Celebrate, protect all Michigan families; pass second-parent adoption law in 2009

Last week, the Michigan Supreme Court deemed Thanksgiving Michigan Adoption Day, aiming to finalize hundreds of adoptions within the state. The hundreds will come from over 4,000 children in the state's foster care system with the goal of adoption.
The celebratory day, however, belies one truth about Michigan's supposed push for adoptions: The barriers to same-sex adoption.
Overshadowed by marriage amendments, same-sex adoptions have come up recently in several states, including one defeat and one triumph for LGBT Americans.
On Nov. 4, citizens of Arkansas voted overwhelmingly in favor of banning single-parent adoptions. This law will affect not only gays and lesbians, but any single person who wishes to adopt, leaving hundreds to thousands of kids with limited options for placement with a family.
Then, on Nov. 25, a Miami, Fla. circuit court struck down a state law banning lesbians and gay men from adopting, granting adoption rights to a gay man raising two foster children with his partner. That law, in the books since the 1970s, is a huge victory in the way of adoption rights for LGBT families, albeit focused to one state.
With adoption and laws regarding same-sex parents in the spotlight, we at Between The Lines feel it's time to once again push for rights in our own state.
Though it's not currently illegal for LGBT people or single persons to adopt a child, there are social and legal barriers that make it difficult for our families to exist peacefully and with the safety afforded to one father-one mother families.
Many adoption agencies make it more difficult for openly gay and lesbian people to adopt. The Michigan Department of Human Services, according to the Coalition for Adoption Rights Equality, "does not encourage" adoption to LGBT couples, despite statements from, among others, the American Psychological Association that two-father and two-mother homes present no difference in terms of capability of raising a physically and mentally healthy child.
Second-parent adoption for LGBT couples remains non-existent. While there is no law banning people from becoming a legal parent of their partner's child, there is also no law mandating their legality. All court cases on the subject have been fruitless.
It has resulted in the separation of mothers and fathers from children they have raised with no pathway for legal action. Moreover, the absence of second-parent adoption has left many children without health care.
California's Proposition 8 has been in the limelight since Nov. 4. Though it is important, there are other issues at hand that also deeply affect LGBT families in negative ways.
Now is the time to act on our frustration and anger over the lack of protection from discrimination and equal rights in regard to adoption in the state of Michigan.
While our state's Supreme Court celebrates the finalized adoption of about 225 children over the past week, it's time to remind them that the number of children taken out of foster care and placed in happy, loving homes could be much, much higher if the barriers to adoption were removed for the LGBT community.