Russia: American Gay Couples (Even Married Ones) Can’t Adopt
Better find yourself a beard if you’re looking to take home a Mikhail or a Svetlana.
Mowcow Times: “A new round of U.S.-Russian negotiations on child adoptions that started Wednesday in Moscow swiftly decided that same-sex U.S. couples would be banned from adopting Russian children. Only heterosexual married couples will be permitted to adopt children, as Russia does not recognize same-sex marriages, said Alina Levitskaya, a senior official at the Education and Science Ministry, Interfax reported. U.S. and Russian officials still must negotiate ways to monitor Russian children adopted by U.S. parents and the possible transfer of the children to new families if something goes wrong, Levitskaya said.”
This is a change in policy since they used to allow single women to adopt from Russia. It wasn’t uncommon that lesbian couples would have one partner go over as a single woman, adopt the child, then have the other partner do a readoption in the US. Perhaps the Russian government got wind of that.
It’s a shame, because as someone who adopted my daughter from Russia more than 12 years ago, i can attest to the number of children who are in their orphanage system (over 700,000), and the difficult fate which awaits those who age out of the system at 16 (nearly 1/3 commit suicide, the incarceration rate for boys is extremely high and a large number of the girls are recruited for the sex trade).
The Russian government is, unfortunately, very much currently run by nationalists and right-wingers and the Orthodox church once again has a strong impact. A lot of terrific children will be missing out on growing up with families. :-(
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When the USA drops its institutional bigotry against its own gay citizens, I’m sure I’ll be able to muster plenty of outrage about Russia’s shitty attitude toward gay US citizens.
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@the crustybastard: Dahling, what you’re missing in The Moscow Times version is what was said in other newspapers in Russian – American delegation has agreed to this tightening of policy. Russian-language sources keep quoting this Russian official saying that Americans have found a way to phrase the agreement in such a way as to prohibit same-sex couples from adopting without contradicting state laws.
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“a Mikhail or a Svetlana” – i guess this was supposed to be funny, but it just sounds like profiling.