Gay couple faces barriers to building a family

Gay couple faces barriers to building a family

Ty Tonander met the tiny girl called Sophie in a crowded orphanage in Ukraine.

A database made the match. He was 27. She was 2 and "troublesome," orphanage workers said.

Her new adoptive father saw a bubbling curiosity instead. "I remember her walking up to a tree and touching the bark -- like she had never seen a tree before."

Adoption opened a new world for him, too. He wanted so much to be a parent. But as a gay man, he feared the experience might be out of reach.

Sophie is 8 now and lives with her two dads, Tonander and Mike Bisping, partners for 15 years. She is a third-grader with friends and homework who plays baseball, soccer and basketball. This year, life in the family's tidy, two-story household in Minneapolis got even livelier. Sophie got a sister. She and her dads made a long trip to Guatemala to welcome 2-year-old Ava to the family.

A sock-footed Ava ceases moving at high speed across the living room to point a finger at Bisping and introduce him as "Daddy." She lets out a giggle, then shifts her hand and her big brown eyes toward Tonander, who she calls "Papa." It's a scene that, a decade ago, her dads only dared to imagine.

While some of their gay friends were finding surrogate mothers to bear their children, Tonander and Bisping set out on a course they thought would fit them better. "So many kids need a home. We knew we wanted to adopt," Tonander says. They knew they wanted a toddler "because we knew all the babies get adopted," he says. And they wanted a girl.

The two men are keenly aware some people believe homosexuality is wrong or weird. But like any parent, they want to protect their children from harm. When they set out to adopt, they believed a girl would be less likely to be taunted about having two dads than a boy would be. "It's one thing for us to take grief from people, but we didn't want to think of our children taking it," Tonander says.

They didn't want anti-gay attitudes to stop them from adopting a child, either. "We both love children," Tonander says. "And we knew we had the time and wherewithal to provide for them."

AN ARDUOUS PROCESS

The time was ripe for change. Diversity was seeping into the ranks of adoptive parents. "There was evidence of a shift away from real and imagined beliefs that to adopt you had to have a certain income and look a certain way," says J. Lindsay Strand, a family lawyer in St. Paul who handles adoptions. By the late 1990s, lesbian couples had been adopting children for several years. Gay men were following their lead.

Some barriers to adoption continue for gays. In foreign countries, as well as most Minnesota counties and many other states, lesbians and gays can adopt only as a single parent. "We were told a lot of countries wouldn't work with a single parent," Bisping remembers. A single male cut the odds even more. A partner seeking to share parental rights must initiate a separate adoption process, akin to a stepparent adoption and at an added cost.

When Bisping and Tonander began contacting agencies, it took more than three years before they met with anything but rejection. Agency officials told them they doubted they could get a single male approved for adoption in the foreign countries they worked with. Adopting a female was even more unlikely, they were told. "They were afraid men wanted a girl for prostitution," Bisping says.

The first agency that agreed to work with Tonander and Bisping questioned them so skeptically that the couple opted out. They then signed with another agency, where the initial interview lasted seven hours. Bisping remembers it as "intense but exhilarating," focused on their parenting philosophies and beliefs rather than their gay status. The main concern was whether Tonander -- the adopting parent in this case -- could get a judge's approval for a single-parent adoption.

"I went along mainly to reiterate what a good parent I would be," Bisping remembers.

Six months later, Tonander was boarding a plane to Ukraine with his mother for their first encounter with Sophie and a required three-week stay before bringing her home. He found the girl in a cold, sparse two-room orphanage with more than 100 other children. "Many ran up to my legs and said, 'Papa, Papa,' " he remembers. "Sophie was wearing a big bow in her hair that made her look even smaller than she was."

The first week, he and his mother could visit the orphanage for two hours a day. The second week, they were allowed to take Sophie to the small apartment where they stayed.

After an initial adjustment, "Sophie really warmed up to us quickly," Tonander says. He was told she never had been off the orphanage grounds.

Conditions were primitive in Ukraine. Without access to a phone or computer, there was no way to communicate with Bisping, who was at home waiting to hear from him.

"I was really worried," Bisping remembers.

ROUND TWO

Tonander brought Sophie home with the surprises of instant parenthood.

"People would say, 'Didn't you miss having her as a baby?' " Bisping remembers. But because Sophie had experienced so little in her two years of life, she had much left to discover. "Especially things like peanut butter and ice cream," Bisping says. "Everything was new and exciting."

He and Tonander liked their roles as Sophie's parents so much that, five years later, they decided to try their luck again. "We looked at our options and ended up with Guatemala," Bisping says.

Adoption agencies told them they could only get an infant, then said they'd need to take a boy. After weeks of discouragement, a new referral landed in their e-mail. "Think pink," the subject line said. A photo of 18-month-old Ava, her dark hair dirty and disheveled, was attached. They knew she was the one.

The waiting began, capped six months later by a brisk finale. In a span of 24 hours, the dads put together a trip to Guatemala for their little family. "It was really important that all of us go this time," Tonander says.

A foster family handed Ava over to her new family. "She bonded immediately to us," Tonander says. He thought it amazing that they could find another child as perfect for them as Sophie.

Bisping thought Ava's outgoing personality a good match for Tonander's, while he likens Sophie's shy exterior to his own. Sophie thought her sister was small.

Known for their savvy about the adoption landscape, they talk with other gay couples contemplating adoption. They work with Rainbow Families, a Minneapolis-based organization for gays and lesbians with children, by candidly sharing their challenges and revelations about the process and parenthood.

The cost of the two adoptions, after federal tax credits, totaled about $45,000, says Tonander, who works as an account director for a design company. "We have two home-equity loans. There they are, right there," he adds with a glance toward his daughters lounging on the couch.

"It's a big lifestyle change," says Bisping, who is customer service director for a multiple-listing realty company. He has put aside an avocation in community theater because "I felt more necessary here."

"We're way more tired," says Tonander of their lives with children. "And happier, too."