Antigay adoption bill rejected in Virginia

A Virginia senate committee rejected legislation on Wednesday that would have required social workers in adoption cases to determine whether the applicants are gay. On an overwhelming voice vote, the courts of justice committee refused to send Del. Richard Black's bill to the senate floor. The house of delegates had passed the bill 71-24 last week. "This thing comes awfully close to being pretty bigoted, so I can't support it," said Sen. Richard Saslaw, a Fairfax Democrat. Black's bill originally would have prohibited gays from adopting in Virginia. However, the bill was amended in the house to require home studies prepared for the circuit court to include whether the applicant "is known to engage in current voluntary homosexual activity or is unmarried and cohabiting with another adult to whom he is not related by blood or marriage." Black, a Republican delegate from Loudoun, said he was concerned only about the best interests of the children. Virginia tradition has long recognized the benefits of a home with both a mother and a father, he said. Republican senator Kenneth W. Stolle of Virginia Beach, chairman of the committee, said the adoption law already protects the child's best interests by requiring thorough background checks that include, among other things, the applicant's moral suitability. Opponents of the legislation attacked the credibility of Black's chief witness: Paul Cameron, chairman of the Family Research Institute in Colorado Springs, Colo., who claimed that gays, drug users, and prostitutes "disrupt society" and have a much lower than normal life expectancy. Responding to questions from Democratic senator Janet Howell of Fairfax, Cameron acknowledged that the American Psychological Association expelled him in 1983 for violating the association's ethical principles. He also conceded that the American Sociological Association adopted resolutions in 1985 and 1986 claiming that Cameron had consistently misrepresented sociological research. Cameron said those rebukes stemmed from "political differences." He said the ASA and other organizations have begun a covert "affirmative action" program favoring gay couples in adoptions to make up for what they believe to be past discrimination. Robert H. Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute in Washington, D.C., urged the panel to endorse Black's bill. "Who among us could say that our father could be replaced by a lesbian, and this would not have made any difference in our lives? Or that our mother could just as easily have been a male homosexual?" Knight said. Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, a lawyer for the gay rights group Equality Virginia, said the legislation was too vague. "We don't know what 'voluntarily engaging in homosexual activity' means," she said. "Does going to a gay bar qualify?" Social worker Jennifer Surrat said the bill "is unnecessary and discriminatory." Investigators already thoroughly examine applicants' relationships with family, friends, and the community, she said.