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(CBS News) Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Friday backed away from his support of adoptions by same-sex couples, saying that he simply "acknowledges" the legality of such adoptions in many states. A day earlier, Romney, in an interview with Fox News' Neil Cavuto, had indicated that while he does not support same-sex marriage, he considers the adoption of children by same-sex couples a "right." He said on Thursday: "And if two people of the same gender want to live together, want to have a loving relationship, or even to adopt a child -- in my state individuals of...

(CBS News) Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Thursday that while he opposes same-sex marriage, he is "fine" with gay couples adopting children. The presumptive nominee also declined to criticize President Obama's reversal on the issue, saying he would "respect the right of the president to reach the conclusion he has." In his most detailed comments to date on the issue of civil rights for gay people, Romney told Fox News television host Neil Cavuto, "I know many gay couples that are able to adopt children. That's fine. But my preference is that we ... continue to define marriage as...

They’re here and they’re queer. But don’t assume they’re all jumping on the gay marriage bandwagon, Katie Couric. The Against Equality collective — a group of gay activists who oppose gay marriage — has been “quietly assembling a digital archive to document the critical resistance to the politics of inclusion.” The result? A compelling pocketbook, Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage. Edited by gay activist Ryan Conrad, and introduced by Yasmin Nair, a Chicago-based academic, the easy-to-read resistance publication sets out to empower information-seeking people, from poor rural folks to technologically disadvantaged gays living outside of North America’s gay...

(Oct. 17) -- Walter Schumm knows what he's about to do is unpopular: publish a study arguing that gay parents are more likely to raise gay children than straight parents. But the Kansas State University family studies professor has a detailed analysis that past almost aggressively ideological researchers never had. When one such researcher, Paul Cameron, published a paper in 2006 arguing that children of gay parents were more likely to be gay themselves, the response from the academic press was virulent, to say nothing of the popular press; the Southern Poverty Law Center, for instance, equated Cameron to a...

Lengthy and passionate testimony in the Senate Judiciary A Committee today ended with a 3-1 party line rejection of a measure that would have expanded gay adoption in Louisiana. Senate Bill 129, which ended up as a combination of two measures by Sens. Ed Murray and J.P. Morrell, would have allowed unmarried couples to jointly adopt and allow an existing parent to petition a court to add a second adult as a legal parent. The bill would have applied regardless of the adoptive parents' sexual orientation, but the debate centered on the rights of gay parents and their children. Louisiana...

Everyone talks about equality. But equality only exists in the eyes of God and is, after all, a rather Christian concept. We are all loved by God and in that is our worth. Ironically, many politicians are marginalizing religion from the public sphere in the name of equality. And many see the major obstacle to this enforced equality as Christianity. Right now, homosexual advocates are marching under the banner of equality. And advancing quite well thank you very much. In fact, just this week the Archdiocese of Washington fell victim to the cause of enforced equality. The Archdiocese just posted...

Over the course of the last few weeks, I have received several requests for an update on the Frank Lombard case. Lombard is the (now former) Duke administrator who was accused last summer of attempting to allow, and even arrange for, strangers he met on the internet to rape his adopted child. A few days ago, WRAL, a Raleigh-based news station, released an update on the case. That update is worth re-printing here, along with my commentary, both for what the update says and what it does not say: “A former Duke University employee has agreed to plead guilty to...

While organizing our filing system, I ran across my adoption papers. My mother gave them to me a couple of years ago for my own records. The cost of my adoption was a 300.00 donation to Catholic Charities in Chicago, I was six days old. I am blessed to be in the family, in which I was placed. My mother tells me there were lots of rules to comply with. The agency wanted to make sure I had a stable and secure home. In reality, no one can predict how a family will one day turn out. Ours certainly had...

Democrat Pete Stark, who told a town hall questioner “I wouldn’t dignify you by peeing on your leg, it wouldn’t be worth wasting the urine” has proposed a new bill to punish Red States for daring to prohibit adoptions by gays. Not surprisingly, Stark’s bill, “Every Child Deserves a Family Act” is built on a lie. The bill would withhold federal welfare funding from any state the Gay lobby doesn’t like. Its immediate targets are Utah, Nebraska Florida, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Where did Stark’s data come from? Stark’s bill says, “A report from the Evan B. Donaldson Institute found that...

The state's [Louisiana's] Department of Vital Statistics cannot be forced to provide a birth certificate listing two men as the parents of of a Louisiana-born boy adopted by a gay couple in New York, a lawyer with the state's attorney general argued Wednesday morning to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Kyle Duncan, head of the attorney general's appellate division, argued before a three-judge panel that because Louisiana law does not allow an unmarried couple to jointly adopt a child, the state registrar cannot be forced to recognize an out-of-state adoption of that sort in a new birth certificate....

  Council removes Christian paediatrician from adoption panel A paediatrician has been removed as a medical adviser to Northamptonshire County Council after asking to abstain from making recommendations on the placement of children with same-sex couples. by Jenna Lyle Posted: Sunday, July 19, 2009, 10:15 (BST)  Dr Sheila Matthews, who has been a medical adviser to the Council’s adoption panel for five years, said she believed it would be “inappropriate” to place children in a household with same sex parents.“Using my professional judgement and having done a lot of reading around the subject, I am satisfied that there are...

A new and even more scandalous rape allegation has surfaced at Duke University. Yet the usual media and campus PC crowd are keeping mighty quiet. Identity politics apparently trumps all sense of outrage. Of course, after the disgraceful media and university reaction to the phony allegations against Duke Lacrosse team members, it is wise avoid jumping to conclusions, but the comparative silence on the current case is nonetheless remarkable, considering how many particulars of the case were left out of the main AP account. Mike Adams, writing on Townhall, lays out the facts the MSM won't: Frank Lombard is the...

LONDON, JUNE 26, 2009 (Zenit.org).- New gay rights legislation in Great Britain has forced one of the oldest adoption agencies in the nation to cease providing key services. The Catholic Children's Society of the Archdiocese of Westminster announced last week it will cease placing children with adoptive and foster parents due to the enactment of the Sexual Orientation Regulations -- part of the 2006 Equality Act -- that stipulates that same-sex couples should be given equal consideration as prospective parents. The agency, founded in 1859, said complying with the new regulations would go against Church teaching on marriage and the...

Please forgive the accurate but inflammatory headline. I just wanted to get your attention. Did I do that? Good. Because we have another Duke Rape case. And this time it’s probably not a hoax. About the author, Professor Mike Adams: ... In his writing he examines the seamy underside of Liberal campus culture. Well, here's a seamy underside that is not going to get much sunlight in the MSM. Nowhere nearly as much attention as the trumped up Duke Lacrosse Rape case. According to Adams, it seems that ... Duke University has another rape case on its hands. This one...

A majority of Roman Catholic adoption agencies have cut their ties with the Church rather than defy gay equality laws. Five agencies have declared themselves independent - and some have changed their names - to comply with laws that say they must allow homosexual couples to adopt children.The retreat ends decades in which the adoption charities have worked in the name of the Catholic Church with support from dioceses, clergy and congregations.The decision to end the formal connection with the Church follows a deadline set by the Government for charities to comply with the 2007 Sexual Orientation Regulations. These...

Two young children are to be adopted by a gay couple, despite the protests of their grandparents. The grandparents first stepped in because the children's mother was unable to look after them. The couple, who cannot be named, wanted to give the five-year-old boy and his four-year-old sister a loving home themselves. But they were ruled to be too old - at 46 and 59. The devastated grandparents were told they would never see the youngsters again unless they dropped their opposition.

The same California Supreme Court that created a "right" to homosexual "marriage" earlier this year has now ruled that the state may force healthcare professionals to provide services that support an immoral and physically dangerous lifestyle. California's highest court was unanimous in its decision on Monday that Christian doctors may not refuse to perform artificial insemination for homosexual patients. (See "California court says no religious exemption for doctors") Attorney Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), reacts to the ruling. "This is a clear violation of the fundamental rights of individuals to live and practice their faith," he...

It's a tough call which accidental placement of Mitt Romney's online campaign ads, as reported by the New York Times, is funnier: The irony of the same-sex marriage-opposing former governor unintentionally urging readers of Gay.com to "Join Team Mitt!" is pretty strong. But in the end we're going to have to go with the Mormon family man, desperate for Americans not to perceive his religion as some kind of weird cult, advertising on FanFiction.net. In case you're not familiar, that's where users can write their own plots about their favorite fictional characters or read the work of others "including pornographic...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 — Visitors to Gay.com can sign up to find the perfect dating partner, advice on sex and how-to articles on same-sex marriage and parenting. Over the course of at least two days in August, they may well also have seen banner advertisements about the Republican presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, according to an analysis of campaign Web advertising provided by the Nielsen Online, AdRelevance, monitoring service. At least 32,000 times over those two days, users clicking on the site got a Romney ad like one saying “Mitt Romney for President — Join Team...

The first F bomb of the evening came early, followed rapidly by the first insult of President Bush, which, not surprisingly, incorporated the second F bomb. This was not the end of the swearing, but then, this was not your usual book fair speaker. This was Rosie O'Donnell. Or, as she is known to the patient fans without tickets waiting outside in the standby line, just plain Rosie. O'Donnell kicked off the 24th edition of the Miami Book Fair International Sunday night at Miami Dade College, and the audience was smaller than usual on past opening nights. A rough count...

COMING OUT: Parents learn true meaning of family after both son and daughter announce they are gay -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo by Shawn Lynch/staff photographer Tom and Carole Allen, the parents of a gay son and a gay daughter, at their home in Arlington on Saturday, June 30, 2007. By Patricia Bertuccio GateHouse News Service Thu Jul 05, 2007, 10:18 AM EDT -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Story Tools: Email This | Print This Arlington, Mass. - “Imagine that, one day, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court sees what you could not — that your children are entitled to the right and privilege to marry the person...

IOWA, 1 June 2007 ( LifeSiteNews.com) - Over the past five years, Dr. Sharon Quick, a member of the American Society of Anesthesiologists and retired Clinical Assistant Professor from the Washington School of Medicine, has analyzed all of the major scientific literature that was used in the 2002 American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Technical Report on Same-Sex "Marriage" Adoptions. The final report was printed in the highly influential Pediatrics journal and concludes by supporting the adoption of children by Gay and Lesbian Couples. In an Iowa court-case in late May, Dr. Quick gave her official testimony that the Technical Report...

SAN FRANCISCO, April 23, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In its brief filed last week with the U. S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Thomas More Law Center urged the court to reverse a federal judge's ruling that an anti-Catholic resolution of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors was constitutionally justified because the Church opposed adoptions by homosexual couples. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, a President Carter appointee and one-time counsel for the National Organization for Women (NOW), ruled that the Board resolution condemning Catholic moral teaching on homosexuality and urging the Archbishop of San Francisco and Catholic Charities of San...

ANN ARBOR, MI – In its brief filed last week with the U. S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Thomas More Law Center urged the court to reverse a federal judge’s ruling that an anti-Catholic resolution of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors was constitutionally justified because the Church opposed adoptions by homosexual couples. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, a President Carter appointee and one-time counsel for the National Organization for Women (NOW), ruled that the Board resolution condemning Catholic moral teaching on homosexuality and urging the Archbishop of San Francisco and Catholic Charities of San Francisco to defy...

CONCORD "" The House voted Wednesday to allow unmarried adults "" including gay couples "" to adopt children together. State law allows children to be adopted by married couples or single adults. Gay individuals can adopt, but same-sex couples can adopt in only six of the state's 10 counties because probate judges interpret the law differently. The 234-127 vote sent the bill to the Senate. Supporter Jayne Spaulding said current law is "neither fair nor just" because some courts allow the adoptions while others don't. The Bedford Republican said the bill is needed to correct an ambiguity. "This bill is...

TALLAHASSEE - Florida's three-decades-old ban on allowing gays to adopt children is under attack once again. But the ban has powerful allies, including Gov. Charlie Crist and Sen. Ronda Storms of Brandon, who ran for office on a pledge to prevent gays from being foster parents. Florida is one of three states, with Mississippi and Utah, that prohibits gays from adopting. Some state lawmakers, backed by human rights and gay rights groups, want to allow gay foster parents to adopt children if a judge rules it's in the child's best interest or if a gay adult were the legal guardian...

LITTLE ROCK - Legislation to ban gays and unmarried couples who live together from adopting children and serving as foster parents passed the Senate on Tuesday, along with a proposed renewal of a $575 million interstate highway bond program. -- SNIP -- Senate Bill 959 by Sen. Shawn Womack, R-Mountain Home, is a legislative response to a June 2006 state Supreme Court decision upholding a lower court ruling that struck down a state regulation that banned gays from serving as foster parents. Pulaski County Circuit Judge Timothy Fox ruled in December 2004 that the state Child Welfare Review Board overstepped...

The Catholic Church of England and Wales has dug in for a battle with the government over proposed laws which would force their adoption agencies to consider placing children with gay couples. Catholic leader Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor wrote to Prime Minister Tony Blair and the cabinet Tuesday, warning that the Church would have to close its adoption agencies if legislation forced them to act against their teachings. Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, said the Church would have "serious difficulty" with planned regulations outlawing discrimination against homosexuals in the provision of goods and services. Plans to force Catholic adoption agencies to...

Two successive Baltimore County judges have delayed ruling on a child custody case involving a 7-year old girl who does not want to continue court-ordered visitations with the lesbian lover with whom her adoptive mother broke up after a live-in relationship that lasted from 1987 to 2004. In February, a court found that the mother’s former lover is also the child’s de facto parent, and required visitation with the child every Wednesday and every other weekend – a ruling that was upheld this month. Court records indicate that a court-appointed social worker reported that the forced overnight visits were causing...

Two Baltimore County judges have delayed ruling in a child- custody case that has forced a 7-year-old girl to spend time with her adoptive mother's former lesbian partner, despite objections from a court-appointed child-welfare specialist. A social worker for Baltimore County Circuit Court reported in August that the ex-partner's overnight visits with the girl "probably caused acute underlying turmoil" for the child, according to court records. "At this time, she seems emotionally vulnerable and experiencing severe anxiety in response to the crisis that this dispute has precipitated," social worker Cheryl Taylor says in the report. "Overnight weekend visits seem to...

Pop star Moby, known for his political statements as well as his music, says he'd do everything he could to make his future child homosexual should the singer ever have a family. He's also blasting conservatives Tom DeLay, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Newt Gingrich as "amoral/immoral" right wingers. In an interview with Planet Out, a publication geared toward homosexuals, the musician, who is not "gay," was lamenting so-called homophobia in society when he suggested his future child should be raised to be a homosexual. "As a matter of fact, I was talking to my friend Laura, who sings on...

Indiana's Supreme Court let stand a ruling that allows unmarried couples, including those of the same sex, to adopt children through a joint petition that gives both partners equal custody. In a 4-1 decision posted Friday, the high court refused to hear arguments in the case. That left in tact the April ruling by the Indiana Court of Appeals, which had overturned a lower court's ruling that state law limits adoption to married couples and individuals. "The court acknowledged that two people can create a caring, stable, loving home for children without being married," said Patricia Logue, senior counsel for...

BOSTON --Chinese policies aimed primarily at keeping its children out of the homes of same-sex couples has helped cause a 6 percent drop in adoptions in Massachusetts in the last year. The University of Massachusetts Center for Adoption Research found that the adoption of Chinese babies in the state has declined by 17 percent, the Boston Globe reported Monday. Overall there were 161 fewer adoptions in Massachusetts in 2004 than the year before, the center found. While researchers pinpointed several factors that contributed to the drop, they determined that the policies of the Chinese government had the largest impact. In...

BELGIUM has voted into law a controversial bill allowing homosexual couples to adopt children, Belga news agency reported. The upper house of parliament, the Senate, today approved the bill by a razor-thin 34 votes to 33, with two abstentions. The vote in the lower house of parliament in December 2005 had also been narrow, at 77 votes to 62, with seven abstentions. Homosexual couples in Belgium won the right to marry in June 2003 and more than 5000 people have taken advantage of that law since it came into force. Now that the new law has been definitively approved, they...

As debate over the issue flares in several states, a major adoption institute says in a new report that it strongly supports the rights of gays and lesbians to adopt, and urges that remaining obstacles be removed. "Laws and policies that preclude adoption by gay or lesbian parents disadvantage the tens of thousands of children mired in the foster care system who need permanent, loving homes," the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute says in the report to be issued today. It advises agencies and officials to make firm statements in support of such adoptions, forsaking a "don't ask, don't tell"...

The San Francisco archdiocese is ending adoptions by homosexual couples through its Catholic Charities, a move that could jeopardize its public funding. The religious agency, which specializes in finding homes for hard-to-adopt children, has placed five children with same-sex couples since 2000, but Archbishop George Niederauer says there won't be any more, the San Francisco Chronicle said Tuesday. "These kinds of adoptions are not in sync with church teaching, and we've committed ourselves to being in sync with church teaching," a spokeswoman for the archbishop said. Last year, Catholic Charities received $800,000 from the state and $5 million from local...

San Francisco -- Without barring adoptions by gay families outright, San Francisco's new archbishop has made it clear he believes that placing children in same-sex households conflicts with Roman Catholic teachings on homosexuality, a spokesman said Monday. Archbishop George Niederauer therefore has asked the social services arm of the Archdiocese of San Francisco to bring its adoption program "fully in sync" with the church's views while continuing to find homes for hard-to-place youngsters, said spokesman Maurice Healy. "Our teaching on marriage and family life precludes these kinds of adoptions," Healy said. "We need to find another way to help this...

The fracas in Boston over Catholic Charities and the decision to shut down its adoption program is dispiriting on many scores. The Church says it cannot continue to place children with gay and lesbian couples, the board of Catholic Charities overwhelmingly rejects the Church’s position, and Fr. Bryan Hehir, head of the organization, says the “simpler” solution is just not to do adoptions at all. Well yes, the really simple solution would be to shut down Catholic Charities, and perhaps the Archdiocese of Boston itself. Think of the many advantages. The Boston Globe would not have the Catholic Church to...

San Francisco, Mar. 13, 2006 (CNA) - The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has said Catholic social service agencies should not place children with same-sex couples. In light of this, the Archdiocese of San Francisco is currently reviewing its practice of permitting homosexuals and lesbians to adopt children through its local Catholic Charities. Maurice Healy, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said the decision to review the policy came after Archbishop William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said that bishops must not permit children to be adopted by same-sex couples....

Veteran singer Sir Elton John has refused to accept husband David Furnish's pleas of adopting a child, and has reportedly told his life partner he has no desire to be a father. Even though the Candle In The Wind singer is jointly sponsoring an African orphan with his spouse, he apparently has no intention of legally fathering a child, as he is convinced that as parents the couple will not be able to do justice with the child's upbringing. "We've talked about it a lot and, personally, I would. But Elton feels that we wouldn't be around enough at the...

If I told you that someone’s religious freedom was being violated or they were being persecuted, you would immediately think that I was talking about what’s happening in China or Vietnam. And while these are certainly the most egregious examples, religious freedom is also being trampled in a place that is, for me at least, closer to home: Massachusetts. In Massachusetts, adoption agencies must be licensed by the state and adhere to the state’s anti-discrimination laws, including laws prohibiting discrimination against gay couples. This puts Catholic Charities in a bind. The Vatican has called gay adoptions “gravely immoral” and said...

UNITED STATES, February 23, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) –Efforts to prevent gay adoption are moving into the center of the U.S. political scene, in what has been described as a “second front “ in the country’s culture wars. A significant number of states are working to introduce legislation banning gay adoption, or to amend existing laws. In at least 16 states, laws or the promise of legislation prohibiting adoption by gay or lesbian couples are prominent in the political landscape, with the question set to become a campaign issue for the next federal election. For the states of Georgia, Kentucky and Ohio,...

WASHINGTON – Harriet Miers, President Bush's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court to replace Sandra Day O'Connor, is on record as supporting the establishment of the International Criminal Court, homosexual adoptions, a major local tax increase and women in combat, WorldNetDaily has learned. While some conservative leaders and organizations were stunned by the appointment, most were not alarmed by the lack of a paper trail by the nominee who has never served as a judge at any level. But a profile of her positions as a leader of the American Bar Association, a Dallas city councilwoman and as presidential counselor...

SAN FRANCISCO - In the latest ruling to recognize rights of same-sex couples, the California Supreme Court has said gay and lesbian couples who raise children are lawful parents and must provide for their children if they break up. The state's custody and child support laws that hold absent fathers accountable also apply to estranged gay and lesbian couples who used reproductive science to conceive, the high court ruled Monday. Being a legal parent "brings with it the benefits as well as the responsibilities," said Justice Joyce Kennard. The decision comes a month after the justices ruled that a California...

The California Supreme Court on Monday became the first in the United States to grant full parenting rights and obligations to gays and lesbians who have children. In three closely watched cases, the justices set rules in an area where changes in family structure and advances in technology have outpaced the evolution of legal principles. In each case, they delivered a ruling that guaranteed that children born to gay couples have two legally recognized parents.

The Catholic church will not baptize the child of a same-sex couple if both parents want to sign the certificate of baptism, the Conference of Catholic Bishops said yesterday.The church's position emerged after independent Senator Marcel Prud'homme took issue with testimony from Marc Cardinal Ouellet on Wednesday at Senate committee hearings into the same-sex marriage bill.Cardinal Ouellet, who explained Roman Catholic opposition to the legislation is based partly on church doctrine against homosexual acts, said the Civil Marriage Act will present a range of difficult issues other than the question of marriage solemnization if the bill becomes law, as expected...

MADRID, Spain (LifeSiteNews.com) – In light of a pending vote in the Spanish Senate on same-sex marriage HazteOir, together with the Spanish Forum for the Family and the Institute for Family Policy, has published and distributed an in-depth report on the effects that being raised by same-sex parents has on a child. The report, entitled “Report on Infantile Development in Same-Sex Couples” and available only in Spanish at this time, gathers and compares information from a vast number of studies carried out on the issue. HazteOir, concerned by the apparent unquestioning acceptance in Spain of homosexual adoption, hopes that the...

Filed at 6:10 p.m. ET RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- The state Supreme Court ruled Friday that the state must provide new birth certificates for children born in Virginia who are adopted by out-of-state gay couples. A lower court had ruled otherwise because of a state policy that bans joint adoptions by unmarried couples. ''This case is about issuing birth certificates under the provisions of Virginia law,'' the high court wrote in its 5-2 decision. ''It is not about homosexual marriage, nor is it about 'same-sex' relationships, nor is it about adoption policy in Virginia.'' Three couples sued in 2002 after...

A bill in the Tennessee legislature would prohibit gay and lesbian couples from adopting children. It would also make it illegal for them to become foster parents. On Friday night all over town people enjoyed the beginning of the weekend. At Central Baptist Church of Bearden, moms and dads watched their kids play basketball. Across town another group gathered for a meal and a worship service, but they are concerned that if a new bill becomes law they might not get the same opportunities as the families in Bearden. "Our state already says that all of these things have nothing...

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island, NOV. 5, 2004 (Zenit.org).- Adopted children of same-sex parents face the deprivation of either a mother or father and the strain of living in an unstable and unnatural situation, according to a researcher in the field. Dale O'Leary, a writer and researcher for the Catholic Medical Association , shared with ZENIT how same-sex parents give their children a second-class upbringing by exacerbating normal problems that adopted kids experience. Part 1 of this interview is here. Q: What's the difference between a child being adopted by a same-sex couple and by a heterosexual couple? O'Leary: If children adopted...