law on the issue. Either challenging the law or challenging state adoption agencies in court was (and continues to be) a highly public process that alerted the anti homosexual groups that someone was challenging the status quo.
The controversy over the adoption of children by homosexual persons was characterized by nastiness and incivility from the beginning, and the nature of the controversy over the issue has changed little over the past quarter century or longer. Although the practice of the adoption of children by homosexual persons is becoming a more widely accepted practice, the virulence of the opponents of the practice is, if anything, worse in the mid-1990s than it was in the late-1960s (Boswell 35-37). A long time passed before adoption rights for homosexual persons began to be recognized.
In October 1989, a Washington state court allowed two persons of the same sex to adopt a child (Ricketts 83-118). That action sparked a fight between proponents and opponents of the practice in the State of Washington that continues in 1995. In 1991, a state court ruled that the Florida law prohibiting the adoption of children by homosexuals was unconstitutional (Harding 33). The fight in Florida also continues in 1995. In 1992, a New York court allowed the lesbian lover of a child's biological mother to adopt the child (Bull 17). In the mid-1990s, however, New York judges continue to differ with one another over the issue of lesbian adoptions (Cordes 88). A New Jersey court followed the lead of New York in 1993 (Sherman 6). Massachusetts followed suit in 1994 (Family law 751-756).
While the public acceptance of homosexuals has increased in American society, this acceptance has not extended to the adoption of children by homosexual persons (Sherman 1). Estimates of the number of homosexual parents in the United States range as high as two million (Cullum 28-34). The legal status of some of these parent-child relationshi...