Well, this is rather refreshing–a few different stereotypes or assumptions flouted at once.
It doesn’t surprise me: there’s a bigger emphasis on making* families in the South. I’ve met very few people who don’t want kids even in the upper South that is northern Arkansas.
*Yes, I know that a couple is still a family. But I’m referring to making a family, as in procreation, rather that combining to become one.
Latinos and Blacks are more likely to have big families than shine-in-the-dark whites, aren’t they? And they tend to have kids younger? That would lead to finding out/coming to terms with your being gay/bi once you’ve already got kids more easily, as well.
I find the last part particularly interesting, that black and latino gay couples are more likely to be raising children. All of my gay friends and acquaintances are white.
The article suggests its because minorities and southerners are more likely to come-out later in life, when they already have kids from previous hetro-sexual relationships. Presumably this is at least partially due to less acceptance of gays in those groups, so it isn’t really incompatible with blacks and latinos having fewer openly gay members.
Which makes sense, gay-adoption is illegal in FL, so to have Jacksonville be the “gay-parent capital”, the kids would pretty much have to be the biological children of one of the members of the gay couple.
:smack: Serves me right for not reading the article in full.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of it wasn’t just that families in general are more common in the South. I’m always surprised at how few children I see, say, at restaurants in San Francisco and New York City. I’ve always heard that cheap land with big houses (and of course mild winters) has been for the last decades a huge drawer of families to the South.
Does it mean INTENTIONALLY???
I say this as I know three male couples all raising kids in George. None of this was planned. In each case the kids were dumped on these male couples by brothers or sisters who had the kids and “didn’t much want them” or were in jail or on drugs or whatever.
In all three cases these “temporary” arrangements lasted till the kids grew up and left home.
In effect it was an unintentional family. I don’t mean this as a rap, but I think it makes a bit of difference knowing HOW the family situation came about
At present, I don’t know any gay males with children, but I know a few lesbian couples who’ve adopted.
Gay adoption isn’t illegal in Texas, nor is it illegal in most of the South… PROBABLY because it never occurred to legislators, way back when, that this would ever happen!
If black or Latino gay couples are more likely to adopt than white gay couples, I can offer a theory based on experience: if a couple is open to adopting a black or Hispanic child, the odds of adopting quickly and easily are GREATLY improved. White babies are in much shorter supply.
Moreover, at many/most adoption agencies, the birth mother gets to choose parents for her baby from a set of profiles she’s shown. A pregnant white girl may be shown 6 profiles of prospective parents for her child- and if she has to choose from 5 wholesome looking straight couples and 1 gay couple, she PROBABLY won’t pick the gay couple. A pregnant black or Hispanic girl probably has fewer profiles to choose from, because fewer people want babies of other ethnicities. Such a girl may see a gay or lesbian couple as the best of the choices available to her.
At the adoption agency my wife and I worked with, we attended a weekend seminar with a dozen other couples, including two Mexican-American lesbians. Many of the couples stayed in touch, and as it turned out, that lesbian couple was the first to get a baby… a black girl.
I noticed this a while back when I was looking up Mississippi statistics for something else:
(wikipedia)
I think it’s pretty cool. I have some friends who are a same-sex couple, raising a daughter. The ladies went to the sperm bank and one of them was artificially inseminated.
I have a theory about Jacksonville. Some would call it a crazy conspiracy theory, I call it a hunch backed up by no evidence at all.
The state of Florida and neighboring states are luring their gay populations to Jacksonville, by offering attractive housing prices, gay sex toy retail outlets, and unbeatable prices on rectal thermometers. Eventually, when the gay population peaks… BLAMMO! There’ll be an “accident” at the nuclear plant that they’ll blame on a gay safety inspector.
It’s been allowed for a few months now. In October, the DCF and then-Attorney General Bill McCollum decided not to appeal the Appeals Court case that went against them, and the DCF stopped enforcing the policy. On January 19th, the adoption at the center of the case was finalized. Governor Rick Scott hasn’t announced any moves to reinstate the policy, although he says that adoption should be limited to married couples.
If it goes to court again, they might need more expert testimony, so George Rekers is already researching potential baggage lifting services for a trip. Lots of research, I imagine.
I strongly doubt the statiscians were looking at that particular detail, but then, very few people look at it when compiling family stats. When they do, they get surprises along the lines of “many teen pregnancies are on purpose”.
I’d imagine circumstances like that happen at least as often, or more, with non-gay parents.