Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site well.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!lll-crg!well!rooter 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.