Romney Camp: Gay Adoption Should Be Decided by State
A spokesman for presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said this week that Romney believes the issue of adoption by homosexual couples should be decided by the state and not federal government.
Romney spokesman Ryan Williams told The Christian Post on Friday in an email statement, “Governor Romney has consistently said that gay adoption should be assessed on a state-by-state basis – not at the federal level.”
During Romney’s previous presidential campaign, he said that the U.S. Constitution should have a marriage amendment, “I think every child deserves a mom and a dad.” But when he was Massachusetts governor, Romney told the Boston Globe that homosexual couples have “a legitimate interest in being able to receive adoptive services,” according to CNS.com.
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What critics of Romney’s position seem to be pointing out are his inconsistencies when talking about marriage and family issues.
Karen McNeil, a board member of Life Choices of Memphis, feels that it’s a cop-out for anyone to throw an issue as important as adoption back to the states.
“When a young single woman who is pregnant comes to our agency for options, we give them the names of several adoption agencies so they can make an informed decision,” McNeil told The Christian Post. “What we see time and time again is that when they choose to give their child up for adoption, they want a stable environment with a mother and a father to raise their child.”
On several occasions Romney has been asked by the media to clarify his position on the issue of homosexuals couples adopting from state agencies, but he would seem reluctant to fully explain why he favors a constitutional amendment on marriage but not on adoption.
During a town hall meeting in Hopkinton, N.H. Monday, an audience member continued to press Romney on his assertion that children are best raised by a mom and a dad.
“There are a lot of folks that get raised by one parent if they’re divorced, through death or through a parent out of wedlock,” Romney said. “But in my view, a society recognizes that the ideal setting for raising a child is when you have the benefit of two people working together and where one is male and one is female.”
During his administration, Romney did nothing to stop homosexual adoptions in Massachusetts, although he did say that religious organizations should be allowed to provide adoption services to only married, heterosexual couples.
But because of the Massachusetts’s anti-discrimination laws, Catholic Charities of Boston, one of the nation's oldest adoption agencies, was forced to leave the adoption business in 2006 to uphold its religious convictions about marriage and family.
More recently, an Arizona-based Internet adoption registry was forced to stop providing adoption services to Californians after the company was sued for refusing to provide services to a same-sex couple.
“It’s a huge disservice to these children to allow children to be placed in an environment that is not in the best interest of the children,” added McNeil.
