16
j UStpUt
NOVEMBER 3. 2006
northwest
Out in the Open
Queer families have ally in adoption
by Malka Geffen
■
ee Amberwood and her partner, Jacklyn,
began talking about starting a family 10
years ago, after they had been together for
eight years. "We knew we both always
I wanted kids in our lives,” she said. “But it
took a long time for it to happen." The couple
started the adoption process with Oregon Child
and Family Services in 1999, and they brought
home their daughter, Rosie, 36 hours after she was
bom in 2002.
For Amberwood, adoption was clearly the way
to go. “There are so many children already here in
the Northwest who need loving parents.”
Though the couple were interested in adoption
only, they were required to take state foster care
classes in addition to having a thorough home
study. “It got convoluted and problematic when our
caseworker disappeared,” said Amberwood, “but
then we got a new counselor who was a lesbian and
went through the whole process again."
At first they thought they wanted to adopt a
4-year-old and were shown dozens of biographies
and photographs. “Suddenly we thought we want­
ed a younger and younger child,” Amberwood said.
“Wanting a baby is different with the state—babies
immediately go into foster care. It seems to me that
the relationship of the foster care system and the
state adoption system
worked against each other.
We found out how diffi­
cult it was to navigate
those two systems, and
after a year and a half, we
decided to explore other
options.”
With no colleagues or
friends looking into adop­
tion at that time, the cou­
ple turned to the phone
book. “We suspected at
some point that certain
agencies most likely would
not be serving gays and
lesbians, and we did run
into that with an agency
that did placements from
Europe, China and Russia,”
Jacklyn (left) and Lee
said Amberwood. “There,
their family.
you have to be ‘single’ to adopt if you’re a gay cou- I of waiting families running on the home page
shows one prospective gay or lesbian couple or fam­
pie. We knew dual adoption had been done in
ily every few seconds, interspersed with photo­
Multnomah County even before we moved here in
graphs of straight couples and families also waiting
'93, and that’s what we wanted.”
to adopt.
“We work with straight families, gay and lesbian
families, married couples and single people. We
strongly believe the choice of adoptive parents
should lie in the birth parents’ hands,” Levine said.
“This reflects the foundation of our agency’s philos­
ophy to empower our clients to create healthy, self-
sustaining relationships to reflect their adoption
vision, not ours.”
According to Levine, OAFS has 60 to 65 fam­
ilies in its pool, most of which live in the region
and 40 percent of which are gay and lesbian cou­
ples. She said the agency has become popular in
the sexual minorities community because it is one
of the only agencies in the world that welcomes
same-sex couples into its infant adoption pool.
“Most agencies, if they work with same-sex
couples at all, would only invite them into their
special-needs pool, where a child is older, has been
severely drug- or alcohol-affected, suffered from
neglect or abuse, or is mentally or physically hand­
icapped,” Levine said. “We feel that that’s insult­
ing. [Gays and lesbiansj should have the same
rights to adopt a newborn that
straight couples have.”
According to lesbian mediator and
therapist Lauren Mac Neill, “Where
some folks once upon a time thought
once you came out you were giving up
hope of ever becoming a parent, they
now know parenting is indeed a possi­
bility, even if we have to jump some
hoops others don’t have to.”
Mac Neill, who recently held a
workshop in Portland for prospective
queer parents called “Maybe Baby,”
said the nature of adoption began to
change in this country about 20 years
ago. “There was a time when kids
didn’t know they were even adopted.
Then there was a trend where [par­
ents] would tell the child. Then more
adoptees became activists and said
Amberwood utilized an open adoption to bring Rosie into
closed adoption files were very
When the couple found Open Adoption and
Family Services (OAFS), Amberwood said it was
like a light bulb went on. “Open, openness, no
secrets. We’ve never been in the closet, so that just
fit with us. Why wouldn’t we want our child not to
have any secrets about who his or her birth parents
are?”
The agency facilitates child-centered open
adoptions in which birth parents and adoptive fam­
ilies create healthy long-term relationships that
address the ongoing needs of children. According
to executive director Shari Levine, the concept of
open adoption was pioneered in rhe Northwest 21
years ago when the agency began. “The definition
of open adoption ranges from the birth mom meet­
ing the adoptive parents once to possibly receiving
pictures and letters to one visit a year for the first
three years all the way to the adoptions we have,
supporting real, genuine friendships between birth
parents and adoptive parents and birth parents and
child,” she said.
A moment on the OAFS Web site, and it is
clear how gay-friendly the agency is. A slide show
NOT ON THIS STATION!
Resources for Queers
Curious About Adoption
• www.openadopt.org: Open Adoption and
Family Service explains its philosophy and provides
great resources and information for prospective
queer families.
• www.adoptioninstitute.org: The Evan B.
Donaldson Adoption Institute presents adoption
research, education and advocacy information.
• www.oregon.gov/DHS/children/adoption:
The Oregon Department of Human Services pro­
vides links to adoption resources and a list of the
state’s waiting children.
• www.laurenmacneill.com: Lauren Mac Neill
offers family conflict resolution. She plans to offer
another “Maybe Baby" workshop for the queer
community in the spring.
• www.lambdalegal.org: Lambda Legal
provides an excellent overview of state adoption
laws.
• The Kid by Dan Savage (Plume, 2000):
The gay advice columnist’s hilarious account of his
and his boyfriend’s efforts to adopt a child. The
couple used OAFS.
• A Legal Quide for Lesbian & Qay Couples,
13th Edition (Nolo Press, 2005): A practical
guide for gay and lesbian couples to protect their
rights.
painful for them. Not everyone wants to know, but
a significant majority wants to know at least some
information, if not to meet their birth parents.”
Mac Neill added, “This is why I chose an identity­
release donor; I’d rather my kids have the option.”
Amberwood said: "We were willing to try this
new relationship with the birth mother. People still
reel back and say, ‘How do you do that?’ For us it’s
quite natural.”
The couple, who spent a total of 15 months in
the pwl at OAFS, were moving on with their lives
while they waited. In the fall of 2002, Amberwood
was starting graduate school at Oregon State
University, and Jacklyn was preparing for a new
career in real estate. Two days before Thanksgiving,
they had plans to go to the coast and “get away
from all the nasty waiting.” According to
Amberwood, the phone rang at 8:30 p.m., and it
was the agency calling to tell them they’d been
picked.
“I just screamed into the phone,” she said. “We
sat on the couch and just laughed. We said: ‘This is
not a good time for this to happen! Look at all the
things going on in our life!’ But we knew she was
ours.’ ©