Bitterly Opposed Adoption Rule Died Quiet Death

SACRAMENTO —  Two years ago, Gov. Pete Wilson created a furor by ordering his Social Services Department to come up with a state regulation that would discourage adoption by unmarried couples.

Gay groups complained that it was discriminatory. Adoption advocates warned that it would prevent hard-to-place children from finding homes. Lawmakers said it was heartless and proposed bills to nullify it.

What few of the governor’s critics knew was that the regulation they so bitterly opposed never happened.

It died quietly, stuffed into a file cabinet where state officials let it sit until the deadline for putting it into effect came and went.

“Well, good for them,” said Assemblyman Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles), who tried unsuccessfully to pass a law that would have overturned the proposed regulation. “This makes me very happy.”

In the governor’s office, where Press Secretary Sean Walsh said the assumption was that the measure had been implemented, the reaction was less joyous.

“Memorandum to [Gov.-elect] Gray Davis,” Walsh said: “Watch out for your bureaucracy.”

Walsh, who learned from a reporter a few weeks ago that the regulation had not become reality, said what really happened to it is not entirely clear.

The explanation offered by officials in the Department of Social Services, he said, is that the proposal attracted so much opposition that they didn’t have time, as required by law, to respond to all the negative testimony.

“It went past the one-year deadline, and welfare reform and other pressing matters came along and it just didn’t move forward,” he said.

He added that Wilson has not changed his position on the issue. “He believes from a policy perspective that it is not in the best interest of the child to be placed in an environment with unmarried couples.”

Eloise Anderson, the department director who had expressed strong objections to the proposal in behind-the-scenes meetings with the governor’s office, declined to comment.

Two years ago, she had plunged reluctantly into the center of the controversy when Wilson directed her department to create a regulation that would require adoption agencies to advise the courts in every case that “having parents who are not legally married to each other is not in the best interest of the child.”

Wilson had weighed in after the department put forth an informal policy that sought to make it easier for unmarried people to adopt. Preparing a presidential run at that time and attempting to shore up his credentials with the right wing of his party, Wilson ordered the department to withdraw the policy and replace it with a regulation that would have the opposite effect.

Anderson’s department complied by proposing the new regulation and holding a series of public hearings. What the department didn’t do was put it into effect.

“I always felt that Eloise didn’t believe in what the governor was asking,” said one former official, “so she just didn’t do it.”

In California, about 6,000 adoptions are completed each year, and judges, even with the controversy ignited by the governor, have generally approved those involving unmarried people.

Diane Goodman, an Encino attorney who handles adoptions, said she remembered attending the hearings and arguing that adoptions by unmarried couples were often very much in the interest of the children. Gay families particularly, she said, have frequently adopted children with special needs who “would not be adopted otherwise.”

Although it was never publicized, she said she had been aware that the regulation was dropped and had assumed it had been done with Wilson’s approval.

“Once he got his publicity, I don’t think it was important to him,” she said. “I think he was looking for the publicity rather than actually changing the law.”

Frank Mecca, executive director of the County Welfare Directors Assn. of California, said his group, which opposed the proposed regulation, also knew that the regulation had simply disappeared.

“We didn’t know why, and we didn’t want to ask any questions,” he said.

At the time, he said, proponents of the regulation had tried to turn it into an issue about gays, complaining that the state needed to step forward and stop homosexuals from adopting.

But for counties, he said, the real issue was children in foster care and the need to find adoptive families for as many as possible.

“It’s been our experience that being unmarried doesn’t necessarily disqualify someone from being a nurturing, stable, caring family,” he said. “We’ve known many unmarried people who had adopted kids from foster care and the adoptions have been very successful.”

And the biggest number of unmarried couples who adopted children have not been gay couples, he said. “For us, it never was a gay issue,” he said.

But for the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition, it was very much a gay issue.

“We have always felt that this would be an inappropriate role model and an inappropriate setting for a child to step into,” he said.

Sheldon said he believed the regulation was in effect and was disappointed to discover it had been dropped.

“Pete Wilson was emphatic that this is a policy he wanted implemented,” Sheldon recalled.