Wednesday statement from the Chamber of Deputies says a measure giving gay couples the right to adopt was withdrawn because federal law doesn't recognize same-sex civil unions.

A proposal granting same-sex couples the same rights as married heterosexuals has stalled in Brazil's Congress for more than 10 years, prompting some states to take their own actions.

Southern Rio Grande do Sul state has permitted same-sex civil unions since 2004, and a Sao Paulo state court allowed a gay couple to adopt a 5-year-old girl in late 2006.

Brazil's Senate will now attempt to hash out the matter.

Barack Obama's same-sex love fest continues!

The presidential hopeful not only expanded his gay efforts this week, but the Senator also clarified his position on gay adoption and other family matters.

The statement comes after pro-gay Family Equality Council - spurred by John McCain's prohibitive comments last month - pressed Obama and his Republican rival on their respective positions.

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Arkansas' social conservatives suffered a bit of blow this week.

The Family Council Action Committee confirmed that it fell about 4,000 signatures short of the 61,794 needed to put a gay adoption ban on this November's ballot.

Though they missed their deadline, they've been given a 30 day extension to meet their mark:

Over the next month, the group's strategy is to redeem the signatures disqualified because of the notaries and gather an additional 10,000 signatures, [Family Council Executive Director Jerry] Cox said. The group will turn again to large churches to gather many of the remaining signatures, he said.

One reason the group has had difficulty gathering the signatures is because the measure is more complicated to explain than the anti-gay marriage amendment it successfully petitioned to put on the ballot four years ago, Cox said.

The Family Council group submitted about 200,000 signatures for that proposal and voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment that defined marriage as only between a man and a woman.

Cox has said the group's adoption initiative this year aims to "blunt a homosexual agenda."

What he meant to say, of course, is "deprive abandoned children of happy, healthy homes."

Barack Obama's campaign's going for John McCain's jugular.

Communications strategist Robert Gibbs sent out a press release yesterday highlighting the Republican presidential hopeful's recent flip-flops, including that gay adoption "clarification."

The self-professed candidate of “straight talk” and “experience” spent today changing his position on gay adoption, adopting Senator Obama’s position that we need more troops in Afghanistan after having resisted taking that position, flip flopping on whether he’d send U.S. or NATO troops (he actually offered three different explanations on where those additional troops would come from), and referring to a country that hasn’t existed since 1992 for the second time in two days.

That would be Czechoslovakia, which split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Some British Catholics are sticking to their homophobic guns.

Rather than complying with new anti-discrimination laws, Bishop Malcolm McMahon and his pious pals at the Catholic Children's Society - and other agencies - will no longer provide adoptions. Because archaic ideology's way more important than a child's happiness.

Said McMahon:

We have been coerced into this, I am not happy about it at all. The regulations have coerced the children’s society into going against the Church’s teaching, and we don’t wish to do that.

McMahon promises that his group will try their hardest to "merge" with another adoption agency. That way the sin's placed on someone else!

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Israel's Attorney General recently ruled that the state should allow gay couples to adopt children. A new case, however, proves the limits of the state's queer acceptance:

The state is opposed to allowing both partners in a lesbian couple to be registered as the biological mothers of their baby boy, even though one donated the egg and the other gave birth, the Tel Aviv District Attorney's Office informed Tel Aviv District Court in a response released Sunday.

The brief, submitted by the state's representative, Attorney Orly Manzur, came in response to a suit filed by the couple, whose names cannot be published, demanding that the Interior Ministry register both partners as the child's biological mothers.

"Before approving the request for artificial insemination, the Health Ministry made it clear that the woman who donated the egg would not [automatically] be considered the child's mother and that if she wanted to be, she would have to adopt him," Manzur told the court

The women argue that joint legality will benefit the child's mental and emotional stability, which sounds sound to us.

Some anti-gay activists are having a hard time scrounging for cash. Arkansas-based Family Council Action Committee, which hopes to ban gay adoption, sent out an urgent call asking supporters for more money.

That dough, they say, will go toward getting professionals to meet July's 92,000 signature deadline, which will guarantee the measure a place on November's ballot.

The Committee remains optimistic, but they've definitely got their work cut out for them. Arkansas Families First, formed in reaction to the group, has gathered more contributions since February than the Committee has since last July. The latter counts about $22,000 for its exclusionary efforts, while Families First has $32,000 for their fight.

France got a judicial spanking yesterday. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the nation discriminated against a lesbian teacher for denying her adoption claim.

A French court decided last year that the single woman couldn't have her dream child, particularly because of a lack of a "paternal referant".

The European Court said, however, that since heterosexual singles can adopt, there's no reason why the unnamed lesbian should have been refused.

• The NY Times' Ward Sutton had some fun with presidential campaign posters past and present.

• Britain's Anglican and Roman churches come together to protest lesbian in vitro legislation.

• United Nations takes on Amy Winehouse's cocaine "glamorization".

• Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency experiencing gayest season ever!

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Maine's 'mos celebrated today after the state's high court ruled that gays have the right to adopt guppies. The case began back in 2001 when two children were taken from their parents and handed over to a lesbian couple, attorney Ann Courtney and Marilyn Kirby, a counselor.

The ladies loved the kids so much, they filed adoption papers. A court refused their request, a refusal the women appealed. After months of battle, the a judge ruled today that it's in all childrens' best interest to grant queer couples adoption rights:

A joint adoption assures that in the event of either adoptive parent’s death, the children’s continued relationship with the surviving parent is fixed and certain.

A joint adoption also enables the children to be eligible for a variety of public and private benefits… Most importantly, a joint adoption affords the adopted children the love, nurturing, and support of not one, but two parents.

It also means the kids get twice the adults to resent during their teenage years. Hooray!