Views on gay adoption

Oklahoma and Kansas recently passed laws that religious adoption agencies do not have to work with same-sex couples if they don't want to. That's a law that's already on the books in seven other state. The foster care system in this country has been home to about half a million children every year for the last 10 years. There's a debate happening about who has the right to take care of those children permanently. About 10 states have made it legal to turn away same-sex couples who want to adopt.

Ordered logit multilevel models reveal that age, education and religiosity have a weaker association with attitudes towards adoption than with attitudes towards homosexuality in general. In contrast, at the contextual-level, the presence of laws and policies ensuring rights for the LGBTI population is positively associated with both attitudes to a similar extent. However, models with random slopes and cross-level interactions reveal important differences in the way critical individual-level characteristics operate in different contexts. In particular, across countries, youth, higher educated and secular respondents display more positive attitudes towards homosexuality regardless of whether their country recognizes legal rights to LGBTI people. Instead, these individual characteristics are associated with positive attitudes towards adoption by same-sex couples only in countries that are more progressive in terms of LGBTI rights. Related works: This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title. Is your work missing from RePEc?

Last week, I read an article announcing the passage of a new bill in the Tennessee Senate that would allow adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples who hope to adopt a child. If passed, this bill would prevent hundreds of loving families from embracing a child in need and providing a loving and stable environment for a child who otherwise would never know the love of a parent. Children who grow up without families face many challenges. Any psychologist will tell you that healthy childhood development depends on many factors.

Judge W. Mitchell Nance, who starts court each day by requiring everyone to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, said in an order this week that he would recuse himself from all adoptions involving gay people. Nance cited a judicial ethics rule that says a judge must disqualify himself when he has a personal bias or prejudice. More: One family's journey with gestational surrogacy. Supreme Court ruled in that all states must permit same-sex marriage.