All You Need Is Love: Gay Interracial Adoption

By Keith Boykin, in sexuality
Saturday, June 1 2002, 11:17AM

Originally posted on Gay.com

A new film called "Daddy and Papa" looks at the issue of gay men adopting black children. Since many of these gay men are white, is transracial gay adoption a good thing?

Many African Americans already have issues with transracial adoption, and many heterosexuals have problems with gay adoption. Combine the two and you have a powerfully controversial issue.

50,000 black children out there

According to the federal government, more than 50,000 African-American children are available for adoption. Many are being selected by gay men such as Johnny Symons, who made the "Daddy and Papa" documentary.

The arguments against transracial and gay adoption are not always based on prejudice. Opponents of the two types of adoptions tend to cloak their words in the familiar paternalistic language of "the best interest of the child." And arguably, a child might be more comfortable or even better off in a culturally familiar environment than in a nontraditional family. But that's as far as the logic goes.

What's also clear is that all children are better off with a loving family than without a family at all. Those who argue for racial purity and sexual orientation litmus tests in adoption should explain how they plan to take care of the 50,000 black kids who need adoptive parents. It's not fair to the children to hold their happiness hostage to someone else's politically motivated agenda.

"The gay community is about creating your own family, and this is what we are doing," filmmaker Symons told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer recently. Symons is not alone.

Some in the community now refer to a "gayby boom," and a Kaiser Family Foundation survey last fall found that 8 percent of the self-identified GLBT adults it interviewed had children under age 18 living with them. In 1995, the National Opinion Research Center estimated that between 1 million and 9 million American children have at least one lesbian or gay parent, according to the Washington Post. That was seven years ago. No doubt, the numbers have grown significantly since then.

Concerned about cultural genocide?

I have always supported the idea of matching black children with black parents. In a world where racism is still a problem and polls show that white people tend not to see it when black people do, it's clear that racial differences color the way we see the world.

In 1972, the National Association of Black Social Workers announced its opposition to transracial adoption, calling it a form of "cultural genocide." Whether or not that's true, there are simply not enough black adults who are adopting who can fill the need. Even if you accept the social workers' argument, the answer is to develop more black adoptive parents rather than to block willing white parents from adopting children. Forcing the children to languish in foster care is not a solution. It's a political cop-out.

The same principle of placing children in a culturally familiar and supportive environment would hold true with gay adoption, but matching children with parents is a little more difficult in this setting. Should gay parents only adopt gay children and straight parents only adopt straight children? Many children don't even know their sexual orientation.

Rigid rules don't work

The gay-straight example makes it easier to understand why rigid rules, theories and formulas don't always work in adoption. In theory, a gay parent may be more sensitive to a gay child's needs, but the gay child may still yearn for a "traditional" family. And there's no guarantee that a gay parent will better equip a gay child for life than a straight parent would.

Similarly, a black parent may, in theory, provide a more culturally nurturing environment for a black child. But this, too, is not a guarantee. If the goal is to provide an "authentic" cultural experience to the child, it's not clear that same-race adoption will always achieve it. After all, some white parents might be more connected to the black community than some black parents are. And some children of color need less cultural support than others.

The ambiguities and conflicts in the logic argue for a sensitive, measured, case-by-case approach to adoption. In all cases, the goal should be to seek the best interest of the individual child -- not a stereotypical child, but the actual child involved. Rather than obsess over race, class and sexuality, we should focus on placing children in a safe, comfortable, loving environment.