Word: colorado
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Hollie Seeley and Christy Allen have been together for seven years, own a home in Denver and are raising two kids. So they were disappointed last fall when Colorado voters joined the bandwagon of states that ban same-sex marriage and civil unions. But the couple won a measure of vindication this spring when Governor Bill Ritter signed a bill making Colorado the 10th state to allow gay and lesbian partners to adopt children as couples instead of restricting parental rights to one partner. Now Seeley can legally adopt Allen's biological daughter Amelia, 2, and Allen can adopt Seeley...
...advocates say they feel such data help account for another Pew poll finding: opposition to gay marriage dropped from 65% in 1996 to 51% last year. The trend is heartening to gay activists who believe that as acts like Colorado's give gay and lesbian couples the opportunity to showcase their worth as partner-parents, the laws will help erode resistance to same-sex matrimony. "We now have a better chance to prove people's fears wrong," says Allen, 39, a painter. Ellen Kahn, family project director at Washington-based Human Rights Campaign, one of the nation's largest...
Still, most acknowledge that a big reason Colorado's law passed "was that it wasn't [designed as] a gay-adoption bill. It was a second-parent adoption bill" that also allows unmarried heterosexuals to adopt jointly, says Colorado adoption attorney Seth Grob. "It was presented predominantly as child-friendly, not gay-friendly," and therefore ran less risk of alienating potential supporters than gay marriage does...
That approach has frustrated opponents like the Roman Catholic Church--some U.S. dioceses have stopped adoption services altogether rather than comply with state funding rules that require them to allow gay adoption--and the conservative, Colorado-based group Focus on the Family. Bill Maier, Focus' vice president and chief psychologist, insists the practice "hurts children because it intentionally creates motherless or fatherless families," and he accuses child-welfare agencies of "a real biased push to normalize same-sex parenting." He adds, "I don't see any shortage of heterosexual parents willing to adopt." Although they say it's not linked...
...Independence Day, I'll be having a cheeseburger at Lucille's - but without Lucille. She's on vacation in Colorado, where she'll be flipping burgers on the barbecue, insisting it won't be the same. "When I'm away, I miss Cairo," she explains. "I miss the people, I miss my life, I miss my food. I've been eating at that restaurant myself for more than 10 years." Lucille, hurry back...