Overseas adoption by gay parents

[FrenchArepa]

Hey there,

My partner and I are two men, very much in love, and we are thinking of adopting a child.

We both have a latino background so we would like to adopt a child from Latin America, preferably Colombia.

Has anyone been confronted to international adoption? I have read many websites and they seem to say that the process is very difficult, especially for gay people.

Hopefully, you will prove them wrong!

Thanks in advance for your answers!

Hi and welcome to Mumsnet. We have gay adopters here (i.e. me) and also international adopters, but I don't think we've got any gay international adopters...

Have you tried New Family Social website? It's specifically for lesbian and gay adopters, and I do remember some threads on international adoption.

You should probably also look at some of the websites that specialise in international adoption. Kewcumber may be along later - she knows all about them!

Very best of luck.

Thanks Hester,

glad to be the pioneer of a new category of adopters :)

I have checked all the main websites but I was hoping to get some "real" stories from adopters.

Thanks again for your advice.

Best regards.

I don't know of any countries off the top of my head who accept openly gay adopters of either sex, though I know of lesbian couples who have adopted as one single woman and then readopted in their home country as a couple. MOst of the countries I know of will not take on single male adopters. But I'll do a quick bit of research for you as I seem to recall one country that still does accept single male adopters. But to do that you would need to have a home study not mentioning your partner which might be tricky and you may not want to consider that.

You would be considered in the UK as a gay couple - have you tried local social services?

I'm also gay. I always thought i'd be the only one on a forum, so there you go!

As far as I'm aware, knowing several International adopters, there are barely any countries that have IA programs that allow gay adoption.

But I did a google search anyway, and found that Argentina have just legalised gay adoption, and I believe it is also legal in Mexico city (but i don't think it is in the rest of Mexico). However, when checking the statistics on adoption applications in Britain, the government haven't got any applications for Argentina at all between 2002-2008, and only 6 applications for Mexico in the same period.

Unfortunately Columbia doesn't allow gay adoption at all.

So I think you ned to be very prepared to find that it just isn't possible. It seems very unfair, specially to the kids themselves, but one thing to remember is that the countries that have IA programs are very often countries that are quite religious and don't therefore agree with gay adoption anyway, or they have so many applicants (e.g. China) that they can afford to be very selective about who gets to adopt. The UK is pretty far forward, so you forget or don't realise that it isn't like that in most places.

How do you feel about adopting in this country? Are you happy with that? I'm not sure how many Latino children are available here, but i'd assume there will be a few, although not that many so I guess you'd have to be quite open to lots of kids to get matched? So maybe it might depend on which children you feel you have a home for? It is well worth it though...

actually this might sound a bit mad but have you thought of the USA? I'm sure thats possible at least theoreticaly.

depends on what state as some states will not allow it

their are lots of children here