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Title: Phoenix gay dads adopt, raise 12 happy kids
Source:
AzCentral
URL Source: http://www.azcentral.com/news/azliv ... am-family-12-adopted-kids.html
Published: May 5, 2011
Author: Karina Bland
Post Date: 2011-05-05 20:36:38 by Sebastian
Keywords: None
Views: 1342
Comments: 3
The Ham family, clockwise from bottom center, are “Papa” Roger, 47; Cooper, 3; “Daddy” Steven, 42, holding Olivia, almost 2; Jackson, 8; Michael, 13; Madison, 8; Vanessa, 16; Marcus, 5; Isabel, 13; Logan, 7; Elizabeth, 12; Andrew, 11; and Ambrose, 4. It's 11-year-old Andrew's turn to set the table for dinner, and he deals out 14 paper plates as if they were playing cards. Marcus, 5, climbs onto a bench and announces, "It smells like pancakes." His brother, 3-year-old Cooper, counters, "I think it smells like chicken." "It smells like Ambrose," says Logan, 7, climbing in between Cooper and their sister Ambrose, who's 4. She glares at the laughing boys. Actually, it smells like spaghetti. A big pot of homemade sauce is bubbling on the stove. The six littlest children fit on the 9-foot-long bench along one side of the table. Andrew and the four other big kids sit in chairs on the other side. Olivia, the baby of the family, is in a high chair. Daddy sits at one end, Papa at the other. Steven and Roger Ham are raising 12 children, all adopted from foster care, in Arizona, one of the most unlikely places for two gay men to piece together a family. In Arizona, two men can't be married, nor adopt children together. In his 2008 run for U.S. president, Arizona Sen. John McCain, who with wife Cindy has an adopted daughter, said he opposed allowing gay people to adopt. "I think that we've proven that both parents are important in the success of a family, so, no, I don't believe in gay adoption," McCain said during an appearance in Wisconsin. That same year, Arizonans approved a ban on gay marriage by 56 percent of the vote. Since 1997, conservative Arizona lawmakers have introduced a half-dozen bills that would keep single people, including gays and lesbians, from becoming foster parents or adopting children in the state's care, or would move married couples to the top of the waiting list for adoptions. Those attempts - one as recent as last year - failed to muster enough votes. But this year was different. On April 18, Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill that gives preference to married couples in state and private adoptions, all other criteria being equal. Yet, in 2009, the governor gave Steven and Roger Ham an award for their efforts at keeping siblings in foster care together through adoption. "As someone who was raised from the age of 10 by a widowed mother, I am well aware that single or unmarried individuals can make wonderful parents," Brewer says. "This legislation merely establishes marital status of adoptive parents among a host of factors to be considered when placing a child." Opponents, however, contend that marriage doesn't guarantee a stable and loving family. The Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C., the nation's largest advocacy group for gay, bisexual and transgender equality, condemned the Arizona bill as discriminatory. Originally, the bill listed marital status as the primary consideration in adoptions, both private and from state foster care. But officials at the Children's Action Alliance, a non-profit advocacy group in Phoenix, were worried that would scare off potential single foster and adoptive parents, who are more likely to take in minority and special-needs children. They worked with the 2011 bill's sponsor, Sen. Linda Gray, R-Glendale, and others to amend the wording, making marital status just one of multiple considerations. "It's the well-being of the child that matters most," says Dana Naimark, director of Children's Action Alliance. Of the 2,100 children, on average, in state foster care who have a case plan for adoption, typically a third would be adopted by single parents, according to state records, a big factor in Arizona's high rate - one of the best in the country - of moving kids out of foster care and into permanent homes. Federal adoption incentives added $584,582 to Arizona's coffers last year. From Oct. 1, 2009, to Sept. 30, 2010, adoptions of 2,025 foster children were finalized, says Mark Schwartz, an administrator with the state Department of Economic Security. Arizona ranks first in the country for timeliness of adoptions from foster care, with 47 percent of children who have been severed from their parents because of abuse or neglect getting permanent homes within two years of their removal, Schwartz says. This compares with the national average of 36 percent. While legislators debate and vote on what constitutes the best kind of family, however, conversation at the Hams' dinner table revolves around 13-year-old Michael's basketball game on Thursday, 16-year-old Vanessa's math homework and whether Cooper has to eat all his meatballs. "I'll eat them," Andrew offers, and Cooper slides his plate across the table. It took a decade, some heartache, a lot of love and never taking no for an answer to gather this unlikely group around this huge table for spaghetti. Steven and Roger Ham wanted a family. And each of their sons and daughters was desperate for one. But bringing together this family wasn't easy. "We had to fight to get them," Roger says. "We had to fight to get them all," Steven says. Roger, 47, sometimes tries to suggest he never really wanted any, though Steven, 42, rolls his eyes whenever Roger says it. Both men grew up in large families, Steven as the youngest of 14 children and Roger as the youngest of 12. They met at a bar in Reno, where Roger was bartending and Steven was a frequent customer - a lot more frequent once he met Roger. They fell in love on their first date, in 1993 to see Cirque du Soleil, and had been together eight years when they decided they wanted a child. Their 3,000-square-foot house seemed too big for just the two of them. Steven and Roger first considered adopting a baby through a private agency. But as Steven did more research on adoption in late 2001, they changed their minds and decided to adopt from state foster care. "With so many kids in the system, we would get the child that we wanted and help a child that no one wanted," Steven says. He could even picture her: a girl, maybe 3 or 4, perhaps with dark skin and curly hair. "We were told there were thousands of biracial children that nobody wanted," he says. "We were like, 'Sweet! - because that is exactly what we want.' " Steven called a number of Valley adoption agencies to find out whether they considered same-sex couples for placement. "Honestly, if I needed to lie and say I was a single parent, I would have," Steven says. But he didn't have to. Of the half-dozen agencies he contacted, only two showed any hesitation. That is because although the Legislature has produced bills that would have kept single people from becoming foster or adoptive parents, prohibited same-sex marriage and given preference to married couples in adoptions, those who work with children who need homes - social workers, agencies, the courts - do not take issue with those same conditions. They are more concerned about the thousands of children taken from homes each year, who then bounce among foster homes and group homes in alarming numbers. The Arizona Department of Economic Security, which licenses foster and adoptive parents, cannot discriminate based on sexual orientation. "I immediately fell in love with them," says Heather Shew-Plummer, the caseworker at Aid to the Adoption of Special Kids in Phoenix who handled the Hams' first nine adoptions. Up to that point, she had worked with 10 or so same-sex couples. Shew-Plummer felt Steven and Roger were ideal prospective parents - patient, loving, fun and ceaseless advocates for the kids who would come into their care. But she worried they might face extra obstacles in adopting because they were gay. "They never tried to hide it, but they never made a big deal out of it, either," Shew-Plummer says. "They didn't want to change the world. They just wanted to raise their kids." After months of classes, filling out piles of paperwork and passing background checks and home inspections, Steven was licensed in 2002 as a foster-adoptive parent, meaning he could take in foster kids with the intent of adoption. Roger, too, attended the classes and went through the same checks, although he was not officially licensed. Had they been married, the two would have been licensed as a couple, but Department of Economic Security policy requires that single people be licensed individually. "Being two gay men, we knew we would be up against obstacles," Steven says. At the time, the debate over same-sex marriage was heating up all over the country. Just two years earlier, Mississippi had banned gay couples - and Utah had prohibited unmarried couples - from adopting. But there was good news, too. In 2002, the American Academy of Pediatrics endorsed second-parent adoption, in which children born to or adopted by one member of a same-sex couple is adopted by the parent's partner. Some states, including California and Oregon, would follow its recommendation. By 2003, when Roger and Steven were meeting their first child, the nation was taking sides. The California Supreme Court affirmed that a same-sex partner could petition to adopt his or her partner's child, and 60 percent of adoption agencies nationwide reported accepting applications from gays and lesbians. But North Dakota's legislature passed a law that allows adoption agencies to refuse to participate in child placements that violate the agency's "religious or moral convictions or policies," including denying placement of a child with gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender individuals or same-sex couples. And along the way, there were the various attempts by the Arizona Legislature to put parameters on who makes the best foster and adoptive parent(s). None of it could deter Steven and Roger from starting their family. "The more someone tells me I can't do something, the more determined I am to do it," Steven says, watching his children play from under a big blue umbrella in a park on a Sunday afternoon. "People can think whatever they want to think. We know what makes a family a family." Roger, next to Steven, says, "We were determined not to let anyone stand in our way to do what we thought was best." It seems ridiculous to the pair that, when there are 10,514 children in the state's care - including group homes, foster care and residential treatment - the priority isn't simply finding the best home for each child regardless of parents' marital status or sexual orientation. "A loving home is a loving home," Roger says. "Our kids have two parents who love them," Steven says. "Not all of their friends do." State child-welfare officials learned to trust and rely on the Hams, bringing them 42 foster children over 10 years. Some needed shelter for a few days; others stayed for months. Child caseworkers knew the men would take in any child, day or night, no questions asked, and treat them as their own. And in the Hams' home, children were never sent back for doing something wrong, and it didn't matter that they were not all the same color, or had special needs. Ten of the Hams' children are adopted from Arizona, two from Washington state. Both dads' names appear on the birth certificates of the two from Washington. But legally, the 10 children adopted in Arizona belong only to Steven. Arizona does not allow same-sex couples to adopt, or for a same-sex partner to adopt a partner's children. Roger jokes that if he ever leaves, he'll take his two kids with him. Very funny, Steven counters: "If you ever leave me, we split the kids down the middle - and I get to pick." They grin at each other. Because they can't co-adopt, a rather complicated series of legal actions had to be put together to cover all circumstances. Roger legally changed his last name to Ham in 2007, so everyone has the same name and there was less explaining to do when he picked up the kids from school or took them to the doctor. An attorney drew up papers that, in case something happened to either dad, guardianship of the children goes to the other. Medical releases ensure that either dad can take the kids to urgent care, and paperwork filed at school means either can pick the kids up. Married couples who adopt children don't have to take such precautions. With only one legal parent, children in gay households are not entitled to health and Social Security benefits, inheritance rights or child support from the other parent. If a gay couple splits up, only the legal parent has custody rights. A lawyer in Washington suggested the men re-adopt the rest of the children in that state. Legally, it would put their minds at ease. But at $1,500 for each child, they can't afford it. Besides, the men say, names on paper don't mean as much as what the kids experience every day. "Honestly, my thought is, they know that biologically we're not their parents, but they know who cares for them and who loves them unconditionally," Steven says. "Papa, I need some love," Cooper says, and Roger accommodates, scooping the little boy into his arms and holding him close for a few minutes before setting him back on his feet and ruffling his hair. "I didn't want that much love," Cooper says as he chases after Marcus. 
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#1. To: Sebastian (#0)
A dying parents nightmare !
#2. To: BorisY (#1)
Yukon is a Dad ? !
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