The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant (6 page)

Jill explained that women who place their children for adoption usually have a lot going for them:

“They've imagined futures for themselves, and a child doesn't fit into their plans at the moment. Playing a role in selecting a family for their child is powerful. The woman doesn't feel that she abandoned her child, or acted irresponsibly. Open adoption is about honesty, and about what's best for birth moms and their children.

“Open adoption means ongoing contact between birth mom and child, and between birth and adoptive families. Openness means no lies, and an adopted child who doesn't grow up wondering who his ‘real’ mom or dad is, or why they gave him up. If the child has a question about why his birthparents couldn't raise him, he can ask his birth mom.”

The agency believed open adoption was the best option for
adoptive couples, too, though not everyone in Lloyd Center's conference room seemed convinced.

Adoptive couples were the only people who lost something, and what they lost was a measure of control and autonomy. “ Traditional” closed adoption only came into being about fifty years ago, when adoption laws were rewritten all over the country. What had been open (and in many cases informal) arrangements were regulated and “closed,” with records being sealed to protect adopted children from the stigma of illegitimacy and single pregnant women from the stigma of premarital sex. Even now, when an adoption was finalized, the court permanently sealed the child's original birth certificate and issued a new one, with the adoptive parents' names listed on it as “father and mother.” This was how it was done everywhere, even in progressive Oregon.

(“I want to be listed as the father,” Terry whispered. “You're the one with birthin' hips.” If we'd been alone somewhere and Terry had taken my hips in vain, I'd have punched him in the shoulder. I wasn't sure how hitting would play in a room crawling with social workers who'd be assessing our fitness to parent, so I had to kick Terry under the table instead.)

Closed adoption also provided adoptive parents with something not every adoptive couple wanted though some did. Closed adoption made it possible for adoptive parents to pretend the child they'd adopted was their own biological child, and for many years adoptions were arranged to match the looks of adoptive parents and their adopted children to facilitate this pretense. Closed adoption made allowances for lies.

Needless to say, this was not something Terry and I could have taken advantage of even in a closed adoption. If we got our families and friends to play along, we could fool the kid for a few years, or longer if we home-schooled, but even the kid would catch on sooner or later. Two men can't make a baby.

But I could take comfort in knowing there was one fundamentalist Christian out there who thought Terry and I should be able to raise our children believing they popped out of our butts. I was interviewing a woman in Seattle who was trying to get books about gays and lesbians out of the schools. She felt homosexuality was something that only parents should discuss with their children, and that it was up to parents whether a child ever even
learned that such things as homosexuals even existed. I pointed out that she was arguing for the right of parents to keep their children ignorant; she responded brightly, “That's right, I am. That's my right as a parent. My children shouldn't know things I don't want them to know.”

I told her I was about to become a parent. Should I have the right to raise my child in complete and total ignorance of “such things” as heterosexuals?

“Oh, yes. You see, this isn't a gay or straight issue, or a Christian issue,” she said, reaching for common ground. “This is about parents' rights. If you have children, you should raise them how you see fit. If you don't want your children to know about heterosexuality, you shouldn't have to teach them about it.”

To make the telling of lies possible, the birth mother naturally had to disappear. Terry and I couldn't hide heterosexuality from our child if this woman was coming around asking to see her baby. Some women who placed their children for adoption through the agency did want to disappear, and were only doing an open adoption because they wanted a hand in selecting the family that adopted their baby.

“They care about their kids, and want them to be happy and well taken care of, which is why letting them play a real role in shaping their kid's future is just so right. Most of the women who come to this agency tell the counselors that if they couldn't do it this way—pick the family, have ongoing contact—they wouldn't place their kids for adoption. Some would raise them themselves, but most indicate they would have an abortion before doing a closed adoption.”

When abortion was declared a woman's constitutional right in 1973, the number of children available for adoption plummeted. Abortion is a tough choice for some women, but so is carrying a baby to term, giving birth, and then being told to pretend your baby died or didn't happen. Perhaps there are women who can walk away from a baby, and not wonder all their lives where that baby is or how it's doing. At least if she has an abortion, a woman doesn't have to wonder. She knows. Why pretend your baby “didn't happen” when you have the option of actually making your baby “not happen”?

* * *

We took a break, then listened to a presentation about the mountains of paperwork we'd all have to do in order to adopt. We learned about the home study and the other hurdles we'd have to jump before we could join a pool of couples for birth moms to select from. Then two birth moms were shown in and took seats at the conference table. We'd been talking about birth moms all afternoon, so actually laying eyes on two of them was like having Madonna and Cher join us.

The paranoia that plagued me earlier in the day had subsided, and I was feeling pretty at ease. We'd had a chance to ask a few questions, make eye contact with the other couples in the room, and be taken seriously. I wasn't feeling like one of “the gay guys,” but more like one of nine wannabe dads. Until the birth moms opened their mouths.

“It was so important to me to find a family that would bring my child up a good Christian,” said one. “Yes, that was important for me, too,” said the other.

They said other stuff, too, stuff about finding adoptive couples they felt comfortable talking with, the amount of contact they wanted, how important it was to them to play a role in shaping their child's future, how wonderful it was to have a relationship with their child, how neither had ever doubted their decision, and how both regarded their biological children's adoptive parents as the “real” parents. None of that mattered, of course, because all I heard was that “Christian homes” were important, and important to both birth moms. Terry and I were wasting our time.

During the next break, Terry and I rented skates, tossed our shoes in a locker, and went around and around Lloyd Center's ice rink. We were quiet for a few minutes.

“Maybe we should go home,” Terry said. “We know lots of single lesbians. Let's see if one wants to be a surrogate mom. No birth mother will ever pick us.”

“Paying someone to be our surrogate mom will probably cost less than doing an adoption,” I responded. “Did you see the fee schedule?”

“I think we're kidding ourselves being here,” said Terry.

Before I could answer, Carol and Jack waved us over to the side of the rink.

“You two are so lucky,” Carol told us. Terry and I looked at
each other, and then asked her what she meant. “You're so different! Everyone in the pool is exactly the same. Everyone's white, suburban, middle-class, and straight. You guys will stick out, birth moms are going to notice you in the pool.”

“Yeah,” said Jack. “You two will get picked before anyone else.”

I
f Carol and Jack were wrong—if we weren't picked right away or if we never got picked at all—Terry and I had other options. Talking with Bob and Kate made quick converts of us, and we'd come to view closed adoptions as unfair to birth mothers and adopted children. That meant traditional closed agency adoptions were out. But if we weren't picked by a birth mom in an open adoption, we would have to consider some other route to parenthood. We could do a foreign adoption, but we'd have to be “ discreet,” i.e., closeted, something neither of us do well. Or we could adopt an abused or neglected kid from the state, some poor kid languishing in foster care, and attempt to undo the damage done by the kid's biological family. We called this route, indelicately, our damaged-goods adoption option.

Without exception, children in the custody of the state were abused or neglected by their heterosexual parents. When straight parents beat, rape, or abandon their biological children, the state steps in. If the kids can't be returned to their biological parents, the state goes looking for homes for these kids. In adoption-speak, these kids are called “hard-to-place” or “special-needs.” They are hard-to-place because most couples doing adoptions want the same thing: the Great White Infant. Couples want a healthy baby, one without emotional and physical scars. DG kids are generally not healthy, often not white, and by the time their biological parents have been stripped of their rights, they're usually not infants. When Terry and I started talking about adoption, we concluded that—as shameful as it sounds—we wanted the same kid everyone else wanted. We weren't hung up on race, but we wanted that healthy infant.

But when you read in straight newspapers about gay couples who've adopted, it's almost always a damaged goods adoption: Good Gay Couple plays foster parents to Damaged Goods Kid, nurses DG kid back to health, and having grown attached, moves to adopt DG kid. GG couple saves DG kid from the system. The subtext? If not for the GG couple, this DG kid wouldn't have a home at all, so . . . if gay men aren't taking optimal babies (healthy white infants) from optimal homes (straight white parents), why not let the fags keep the baby? Gay men are damaged goods, too, so why shouldn't they settle for damaged goods?

Admitting we were just as selfish as every other straight couple trying to adopt wasn't easy. Besides the ease and relative rapidity, there were other perks to adopting the DG kid: First, it's tremendously good karma, and that has to count for something. Also, gay men are constantly told we're morally inferior, so any opportunity to claim a chunk of the moral high ground would be tempting. In addition to being told we're morally inferior, gay men are accused of being a danger to children. Adopting a child endangered by straight parents would allow us to refute that particular lie more dramatically than any citation of child abuse statistics demonstrating that it's straight-identified men who sexually abuse children, not gay-identified men.

Not too long ago, a Good Gay Couple made news in New Jersey. GG couple wanted to adopt Adam, a DG kid born addicted to drugs, with lung damage and heart problems. GG couple had been Adam's foster parents, and under their care, Adam made a remarkable recovery, and wasn't really a DG kid anymore. Then GG couple sued for the right to adopt Adam as a couple rather than going through the expense of doing separate single-parent adoptions. The court ruled in their favor, placing gay couples in New Jersey on the same legal footing as straight couples (which already was the law in Oregon and Washington, and other states). After their victory, “Good Gay Couple Adopts Damaged Goods Kid” stories ran in papers across the country.

Christian conservatives weren't pleased by the news about Adam, but it was difficult for them to argue that gays were a danger to kids when two gay men were fighting to adopt a kid no one wanted—especially a kid that had been so spectacularly endangered by his heterosexual parents. So when the anti-gay
Family Research Council spat out a press release about Adam, there was nothing in it about gay men being a danger to children, or morals, or gerbils, or anything else. Instead, there was only a deep concern for little Adam.

“A child placed with two fathers will never be able to call out the word, ‘Mom,’ ” said FRC cultural studies director Robert Knight in the FRC's press release. While conservatives are typically opposed to the creation of new rights, the FRC read a brand new “right” into the Constitution: the right to a mommy. “The state is abrogating that child's right to a mother for the rest of his life.”

When Elizabeth Birch, head of the gay-rights group Human Rights Campaign, adopted twins, Jacob and Anna, with her girlfriend Hilary Rosen, the Family Research Council spat out another press release, this time complaining about children being denied their right to daddies. “Placing babies in a lesbian household deliberately deprives these children of a father's love. . . . What kind of image of manhood and fatherhood will little Jacob obtain being raised by two lesbians? How will little Anna, who will never know the love of a father, relate to men someday?”

There are many arguments Christian conservatives could make against gay adoption—Leviticus, Romans, Timothy—but the one they're opting to make these days is this every-child-has-a-right-to-a-mommy-and-daddy argument. Yet plenty of healthy children are raised in environments where they never get to call out “Mommy” or “Daddy.” Children are raised by their grandparents or aunts or uncles; they're raised by single dads and single moms. No FRC press release was issued when my next-door neighbor adopted a little girl who will never know the love of a father. The FRC isn't really all that interested in making sure every child has one parent of each gender. They're interested in preventing gays and lesbians from enjoying any of the rights straight people take for granted, and, of course, raising money by scaring little old ladies in Omaha with nightmare visions of children brought up in creepy, queer single-sex environments: little Adam's play group meeting in a gay bathhouse; little Anna having her hair braided by shirtless wimmin at the Michigan Women's Music Festival.

Children adopted by gay or lesbian couples may not get to call out “Daddy” or “Mommy,” but they don't grow up in a single-gendered gay universe either. Gay men have mothers,
sisters, and aunts; we have female friends, coworkers, and neighbors. Lesbians have fathers, brothers, and uncles, male friends, coworkers, and neighbors. Conscientious gay parents, like conscientious straight single parents, take steps to ensure their children have male and female role models.

Opposition to gays and lesbians becoming parents isn't about kids, of course, it's about politics. While it's currently illegal for gays and lesbians to adopt only in Florida, the Christian right has pushed for bans on gay adoption in Texas, Indiana, Utah, Oklahoma, and Arizona. Governor of Texas George W. Bush went on the record in support of a ban on gay and lesbian adoptions in Texas, saying he believed “a traditional home with a mother and a father present should be the first choice for a child in need of home.” At the same time Bush endorsed mothers and fathers, Jeanne Shaheen, governor of New Hampshire, signed a bill repealing her state's twelve-year-old anti-gay adoption ban. Undoing the gay adoption ban “was good for New Hampshire and good for our children,” Shaheen said. On gay adoption, America could quickly break down into slave states and free states.

Yet while gay adoption garners less support in public opinion polls than gay marriage, passing anti–gay adoption laws will be harder than passing anti–gay marriage laws. The Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996, prevented hypothetical marriages from occurring some time in the murky future. But gay adoption isn't hypothetical: gay men have been adopting children for years; lesbians have been adopting and making babies forever. The National Adoption Information Clearing House, a federal agency, estimates there are between six and fourteen million children being raised by gays and lesbians. A fight to ban gay adoption would not be over hypothetical children and optimal homes, but a fight over real children in real homes. The question wouldn't be, “How will kids do in gay homes?” but instead, “How are kids already in gay homes doing?”

The limited research that exists shows that kids with gay or lesbian parents are doing fine. They're just as well adjusted as kids with straight parents, just as likely to identify themselves as straight when they grow up, and just as likely to have positive relationships with other children. There isn't much of a measurable difference. Since gay men and lesbians don't have children by accident—it's
hard to get drunk one night and do an adoption, or slip and fall into the stirrups at an artificial insemination clinic—all our kids are wanted kids, planned for and anticipated. All parenting experts agree that a wanted child is usually a loved child, and a loved child is a well-looked-after child.

In deciding to push ahead and do an open adoption—or try to, anyway—Terry and I decided against the DG adoption option. It takes a special kind of parent, we were told, to adopt a child with a physical or emotional disability. We weren't sure for how long the satisfaction of sitting on the moral high ground, knowing that we were better than abusive straight parents, would keep us going. There's always the chance you'll adopt a child who's fine, like Adam, or a child who can be repaired, but there's a chance you'll wind up with a kid past help, one who can't be fixed. We didn't want to start parenting at a disadvantage, not with our first kid. We didn't want to adopt a kid someone else had messed up. No, we wanted to mess up a kid all by ourselves.

And if we did an open adoption and went for that healthy infant, maybe Robert Knight and the Family Research Council would leave us alone. If their opposition to gays adopting is really just about depriving children of their right to a mommy and a daddy, Knight and the FRC could take some comfort in what Terry and I were trying to do. Whatever child we would adopt— provided we got picked—would have a relationship with his birth mom. He'd get to call out “Mommy,” and he'd know a mother's love. Knowing the FRC would be on our side made us feel a little bit better about pressing on with open adoption.

So what if we weren't going to be the Good Gay Couple? We were going to be a Selfish Gay Couple and go for that healthy infant, and if that made us assholes, well, we had a lot of company— most of it straight. I felt tremendously guilty about all of this, naturally, and reminded myself that even the healthiest of infants can become a DG kid in a moment. One fall from a swing, one moment alone in a bathtub, and we could find ourselves raising a child with severe disabilities. Should this happen, we would, like good parents, rise to the challenge. But we wanted to start even, though we knew there was no guarantee we would stay even.