The Fight Is On to Let Gay Families Adopt Kentucky Kids

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Add Kentucky to the gay adoption battleground. The state where McDonald’s customers are called “faggots” is also home to new legislation that’s trying to keep gay parents from adopting. Or, as the bill states, children would only be put in adoptive or foster homes with those who “are not cohabiting outside of a marriage that is legally valid in Kentucky.” But, two pieces of good news.

First, if the legislation passed, children already placed with gay families before it was signed into law wouldn’t be affected.

And second, gay rights activists are involved to keep the bill from going on the books.

Chris Hartman, head of The Fairness Campaign, said the legislation unjustly rules out potentially good parents just because they’re not married in the traditional sense.

“We literally can’t afford to play politics with these children’s lives,” Hartman said. “Hundreds of children are awaiting adoption each day in Kentucky, and it should be our politicians’ jobs to find them a home, not to categorically eliminate potential loving parents with an anti-gay political attack.”

But how’s this for a rebuttal?

David Edmunds, a spokesman for The Family Foundation, said the legislation isn’t discriminatory toward gay and lesbian couples because it also bars unmarried heterosexual couples from adoption and foster care.

“Kentucky needs to find the best homes possible for children,” Edmunds said. “This is not about an adults’ rights issue. It’s about what is in the best interest of our children.”

Of of this comes on the heels of a Kentucky court of appeals 3-0 ruling that prohibited judges from granting step-parent adoption rights to gay couples — making step-parent adoptions available to only to someone legally married to the biological mother or father of the child. And because gays can’t marry each other in Kentucky, well, you get the idea.

[Kentucky/Lexington Herald-Leader]

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