Florida Ban on Gay Adoptions Estimated to Cost Millions in the First Year

Last summer I found an old college friend on Facebook, a former editor at the college paper where I worked in the 80s when I attended West Georgia College.

I hadn't seen her in 20 plus years but one thing she said surprised me incredibly when I told her about placing my daughter for adoption in 2000:

"I want you to know I so respect and admire the fact you are a birth mother who gave that most generous of gifts: life for your child and a child to a new family," she wrote. "A friend of mine adopted a little girl this summer and after hearing about the kindness of that birth mother, I gained a whole new appreciation for the courage and generosity of such an act. Those of you who have done that should receive a medal, as far as I'm concerned."

In July after one of me and my birth daughter McKenna's visits, I emailed my friends and family: "Just got back from seeing McKenna and had a great time. She already says BFF at eight years old, can run a computer, the DVR like nobody's business, and in the fall will be in the gifted and talented program. She made me a steppingstone which she gave to me. I actually got invited to their house this time for the first time."

My friend wrote further: "I am in awe of your birth decision. I really don't think any woman makes such a decision lightly, in no small part because there are some very real physical ramifications (as you know) in addition to the emotional ones. If it makes others uncomfortable, well that's their problem (And could it be they just don't know what to say to such a thoroughly unselfish act?). That's wonderful that you even get to see you daughter and know what she's up to. I would think that would be a great comfort."

The Williams Institute, associated with the UCLA School of Law, published a study about Florida legislators entitled "The Cost of Florida's Ban on Adoption by GLB Individuals and Same-Sex Couples" by Naomi Goldberg and Lee Badgett which found that prohibiting gay people from adopting means that 165 children must remain in foster care or must have alternative adoptive homes recruited for them. (Source: Proud Parenting).

"The Florida adoption ban, from the very beginning, has been more about politics and sending a message of disapproval of homosexuality than about the well-being of children," wrote Carlos Ball of The Huffington Post. "The ban was part of the backlash stoked by social conservatives like Anita Bryant after Dade County in the mid-1970s became the first southern municipality to erect a gay rights ordinance."

Former "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon, a lesbian parent, will appear in a Florida campaign to overturn the gay adoption ban, according to edgeboston.com.

The state is the only one in the country with a blanket ban on gay adoptions, Creative Loafing reports and the ban went before an appeals court last August, research shows.

In unrelated adoption news, there are reasons to suspect that the vaccine records of children adopted internationally do not accurately reflect immunity due to documentation inaccuracies, falsification of vaccine certificates, lack of vaccine potency, and impaired immune response, according to a recent study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Prospective adoptive parents are urged by experts to verify all vaccinations before bringing their newly adopted children to the States.