The Adoption Decision

There are a lot of choices when it comes to building a family. Sometimes it is difficult to get specific information because each family, each scenario is unique. The decisions you need to make are dictated by your own personal needs and the laws of the state in which you live.
For example:

My partner and I have no interest in surrogacy. For us it seemed an expensive way to create our family. Being the quiet and shy people we are, it took us a little while to warm up to the idea of open adoption. I can't imagine going through the surrogacy process. I understand why some folks pursue that path, but it just didn't feel right for us.

We also didn't feel emotionally prepared to take on foster kids, hoping to adopt them one day. It seemed unfair to secretly hope that their parents would screw up enough so that we could end up adopting their children. I simple cannot imagine having to give back a child after we've opened up our home and hearts to them.

And so adoption.

As a gay couple our options are limited in certain ways. International adoption is pretty much out of the question as most countries refuse to adopt to gays and lesbians. One way around that is to apply as a single person, but a majority of countries still require married (straight) couples. Some states in the U.S. have similar restrictions on wanting only married couples to adopt. Since most states don't allow gay marriage, by default they don't allow gays to adopt. Sneaky. Besides, I don't want to lie about my relationship to adopt a child.

Then you need to decide if you want to adopt independently through an attorney or use a full-service agency. The independent adoption route seemed like too much work for us. I know that sounds lazy, but it really felt a lot of responsibility that we just didn't think we were ready to take on. So we felt using an agency was the right choice for us.

Also, living in New York (as we do) we must follow the very strict rules governing out-of-state adoptions. We can only use approved agencies licensed by New York. This drastically reduces the number of agencies we can use. And of those agencies, we need to shy away from the Catholic-sponsored ones because most will not work with gay couples. (I haven't actually called or emailed these religious affiliated agencies to ask, but I have yet to see any language on their websites regarding gay adoptions or see photos of LGBT clients on their sites. Besides, the relationship between gays and the Church is not a positive one.)

So that's how we decided on adoption and how our pool of agencies was whittled down to about 4 or 5 we wanted (or were allowed) to work with. As of writing this, my partner and I are still deciding on which agency to choose. But I'll save that for another post.