On a fall evening, Gus, 6, and Niko, 3, help their father Kelly Huntington make bacon and eggs for dinner. Gus stirs the eggs while Niko pets the dog and watches his older brother work.

From the living room, Gus’ and Niko’s other father, Christopher Katis gently chides them about staying on the reading schedule and doing their chores if they want to go to the play date the next day with the neighbor's children.

“We’re just another typical American family,” Chris said.

Chris insists that each family is different and his family just happens to have two fathers.

The adoption process for Chris and Kelly began on a Thanksgiving afternoon walk in Oakland, Calif.

In 2000, Chris and Kelly had decided to spend the holiday alone, away from family. After all, they are vegetarians with a jet-set lifestyle – traveling and seeing new places was their passion.

After making Chinese food for dinner, Chris and Kelly went for a walk and passed a large house with big bay windows where they could see inside the home. There was a family with several generations, standing around the dinner table, holding hands, saying a prayer.

“We had a good life,” Chris said. “But that afternoon, when I saw that beautiful family, I decided there was more to life, and we weren’t a part of it.”

After a relationship of 17 years, Chris and Kelly decided they wanted to adopt a child.

The Journey

Chris and Kelly are participating in a study done by Sean Camp, a USU social work professor. The study analyzes how gay males become adoptive parents. Camp said the American Civil Liberties Union reported that there is six to 14 million gay parents in the U.S. The exact number is difficult to determine because many gay parents do not openly admit they are gay due to a variety of social and legal pressures, Camp said.

Many gay couples wish to adopt, Camp said. It’s the difficulties of adoption and the legal matters that often stop couples from adopting, despite a need for more adoptive parents.

There are more than half-a-million children who are in foster care in the United States, according to Camp’s study, and the number is increasing.

“It’s so hard to look at kids in the face and tell them they can’t be part of a family when there’s a long line of gay and lesbian couples who are just waiting to adopt,” Camp said.

Chris and Kelly first met in Salt Lake City through a mutual acquaintance and then again when Chris answered a personal ad by Kelly. They hit it off and shortly thereafter started dating exclusively. After eight months of dating, they moved to Monterey Calif.

And on that Thanksgiving in 2000, the two decided to expand the family.

“We were still skeptical and Kelly wanted to do it more than I did,” Chris said. “There were still a lot of unknowns at that point.”

The couple started with the adoption classes, but they doubted that a gay couple would be allowed to adopt.

Chris said, “On the first day of class, I went up to the counselor and said, ‘Obviously we’re a same gender couple. Do we even have a chance?’ The counselor looked at me with a look of disgust and said, ‘Why wouldn’t you?’”

The class was three hours long every Saturday for 10 weeks. It taught parenting skills and a variety of other skills. In the class there were two other homosexual couples, Chris said. Before Chris and Kelly could adopt they had to go through extensive background checks, had their home thoroughly reviewed, had to write an extensive autobiography and were interviewed by case workers. This process is the same that all couples trying to adopt must undertake.

“Almost two years had passed since we decided we wanted to be dads,” Chris said. But caseworkers had not yet found a match.

They decided that if the county had not made a match by the end of the year they would pursue other options.

In October 2003, a match was finally made and Chris and Kelly went to meet a 6-month old baby boy.

The foster mother of the boy had her doubts about allowing two gay men to adopt her child and she raised those doubts with Chris and Kelly.

“When we first went to the house to meet the baby boy, he was in a Johnny Jumper but there were other kids in the house,” Chris said.

Chris and Kelly began spending time with the baby boy. But it was on Thanksgiving that Chris, Kelly and the baby really bonded.

“When we went to take (the baby) back to his (foster) mom’s he started to cry, he didn’t want to leave us,” Chris said.

The fosster mother recognized that her son had bonded with Chris and Kelly and soon after they became his guardians.

Chris and Kelly came full circle two years after deciding to adopt. The desire became a reality and they named the boy after Chris’ father, Gus.

In the winter of 2007 Chris and Kelly were notified that Gus had a little brother, who they also adopted and named Niko in October 2008.

Challenges

Camp’s study looks at the process that gay couples go through in order to adopt, even though it is different for each couple.

The study cites extensive research that has found gay men to be as capable at parenting as their heterosexual counterparts.

The laws on adoption vary by state and Utah does not allow gay couples to adopt, or at least on the surface it is against the rules, Camp said.

“Some agencies allow it and know that the couple is a gay couple,” Camp said. “The agencies that do this fill out the paper work and go through the process as though it were a single man who was adopting.”

Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) is forced to follow the regulations but occasionally will allow gay couples to adopt; the parents just have to hide their sexual orientation, Camp said. During home inspections, the couple must “de-gay” the house and pretend there is only one parent living in the home, Camp said.

Ignoring the issue altogether does not allow couples to be trained about issues that only gay fathers face such as how to deal with teachers, how to address the issues of showing physical intimacy and a variety of other factors, Camp said.

“Gay men face stricter scrutiny when adopting,” Camp said. “They are looked at closer than a heterosexual couple that is adopting.”

Social Pressures

As the number of children being adopted by gay parents increases, the understanding and social acceptance improves, Camp said.

“It’s definitely different for gay parents,” Camp said. “They have more to prove, there’s more pressure on them.”

The pressure comes from families, school mates, neighbors and case workers, Camp said. And the number one objection to gay couples adopting is the false notion that gay couples who want to adopt are child molesters, Camp said. There is extensive research that shows more than 97 percent of child molestation is done by heterosexual males, he said.

Chris’ parents were not in favor of him adopting children at first because of Chris’ and Kelly’s jet-set lifestyle. But that changed quickly as soon as they met Gus and later Niko, and now Chris’ family is accepting and loving of the two children.

Gus, who is now in the first grade, and Niko, who is in preschool, have accepting teachers, and Chris said he has never noticed any discrimination or maltreatment toward the children.

“No one wants to hurt or blame the children,” Chris said.

Gus and Niko have regular play dates with other children their age, and parents are generally accepting of the children, Chris said.

Chris and Kelly try to stay involved in their kids’ education and in their hobbies.

“This last year I was the only man that read in my son’s kindergarten class,” Chris said. “It was all the women and me.”

The kids don't seem to mind that they are growing up in a family with two dads.

“I try and tell my kids that each family is different and special in their own way,” Chris said.

For Chris, his family might be a little different, but the fundamental aspects are still present.

“I don’t consider myself a gay dad,” Chris said. “I consider myself a dad, who happens to be gay.”

As a gay father, Chris acknowledges the pressure he feels to be a successful parent.

On one occasion when the family went to Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Gus began to act up and be loud. Chris, feeling embarrassed, pulled his son aside and began to lecture him on how important it was that he represents his fathers well.

Chris said he promptly realized Gus had no idea that his family was different than other families and Gus was just behaving like any other child.

“But the pressure is there. I feel it,” Chris said.

Gay adoption and gay rights

Gay rights activists are pushing for a variety of reforms and bills, from simple protections against discrimination to legalizing gay marriage across the country, Camp said.

Gay marriage and gay adoption are intricately linked. When a couple has adopted children, the argument for them to be able to marry is that much more potent and tangible, Camp said. Likewise, if gay marriage is legal, then it's only logical that gay couples be allowed to adopt, he said.

Chris and Kelly were married in 2004, then again in 2008. Chris' and Kelly's marriage is not recognized in Utah.

For Chris, fighting for gay rights is a passion and he sees his family as an illustration of how far gay rights have come in the past 50 years.

The idea that gay marriage would be legal even in some states was unheard of 50 years ago, Chris said.

The American Gay Rights Movement began in 1969 when police raided the Stonewall Inn, a bar in New York City that catered to a gay and lesbian crowd. After a history of mistreatment and antigay laws, many of the patrons fought back against the raids. This sparked a series of protests, known as the Stonewall Riots, all across the United States.

Not too long after the riots, Harvey Milk was the first openly gay person elected to public office when he won a seat as a city supervisor in San Francisco in 1977. He was assassinated in 1978.

In August, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Milk.

Gay rights are expanding and homophobia is becoming a thing of the past, Chris said.

“Every step is a step forward. We will never go backwards,” Chris said. “Every step is a link in the chain. From a bunch of drag queens in high heels in 1969 that said, ‘Enough is enough,’ to Harvey Milk, to my family here today. Every step is a link. And it becomes a nonissue as we begin to see gay relationships and families daily. It’s not a matter of if homophobia will be unacceptable but a matter of when it will be unacceptable."

–seth.bracken@aggiemail.usu.edu