NOM Injects Race Into Gay Parenting Debate

A subgroup affiliated with the National Organization for Marriage is outwardly condemning adoption for gay parents while attempting to provoke African-Americans to take a stand against the practice.

Jennifer Roback Morse, the head of NOM's Ruth Institute, which educates college students on the merits of heterosexual marriage, was referencing Raise a Child, a campaign to encourage same-sex couples to adopt, according to GoodAsYou.org. "Why aren't we recruiting stable heterosexual married couples to be foster parents," Morse wrote. She went on to say that gay people raising children is an "untried social experiment" and that male couples acting as parents is "exceedingly uncommon."

Morse then made a point about the races of the children and parents in the ad campaign, posted throughout Hollywood. "And look at the children in these posters. I wonder what the African-American community thinks about recruiting gay men to become foster parents for the children of their community who have been taken from their parents."

The Raise a Child initiative is a partnership between the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services and three nonprofit adoption organizations. According to Raise a Child, there are nearly 500,000 children in foster care, with 115,000 available for adoption.

Robyn Harrod, adoption director at the Southern California Foster Family and Adoption Agency, one of the partnering organizations, said in a press release that half of the families her agency works with now are headed by single or partnered gays and lesbians. "Ten years ago there were very few LGBT families that understood that they could foster and adopt through the county," Harrod said.