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Still, in practice, adoption policy is almost always made case by case, and sympathetic judges--in the U.S., every adoption must be sanctioned by a judge--can allow just about any arrangement. William Pierce, president of the National Council for Adoption in Washington, estimates that "thousands" of individual gays have adopted over the past 20 years. Many more gay parents, perhaps millions, are rearing their own biological offspring.
It's unclear how much the New Jersey agreement will change adoption law elsewhere. In fact, there's a chance that the New Jersey case could do for adoption policy what a Hawaii case did for marriage: ignite a national backlash. Lower-court decisions in Hawaii allowing same-sex marriages led other states and eventually Congress to pass the bills outlawing them. (The Hawaii Supreme Court will probably rule on the issue soon, but next year Hawaii's voters will have a chance to amend their constitution to ban same-sex marriages.) The New Jersey case, says Arne Owens, a spokesman for the Christian Coalition, "will serve as a wake-up call to people, because what we see is another effort by the homosexual lobby to advance their agenda, and here they're doing it on the backs of children. Traditional family arrangements are proven to work." Gay groups countered with an American Psychological Association study concluding that children of gay parents turn out no better or worse than children of heterosexuals.
Last week's bickering meant little to Adam, the two-year-old who started it all. Born addicted to cocaine and suffering from a respiratory virus and a weak liver, his chief concern last week was trying to open some of the Christmas presents crammed under the tree. Having finalized his adoption in October, Holden, 34, and Galluccio, 35, plan to adopt their foster daughter as well. Of Adam, Holden said last week, "he has had two physical parents, two psychological parents, two emotional parents. The only things we weren't were his two legal parents." Now Adam has those as well.
--With reporting by Elizabeth Rudulph/New York