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Kentucky ignores anti-gay adoption bill

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A Senate bill that would have banned gay couples from adopting or fostering children appears to be dead this legislative session.

The measure’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Gary Tapp of Shelbyville, said Senate leaders will not bring Senate Bill 68 to a vote in the final four days of the legislative session. Tapp said Wednesday that he plans to file the bill again next year.

The bill would restrict future foster and adoptive parents to people who are married under Kentucky law, which would eliminate gay couples or unmarried couples from adopting or becoming foster parents.

A similar bill has been developed in Tennessee. Three states – Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas- currently have laws that outlaw adoption by unmarried couples.

Hundreds protest Kentucky Senate bill which effectively bans gay foster parents

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Approximately 150 people protested in Frankfort, Kentucky yesterday against proposed Senate Bill 68, which intends to bar gays and lesbians from serving as foster parents or adopting children.

The event was organized by Louisville’s Fairness Campaign to protest the bill, which would bar anyone “cohabitating with a sexual partner outside of marriage” from becoming a foster or adoptive parent. It would apply to heterosexual couples but gay-rights supporters argue it is aimed at gay couples and is modeled on an Arkansas law passed last year to ban gay foster and adoptive parents.

Opponents argue it would also limit the number of foster and adoptive parents in a state that has more than 7,000 children in need of care who have been removed from homes because of abuse or neglect.

About 1,878 Kentucky children are eligible for adoption – or soon will be as their parental rights are terminated, Vikki Franklin, a spokeswoman for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services said. Of those whose parental rights have been terminated, the state is still seeking adoptive homes for 422, she said.

“We are always looking for loving, nurturing homes,” she said.

Image: Arza Barnett, The Courier-Journal

Anti-gay adoption bill being considered in Kentucky

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The Fairness Campaign is opposing Kentucky Senate Bill 68 [sponsored by state Sen. Gary Tapp, R-Shelbyville] that would bar gay and lesbian couples from adopting children.

The AP reports that the measure would allow children to be placed only in adoptive or foster homes with people who “are not cohabiting outside of a marriage that is legally valid in Kentucky.”

Under the legislation, children who were already placed in such homes before the legislation was enacted would not be uprooted.

Chris Hartman, head of The Fairness Campaign, said the legislation unjustly rules out potentially good parents just because they’re not married in the traditional sense.

“We literally can’t afford to play politics with these children’s lives,” Hartman said. “Hundreds of children are awaiting adoption each day in Kentucky, and it should be our politicians’ jobs to find them a home, not to categorically eliminate potential loving parents with an anti-gay political attack.”

David Edmunds, a spokesman for The Family Foundation, said the legislation isn’t discriminatory toward gay and lesbian couples because it also bars unmarried heterosexual couples from adoption and foster care.

Hartman said at least six other states – Arkansas, Florida, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska and Utah – have similar laws that he called “direct attacks” on nontraditional couples. The Kentucky measure, he said, “is irresponsible on every front” and isn’t likely to pass during the current legislative session.