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From: rooter@well.UUCP (Brian Mavrogeorge)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Re: New kid on the block (gay adoptive parents)
Message-ID: <141@well.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-Aug-85 21:36:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: well.141
Posted: Tue Aug 20 21:36:42 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Aug-85 20:55:20 EDT
References: <133@well.UUCP> <977@rayssd.UUCP>
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
Lines: 56
Summary: gay adoptive parents


About 7 years ago we began attending the San Francisco Metropolitan
Community Church.  The minister and his lover had adopted a baby boy.
The adoption had been private - the mother was a lesbian who knew the
adoptive parents and it was all handled through attorneys.  That started
my spouse and I thinking about the possibility of having children.  Both
of us come from large families - 6 children in my family and 10 in his
and we both have strong "family" feelings.  About a year later the
minister and other gays and lesbians who had children appeared on a local
tv program and that convinced us that we would start the process and see
what happened.
  So I went to the City Social Services Department and started the application
process for adoption.  In the written parts of the application it appeared
as if I was a single man but during the interviews with the social worker
it became apparent that they were looking for two parent adoptions.  It was
made abundantly clear that two parent applicants had better chances at a
successful adoption than singles.  At that point I told the social worker
that indeed it was a 2 parent application and in my viewpoint the unit had
exactly the strengths he was looking for.  I also invited him to our Holy
Union (wedding) in a few weeks.  The process also includes a series of
meetings with other prospective adoptive parents covering the whole range
of child raising issues.  We joined a group consisting of 5 heterosexual
couples, two single women (neither a lesbian), and us.  It was an interesting
experience for all concerned.  Over the span of the meetings we found the
social agency and the classmates to be extremely supportive and one meeting
was spent exploring the issue of gay adoptive parents.
  The cruel reality of life was however, that all those people were matched
with children at the end of the classes and we were not.  Another group was
formed and all those people were matched but we were not.  At that point
our classmates organized a letter writing campaign and demanded a meeting
with the Director of Social Services.  Concurrently with that another gay
people had applied for adoption.  One of the people was experienced with
nursing and the other worked in a child care center.  While they could
hesitate on our "qualifications" the other couple's were impeccable.  As
luck would have it, that couple was matched with a child who has now been
officially adopted by them.
   After that adoption the agency cooled on our application and no other
gay couples were in the pipeline so to speak.  The agency's adoption staff
went through a 100% turnover.  Two years went by with us being on an emotional
rollercoast -- will they call this week?  maybe next week?.  We completed
all the forms and were certified as foster parents also.  We waited.  We
hoped.  After 2 1/2 years a social worker called to see if we were still
interested because he had noticed our file and it was pretty old.  (We had
gotten lost in the shuffle, he said.  Homophobia, I thought).  A week later
he called to see if were interested in adopting a fetal-alcohol syndrome
child.  No firms offer - just wanted to know if there was interest.  My
spouse and I talked it over and decided that we didn't believe the worker
and it was time to climb down off the roller coaster.  So we told him
no.  We never heard again.
  Summary - we didn't personally get a child but were able to be support
people for another gay couple as they went through the process.  Our
initial contact spurred the agency to have some internal training on
sexual minorities and training, we helped at least 5 couples work through
some gay bias.  It still hurts not succeeding.  I kid my spouse every
once in a while about reaching 40 with a barren womb.  Sometimes its
a remark with a hollow ring.