Gay families struggle to safeguard adopted kids

The caseworkers who conducted the pre-adoption home studies treated Ray and Matt Lees as a couple. Results of background checks and financial reviews and observations about their relationship and the condition of their large suburban home added up to a pleasing portrait.
“Together, you are a great family,” Matt said, paraphrasing a caseworker’s summary. “But now, from a legal perspective, we are going to remove one of you from the equation.”
Because same-sex couples cannot marry, they cannot jointly adopt in Ohio and several other states that prohibit second-parent adoption. That should remind Americans that the nation’s long-running debate about gay marriage is a child-welfare issue, too, advocates for same-sex couples say.
It’s also an issue that is being pushed to the forefront by growing numbers of those couples who are turning to, and often being embraced by, agencies seeking permanent homes for tens of thousands of foster children.
According to the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law at the University of California, Los Angeles, adoptive parenting is on the rise among same-sex couples in the U.S. About 19 percent of same-sex couples who are raising kids reported having at least one adopted child in 2009, nearly double the 10 percent who reported adopting in 2000, the institute said.

For Surrogacy service

Read more... http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/05/27/gay-families-struggle-to-safeguard-adopted-kids.html

Weecare Surrogacy - UK same-sex couples could get free IVF

Gay and lesbian couples will be eligible for free fertility treatment on the NHS under controversial new proposals.
Same-sex couples would be allowed artificial insemination, even if they don't have a diagnosed fertility problem, according to draft guidelines from an NHS watchdog.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) says couples who do not become pregnant after six attempts with donor semen should be referred for further investigations and IVF.
Gay men could take along a surrogate mother, who would carry the baby for them.
It will be the first time that same-sex couples have been allowed NHS fertility treatment.
The recommendations are included in updated guidelines to NHS fertility provision that NICE is currently consulting on.
The guidelines also increase the upper age for IVF from 39 to 42.
People with infectious diseases such as HIV and those with a physical disability that prevents them from having sex would also be eligible for treatment.
But religious groups have condemned the inclusion of homosexual couples in the guidelines.
Josephine Quintavalle, director of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, told Sky News: "The NHS does not have enough money to go round.
"It's one thing to treat people with genuine fertility problems. But just because someone's sexual persuasion does not allow them to have children does not mean we have to kowtow to political correctness."
Professor David Jones, director of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, said: "NICE is requiring the NHS to provide a treatment not for a medical problem but for a personal choice."
But a spokeswoman for NICE said gay and lesbian couples may not know they are infertile. "We need to take into account equality legislation," she said.

For Surrogacy service

Read more..http://www.skynews.com.au/world/article.aspx?id=753098&vId=

Weecare Surrogacy - Baby dilemma

IS the NHS so awash with cash that it can afford to offer free IVF treatment to same sex couples?

Louise Allonby

Apparently so.
The government announced this week that new guidelines will give homosexual and lesbian couples the same rights as heterosexual couples when it comes to infertility treatment. At the same time, the upper age limit for fertility treatment is to be increased by three years to 42.
The latter suggestion seems reasonable – after all, many women conceive naturally after the age of 40, so why shouldn’t those who can’t do so have access to help? (Universal access as of right is another matter, of course).
But the guidance on homosexual IVF treatment from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) seems to be little more than a misguided exercise in social engineering.
It is hard to see how a stretched NHS should be expected to foot the bill for the lifestyle choices of thousands of gay and lesbian couples who decide they want to have children.
As a critic of the plans, Josephine Quintavalle of the Comment on Reproductive Ethics campaign group, pointed out this week, whilst infertility treatment is important, offering it to same-sex couples strays into the territory of trying to rewrite biology.
It is difficult to argue against that viewpoint. Two males or two females cannot biologically reproduce. Fact. Surely the lifestyle choice to be in a same sex relationship should involve acceptance of the fact that this will bring limitations: the main one being that no offspring will naturally result from the relationship.
For surrogacy service

Read more..................http://www.nwemail.co.uk/home/columns/baby-dilemma-1.956973?referrerPath=pictures/slideshows

The sex lives of others are our greatest fetish

George Michael has claimed that the News of the World fabricated their front page “sex shame” story, luridly implicating him in “illegal gay sex thrills” on Hampstead Heath. The unethical tactics associated with the now-defunct paper were all present and correct, according to Michael. His supposed “cavorting” partner was allegedly threatened with the publication of compromising photographs, blackmailed and bullied into signing the fake exposé. What’s more, Michael suggests, no news outlet would retract the story - unless (in the case of the Sunday Mirror) the other man was HIV positive.
Whilst the less cynical of us are hoping the Leveson inquiry will lead to a systematic overhaul of ethical abuses within the British media, salacious reporting on sexual practices will still be seen as fair game. We’re free to read about Tulisa’s sex tape, Gareth William’s possible interest in erotic cross-dressing, Milly Dowler’s father’s kinky porn stash. Tabloid rhetoric on “romps”, “vice girls”, “hookers” and “ladettes” is so well worn that it has permeated into public consciousness. Multi-billionaire Max Mosley may have obtained extensive compensation over the fiction that his paid-for orgy had “Nazi” content, but the damage to his reputation, dignity and privacy is done. For Surrogacy service.
This is not something inflicted by the press on an uninterested public. Our pursuit of sex-related gossip amounts to fetishism. Foul media tactics aside, stories about sexual activities, particularly those seen as non-conventional, sell and sell. We, the public, lap it up, and in doing so drive the reportage. Forget party politics, (men’s) football, or The Voice: we want to know the details, spurious or otherwise, of what people might be getting up to behind closed doors. Which successful female pop star will this week be accused of having intersex genitalia? Who is Jordan marrying now? The front pages create a celebrity’s sex “shame”, whilst international news is relegated to the lesser-read middle.

Read more.....http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/media/2012/05/sex-lives-others-are-our-greatest-fetish

Love makes a family - Same-sex couples

At the most conservative estimate about 30,000 Australian children are being raised by same-sex couples. The figure is probably much higher.

These children will grow up to be just as happy and healthy as their peers, and will be heterosexual in exactly the same proportion.

I’m certain about this because it is confirmed by 40 years of research.

But don't take my word for it.

All relevant professional organisations agree it is love which makes a family, not gender.

For example, here's the view of the Australian Psychological Association:

"Parenting practices and children's outcomes in families parented by lesbian and gay parents are likely to be at least as favourable as those in families of heterosexual parents."
Meanwhile, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has shot down one the silliest stereotypes about same-sex parenting:

"There is no basis on which to assume that a parental homosexual orientation will increase likelihood of or induce a homosexual orientation in the child.”
Based on this kind of expert opinion, Tasmanian and Australian law has moved a long way towards recognising that parental gender and sexual orientation are irrelevant.

Same-sex couples can have children through fertility treatment and be legally recognised as a family when they do.

Same-sex couples can foster children and same-sex step-parents can adopt their partner's child.

Read more...http://www.theadvocate.com.au/news/local/news/opinion/mr-croomes-reply-love-makes-a-family/2553919.aspx

Gay marriage, abortion back in campaign spotlight

NEW YORK (AP) — Abortion and gay marriage. For years, they’ve been lumped together as the paramount wedge issues of U.S. politics — hot-button topics in the vortex of sexuality, personal freedom and public policy.
Yet these two divisive issues, prominent as ever this election season and still firing up the liberal and conservative bases of the two major parties, are evolving in intriguingly different ways. Partisans are taking care not to overstate how much the issues have in common.
Same-sex marriage vaulted into the spotlight when President Barack Obama declared his support this past week, and conservatives restated their opposition. Republicans deny Democrats’ claims that they are waging a “war on women” that encompasses infringement of abortion rights.
Polls on same-sex marriage show a huge shift in public opinion in just a decade, from overwhelming opposition to a slight edge in favor. By contrast, attitudes toward abortion have scarcely budged over several decades, with a modest majority of Americans favoring some degree of abortion rights and opposition remaining both stable and vehement.

Read more ....http://www.news-press.com/article/20120512/NEWS0107/305120018/1075/Gay-marriage-abortion-back-campaign-spotlight?odyssey=nav|head