Homophobic nurse attempts to prevent gay couple from adopting
A father from Texas has spoken out about the discrimination he and his partner faced as they attempted to become parents.
After getting on well with the child’s birth mother and her family, Andy Miller and his partner were all set to collect their son from hospital after he was born.
However, a homophobic nurse threatened to derail the pair’s attempt to start a family of their own, by asking a series of discriminatory questions, quizzing the mother as she recovered from the birth.
“We rushed back to the hospital and she starts telling us that one of the nurses that was assigned to her to come in and check all of her sutures started asking her a lot of questions, starting with, “Aren’t you the girl that’s giving your baby up for adoption?” which is a huge red flag for us,” he said.
Adoption classes and research had prepared the couple for such situations, yet it still surprised them that these questions were coming from a nurse.
“We went through adoption class and anyone who uses that term like ‘giving up a baby’ is already coming to that conversation with some judgment.”
The nurse continued to ask the mother a series of difficult, judgemental questions. One question was if the mother was afraid her son would hate her for allowing him to be adopted by a gay couple.
She also asked: “Aren’t you afraid those boys are going to hurt that baby, aren’t you afraid that he’s not going to grow up and be normal?”
Luckily, after speaking to a social worker, the mother decided to stick with her original decision, and now Andy and his partner are the proud fathers to a little boy.
Andy goes on to discuss the difficulties involved when adopting as a gay couple in the USA.
“No one’s given an easy ride when a child enters the world. There’s always two things that happen: Money exchanges hands and there is pain,” he said.
“It’s just a question of how those two things happen.
“And for the LGBT community, a lot of times the way it happens for us is, money exchanges hands between the adoption agency and prospective parents. And the pain is oftentimes emotional.
“It’s not physical pain that comes with the birth. But we’re all kind of more alike than different in that regard.”
Andy was speaking as part of the I’m From Driftwood project, a story-telling community for LGBTI individuals.
Watch Andy’s full video below:
