CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- The American Academy of Pediatrics has endorsed homosexual adoption, saying gay couples can provide the loving, stable and emotionally healthy family life that children need.
The new policy focuses specifically on gaining legally protected parental rights for gay "co-parents" whose partners have children, but it also could apply to gay couples who want to adopt a child together, said Dr. Joseph Hagan Jr., chairman of the committee that wrote the policy.
Citing estimates suggesting that as many as 9 million U.S. children have at least one gay parent, the academy urged its 55,000 members to take an active role in supporting measures that allow homosexual adoption.
An academy report, based on related research, says "there's no existing data to support the widely held belief that there are negative outcomes" for children raised by gay parents, Hagan said.
"Denying legal parent status through adoption ... prevents these children from enjoying the psychologic and legal security that comes from having two willing, capable and loving parents," the policy says.
Critics say the nation's largest pediatricians' group relied on flawed data and is meddling in a political issue.
"It's a group of pro-homosexual people ... who want to further tear down the one-man, one-woman relationship in America," said the Rev. Louis Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, a Christian lobbying group. He called the policy irresponsible and "a disservice to medicine."
But the academy says it's crucial for pediatricians to get involved because gay households are becoming more prevalent and doctors are increasingly confronted with related issues.
Gay partners often are the primary caretakers, but without parental rights they have no legal say in matters as simple as granting doctors' permission to give a child a shot, said Dr. Barbara J. Howard, an assistant pediatrics professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center who helped draft the policy.
Also, children in gay households may lack health insurance if the family's only breadwinner is a gay parent without parental rights, Hagan said.
In addition, gay partners lacking parental rights may lose visitation or custody battles when a couple separates or one partner dies, depriving children they've helped raise of future contact, Howard said.
"It's not a political issue," Howard said. "This is an issue regarding the well-being of the child."
The policy is published in the February issue of the academy's medical journal, Pediatrics.
The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the American Psychological Association also support homosexual adoption.
Steven Drizin, an attorney with Northwestern University's Children and Family Justice Center, said the academy's stance will make a tremendous difference in legal battles involving gay adoption.
"The stamp of approval from a widely respected and mainstream organization ... will go a long way to further the movement throughout courts and legislatures," Drizin said.
Nationwide, about half the states have allowed second-parent gay adoptions, where one partner already is a legal parent, said Patricia Logue, an attorney with the gay rights advocacy group Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.
A handful of states have prohibitive statutes. Florida bans any homosexual from adopting, while bans in Utah and Mississippi affect gay couples but not gay individuals, said Lisa Bennett of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group.
Research cited in the academy's report includes a study published last year suggesting that children with gay parents are more open to considering homosexual activity than those raised in heterosexual homes, although not more likely to be homosexual as adults.
Gay rights opponents say that study supports their contention that being raised in a gay family is harmful.
But the academy's policy statement says "there is no basis on which to assume that a parental homosexual orientation will increase likelihood of or induce a homosexual orientation in the child."
Hot-button issues aren't new for the academy, which also has supported gun control and banning television for children under 2, and opposed mandatory disclosure to parents when patients are considering abortion.
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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Paediatricians Support Gay Adoption
by Paul
Johnson
365Gay.com International News Editor in Washington
February 4, 2002
Washington: In a report to be released today the the American Academy of Paediatrics will announce its support for adoption by gay and lesbian couples.
The report says that children with parents who are gay have the same advantages as children with heterosexual parents.
Legal "co-parent" status for gays would promote children's best interests, says paediatrician Joseph Hagan Jr., chair of the panel that authored the new APA policy.
The AAP report is based on a series of studies over the past several years on the children of gays and lesbians. Those studies showed that gay and lesbian parents are often more nurturing than heterosexual parents, that the children of gays and lesbians (adopted or birth children) are inclined to be more accepting of people than children reared by straights.
Few states in the US permit gay and lesbian couples to adopt. The AAP report will provide a strong argument to overturning the bans.
"We're talking rights and responsibilities that provide long-term security for the child," Hagan says. The heterosexual pattern "is the gold standard, and right now we're in the bronze age for gay and lesbian families."
The policy advises paediatricians to lobby legislatures and speak out in judicial hearings.
But, the conservative Focus on the Family, has already denounced the report. A statement from the group's "child psychologist", William J. Maier said: "It seems clear that the American Academy of Paediatrics has submitted to the will of homosexual activists within its ranks -- at the expense of scientific honesty and the very children it seeks to serve."
Focus on the Family said Maier holds a Psy.D. and disputes the studies on which the AAP based its report.
"Studies on this topic are fraught with methodological flaws, motivated by political agendas and ultimately offer no scientific justification for this hazardous recommendation," said Maier.
In December, 2001, the American Medical Association adopted a resolution encouraging the development of domestic partner health care benefits in the public and private sector. (See article below)
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Domestic Partner Benefits 'Good
Medicine'
Mary Ellen Peterson
365Gay.com Newscenter in Los
Angeles
December 6, 2001
San Francisco: The American Medical Association has adopted a resolution encouraging the development of domestic partner health care benefits in the public and private sector.
AMA's House of Delegate Resolution, "Equity in Health Care for Domestic Partnerships," would "support equity of pre-tax health care benefits for domestic partnerships, . (and) support legal recognition of domestic partners for hospital visitation rights and as the primary medical care decision-maker."
According to Census 2000, there are 601,209 same-sex unmarried partner households in the United States. And it appears that the American public's support of domestic partnership benefits is growing. The November 2001 Kaiser Family Foundation report indicated that 70 percent of the general public support employers providing health insurance benefits for same-sex domestic partners.
The AMA, the nation's largest and most powerful organization of physicians, passed the resolution largely at the urging of the AMA Medical Student Section as well as the ongoing support of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association.
"We're encouraged by the actions of the AMA," said GLMA President Christopher E. Harris, MD, Nashville, Tenn. "We have long held that the rights and responsibilities accorded to married couples should be conveyed to same-sex couples as well. The AMA, by passing this resolution - as they have others that support civil rights restoration for our population - is paving the way for greater equity in our nation's health care system."
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