Pro gay adoption organisation seeks parents
As Catholic adoption agencies bicker about allowing gay couples to adopt, one agency in San Francisco is welcoming them with open arms.
With a new publicity drive launching on Monday and a new slogan, “there’s no place like home” Family Builders is determined to help children find families be they straight or gay.
Head of the new initiative, Ms Jacobs, who herself has fostered and adopted two children through her organisation explained that gay couples have been welcome to foster since 1996. “We have been working with very open and out families,” she said, though “it was a little more discreet”.
The agency’s new publicity drive is designed to match Lesbian Gay Bi or Transgender (LGBT) children with parents or foster parents who will understand their needs. It is thought that of the10,000 children in foster care in the Bay area, some 15% may be LGBT. Jacobs said that the campaign was not, “targeted specifically to same-sex couples. Certainly, we are starting in the gay community but non-LGBT parents are very willing to parent LGBT youth”. She acknowledged that, “Not all LGBT adults want to parent an LGBT-identified youth and not all LGBT-identified youth want gay parents.”
The recent policy debates in the Catholic have brought the possibility of gay adoption to couples who simply did not know that they were able to do it. Jacobs said that she was shocked at how many people tell her “we thought we couldn’t adopt because we are gay.”
Hopefully the “there’s no place like home” campaign will dispel that myth once and for all.
