Use these points to educate family, friends and community members or as background for your letter-to-the-editor, episode screening, or media alert.

Making custody determinations or adoption or foster care placements based on arbitrary parental characteristics such as sexual orientation does not serve children’s interests. Excluding any potential group of adoptive or foster parents denies children access to adults willing and able to provide for their needs. The criteria for placement should be a couple’s capacity to provide a safe, nurturing and healthy environment for a child.

• Every significant study comparing children raised by same-sex couples to those raised by male-female couples has found the children to be equally well adjusted.
• All of the major national child welfare organizations have reached a professional consensus that:
  1. Gay and lesbian parents are just as likely as heterosexual parents to provide supportive, healthy homes.
  2. Gay people should not be excluded from consideration as adoptive or foster parents, and that custody and visitation determinations should not be based on parents’ sexual orientation.
• Excluding potential parents because of sexual orientation is especially harmful to children waiting for adoption. The shortage of adoptive parents means that many children must remain in foster care indefinitely or are never adopted.
• The shortage of caregivers affects foster children who must often be placed far from biological families and community of origin, separated from siblings, or placed in overcrowded family settings.

---

Support from the experts:

• American Psychological Association , Lesbian and Gay Parenting: A Resource for Psychologists, 1995
  "...There is no evidence to suggest that lesbians and gay men are unfit to be parents or that psycho-social development among children of gay men and lesbians is compromised in any respect..."
• American Academy of Pediatrics, Policy statement issued Feb. 4, 2002
  "The American Academy of Pediatrics recognizes that a considerable body of professional literature provides evidence that children with parents who are homosexual can have the same advantages and the same expectations for health, adjustment, and development, as can children whose parents are heterosexual."
• Child Welfare League of America, Standards Regarding Sexual Orientation of Applicants, adopted in 1988
  "Gay/lesbian adoptive applicants should be assessed the same as any other adoptive applicant. It should be recognized that sexual orientation and the capacity to nurture a child are separate issues."