‘Difference’ is much the same

Adoptions by same-sex couples are perfectly legal in South Africa — and heterosexual and homosexual couples undergo an identically rigorous screening and training process before they can adopt a child.

The issue of same-sex households was thrown into lurid relief by the ‘lesbian murder case” splashed across the daily press last week.

Right-wing groups such as the African Christian Democratic Party and Doctors for Life climbed on the bandwagon by suggesting that child abuse was more likely within same-sex relationships.

Yet Ann Bruce, a social worker at Child Welfare in Cape Town, said her agency only looked for couples under the age of 45, with sufficient means to educate the child, a clean home, good health and a normal life expectancy and a sound motivation for adopting. They tried also to place babies ‘within their own culture” and give preference to infertile couples.

Whether the adopting couple was homosexual or heterosexual was not an issue. ‘We probably do one or two same-sex placements out of a total of 30 or so a year,” she said.

Child Welfare informs the birth mother about the race and sexual orientation of the adopting couple, and the adoptive mother signs an affidavit acknowledging that she has been informed of this. ‘Some women decline on that basis,” said Bruce, ‘But most don’t mind; they want a loving family that can provide the child with a good education.”

Julia Sloth-Nielsen, law professor at the University of the Western Cape emphasised that legally, there was no barrier to single-sex adoption.

The first such adoption took place in Johannesburg in 1995, but custody and guardianship rights could be granted to one partner only. A 2002 Constitutional Court judgement made it possible for adopting couples to share custody.

The Children’s Bill, passed by Parliament in 2005, has entrenched this position in legislation by providing for ‘partners in a permanent domestic life-partnership” to jointly adopt children.

Lesbian couples interviewed this week said they had experienced subtle forms of discrimination, largely because of ignorance about adoption and homosexuality but, that said, their experience of adoption had been largely positive.

‘Overwhelmingly, our experience has been positive,” said Marianne Thamm, who has adopted two daughters. Thamm said that as lesbian and gay people tended to be marginalised, the right to parent gave them an opportunity to engage in mainstream life.

She had not encountered much overt hostility, but had been on the receiving end of people’s efforts to understand homosexuality through a heterosexual paradigm, like an official who asked which one of them was the man.

‘It’s surprisingly uncomplicated,” said another woman who had adopted a boy with her partner and asked to remain anonymous to protect her family’s privacy. ‘People have the impression that prejudice will be excessive, but that certainly has not been our experience.”

Her interaction with the bureaucracy was also relatively easy. ‘We had no difficulties. We went through the magistrate’s court, were interviewed by social workers and deemed fit parents.”

While she has not experienced much social discrimination, both she and Thamm acknowledge that their middle-class lives cushion them from discrimination. ‘Generally more-educated people are more tolerant or are under pressure to be more tolerant,” she said.

However, Glenn de Swart of the Triangle Project, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender support group, said that many people regard lesbians and gays ‘as having stepped out of the realm of procreation, and similarly from associated concepts of enduring relationships and parenting.

‘We often find that people very strongly associate homosexuality with sex, forgetting that a gay or lesbian person is both romantically and sexually attracted to people of the same sex.”

As a result, De Swardt said that many people viewed gay and lesbian people as a threat to children based on concerns about ‘moral decay”.

Rebecca Kahn interviewed 15 heterosexual and homosexual couples for her book on adoption, Thicker Than Water, due for publication in July. Many same-sex couples found themselves supported within their communities, said Kahn, but widespread ignorance about adoption issues in general pushed gay and lesbian adoption ‘far off people’s radar”.

Kahn cited Actuarial Association of South Africa’s 2002 projections that by mid-2004, a quarter of a million children in South Africa would have been orphaned, in part because of the HIV/Aids epidemic.

By contrast, only 2 320 children were adopted in 2003, according to the Department of Social Development.

Non-mainstream sexual orientation was only one aspect of ‘difference” encountered by adopted children. Bruce pointed out that it was more common for black children to be placed with white couples. In addition to not looking like their mothers and being adopted, the children have to deal with explaining why they have two mothers.

Yet Thamm does not think having a lesbian mother will be a burden for her daughters, who are African. She hopes her own experience of dealing with prejudice will help her children manage similar experiences later in life.