France bans gay adoptions

By CHARLES LANE

If you had to guess, where would you say a gay couple has a better chance of legally adopting a child: France or the United States? The answer, of course, is here. We all learned a lesson about the social progressiveness of Europe, as opposed to the conservative United States, when a French court declared last week that a lesbian could legally adopt a child as an individual.

This breakthrough, which came in an appeal of a lower court’s denial of the woman’s petition, put French law on a par with Texas law. That state, like most others in the “narrow-minded” United States, already allowed gay individuals to petition to adopt. (This right exists on paper but may be subject to ideological variation among local courts.) In addition, several U.S. states allow same-sex couples to marry, which they still can’t do in France. And some states — California, Illinois and Oregon, for example — do not license gay marriage but still permit gay couples to petition to adopt.

Ban reaffirmed

It is, however, still against the law in France for gay couples to adopt as couples. The government of President Nicolas Sarkozy — who declared during his 2007 campaign that France’s “model must remain that of a heterosexual family: children need a father and a mother” — reaffirmed that ban after the ruling. An official promptly announced that the government “respected” the court’s judgment but still opposed adoption by gay couples.

As for the rest of Europe, a couple of countries — Italy and Latvia — still ban even adoptions by individual gays. This could change in the wake of the French ruling, especially since the European Court of Human Rights had disapproved of France’s policy.

Only four U.S. states — Arkansas, Michigan, Mississippi and Utah — ban adoption by gay couples, as France does. In other words, gay men and lesbians seemingly have somewhat greater adoption rights in the States than they do in Europe’s second-largest country — and in several smaller ones as well.