By Alex Vaughn

Photo: Tommy Starling and Jeff Littlefield,  of South Carolina, with their daughter, attend the White House Easter Egg Hunt Courtesy Georgetown Times

A report titled “All Children Matter: How Legal and Social Inequalities Hurt LGBT Families,” which was released on Tuesday, showed the damaging effects that current laws will, and do have on the children involved, and how they are hurting the innocent.

One aspect discussed within the report explains that children were more likely to live in poverty if they grow up in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender families. This is due to a lack of federal recognition of same-sex marriages, which in turn, means such families face higher tax burdens and unequal access to health insurance and government safety net programs.

The report was released online and written by a range of different groups advocating gay rights including the Liberal Center for American Progress, the Movement Advancement Project, and the Family Equality Council. Other participants in the project were the National Association of Social Workers and the Child Welfare League of America.

“The reality is if you look at today’s modern families, they come in all shapes and sizes. Fewer than a quarter of all US households are made up of married heterosexual couples raising their biological children, yet public policy is consistently failing those children whose families do not fit into this certain mold,” said Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of Family Equality Council. She went onto say, “All children matter, and we need our laws to affirm this.”

“Many Americans don’t realize how anti-gay laws and policies hurt children,” said Jeff Krehely, director of the LGBT Communications and Research Program at the Center for American Progress.

“For example, the Supreme Court of North Carolina just invalidated all second-parent adoptions, undermining family security and leaving children as legal strangers to the LGBT parents who have raised them since birth. Similarly, when states like Minnesota and North Carolina advance ballot initiatives to deny marriage to same-sex couples, it can have serious consequences, such as denying children access to a parent’s health insurance.”

Naz Meftah and Lydia Banuelos are featured in the report. This same-sex couple, who were legally married in California, and are parents to three young children face many problems including tax implications and medical expenses. In part because Banuelos is not recognized legally as a parent, she cannot sign medical releases for the children and is not listed on any of their birth certificates.
“It’s not just sentimental and heart breaking. It has a real impact,” Meftah told Reuters.

“We are legally married and Lydia is a stranger to her own kids by law.”

The report estimated that two million children are being raised within LGBT families and are without basic safeguards. It was clear, however, to state that the children are as happy, healthy and well-adjusted as their peers raised by heterosexual parents.

The report indicated that LGBT families exist in 96 percent of US counties.

In 31 states, however, it is extremely difficult for same-sex parents to establish legal ties for their children to both parents, Chrisler said. This leaves a child vulnerable if a parent dies or the relationship dissolves.

The report outlined in detail over 100 state and federal policy recommendations to combat the damage being done to the future of these children. They included ensuring access to health insurance and care, educating doctors and schools about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender families and revising medical decision-making laws.

It also highlighted legalization and federal recognition of same-sex marriage as a crucial measure to protect children within LGBT family units. Very quickly, of course, opposition came up against the report including from Maggie Gallagher, a co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage, which opposes legalization of same-sex marriage. She said a change in the federal marriage law would not better protect children, but that marriage between a man and woman, so the child would have a mother and a father, would.

As it stands, the report outlined how the current laws affect families including the denial of children’s legal ties to both of their parents—which affects everything from custody to a parent being able to make emergency medical decisions for his or her child; wrongly separating children from their parents in cases of divorce or death of a parent; tying children’s access to critical federal and state safety net programs to family structure, rather than need; denying children access to quality child care and early childhood education; denying children Social Security survivor benefits or inheritance when a parent dies; putting a child’s legal ties to his or her parents in jeopardy if the family crosses state lines; and denying forever homes to 115,000 children awaiting adoption.

The report also brought to the fore statistics regarding LGBT families. For example, same-sex couples living in the South are most likely to be raising children (Mississippi has the largest percentage of same-sex couples raising children); LGBT families are twice as likely to be living in poverty as married opposite-sex parents with children; LGBT families are more racially and ethnically diverse than the population as a whole; and that decades of social science research show that children of gay and lesbian parents grow up to be as healthy, happy and well-adjusted as their peers. Also, all major child health and welfare organizations support parenting and adoption by gay and lesbian parents.

Sources: Reuters, AP, “All Children Matter: How Legal and Social Inequalities Hurt LGBT Families”