In a landmark decision for gay adoption rights the American Academy of Paediatrics (AAP), representing some 50,000 US doctors, has endorsed research findings that children's development is not harmed by upbringing in a gay home, and called on its membership to campaign for legislative reform allowing adoptions by gay couples. From Patrick Smyth, Washington Correspondent
An AAP report in the journal Paediatrics says "there's no existing data to support the widely held belief that there are negative outcomes" for children raised by gay parents.
Studies showed, the report says, that children raised by same-sex couples had no greater risk of becoming confused about their gender identity.
"Denying legal parent status through adoption . . . prevents these children from enjoying the psychological and legal security that comes from having two willing, capable and loving parents," the report says.
The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the American Psychological Association also support homosexual adoption. The latter's explicit statement in the 1960s that homosexuality is not a psychiatric condition is considered by many to have contributed more than any other move to the legalisation of gay rights.
The number of US children with at least one gay parent is estimated at between 1 million and 9 million.
The report has been condemned by "pro-family" groups. "It's a group of pro-homosexual people who want to further tear down the one-man, one-woman relationship in America," said the Rev Louis Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, a Christian lobbying group. He called the policy irresponsible and "a disservice to medicine".