When best choice isn't available

We urge the Utah Legislature to support a proposal that would remove the state's ban on unmarried cohabiting couples as foster and adoptive parents. The well-being of children should come first, and the judges and professionals charged with helping children should not be handcuffed by state law in finding the best home available.

The Utah Adoption Amendments, sponsored by Sen. Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake, and Rep. Rebecca Chavez-Houck, D-Salt Lake, would respect traditional families by continuing to give priority to married couples in adoption or foster care cases. But the amendments would give courts the option of allowing a cohabiting adult to adopt or take in foster children in some cases, rather than forcing judges to put children into state custody.

While a healthy home environment with a married mother and father is the best choice for a child, sometimes that option simply isn't available. But a close relative, or even a parent, may be in a home environment currently disallowed for children.

The current ban hurts kids. In 1999, before the restriction, the Utah Division of Child and Family Services placed 644 children with relatives. As of last year, placement with relatives had dropped 31 percent. The figures suggest that each year a couple hundred children are deprived of a familiar face at home because the law prevented them from being placed with an unmarried relative.

The law prevents a parent from sharing rights with another cohabiting adult. That means you can't leave the child with that person when going to work, for example. But is going on welfare better than working? We don't think so. Besides, nobody's checking the moral credentials of baby-sitters who are not cohabitating.

Supporters of changes correctly say that state law creates some absurd situations. Under current law, a single parent can designate someone else for a single-parent adoption, including a romantic partner, so long as the designee lives somewhere else. But if the two adults live together, that's a no-no. If Utah can tolerate a role by a parent's romantic partner who happens to live down the street, it can certainly abide with allowing such a partner to be in the home and helping raise the child.

One of the hot-button issues is adoption by gays or lesbians. Supporters cite studies showing that children raised by gay or lesbian couples fare about as well as children raised by heterosexual parents. We think the jury is still out on this, though it is clear that children brought up in a stable family with two parents have a better chance of a happy, productive life than those raised by a single parent, regardless of the sexual orientation of the parents.

Again, the point should be what is better for the child. Would it be better to be raised in a stable home by two homosexual parents -- one of them your real parent -- or by a succession of unstable heterosexuals? We choose the first scenario. It may not be ideal, but it's better than the alternative when ideal is not a choice. Judges should be given the discretion to decide.

The proposed amendments would not affect a huge number of children. The Williams Institute analyzed census figures, and found that, as of 2005, 1,226 children in Utah lived in households headed by same-sex couples. About 2 percent of adopted children -- 367 kids -- lived with a lesbian or gay parent. This suggests that while the proposal has the potential to help hundreds of children, it nevertheless won't have a disproportionate impact on Utah as a whole.

We do not believe that such a law undermines the traditional ideal of a husband and wife raising their own children. But a society must make provision for situations where this or any other ideal cannot be attained. State law recognizes the unhappy realities of separation and divorce. Likewise, the law should recognize that in some cases letting unmarried partners care for a child is the best choice under the circumstances.

The proposal simply gives judges more leeway to evaluate each unique case and render an informed judgment. Cases often turn on specifics about what a child needs and what a parent or parents can provide. A law that tries to shoe-horn such human situations into a preconceived ideological slot will inevitably put the courts in awkward situations, sometimes to the detriment of the child.

The proposed change does not push any family into an ideological box; it merely allows social service professionals and judges to do their jobs. A law that helps children grow up healthy and stable will benefit Utah in the long run.

We urge lawmakers to take a realistic and sympathetic view of the kids and parents involved and pass the Utah Adoption Amendments in the upcoming session. The state can't always provide the best alternative for kids, but it should be allowed to provide a better one.