Perhaps there are many reasons why Elton John would not be a suitable parent to adopt a child, but his age and his sexual orientation shouldn’t be among them – not when so many deserving children are living in Ukraine’s orphanages with little prospect of adoption into good families.
The British pop star created a flurry of international publicity – as few others are able to do – over his Sept. 12 visit to a Makiyivka orphanage in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast. He and a 14-month-old AIDS-affected child, Lev, hit it off after John performed for about 80 children there. We believe John’s emotional reaction was sincere when he said the child had “stolen my heart.”
But parenthood is serious business. And if John is serious, he should follow up with an adoption application and go through a rigorous process designed to determine his suitability as a parent. First, however, he may want to recruit allies to change Ukraine’s standards. It may well be in the best interests of the child to grow up in a home with John and his gay partner, David Furnish, as parents, rather than languishing for years in a poorly financed orphanage.
John’s visit mostly resulted in positive attention – to Ukraine’s growing AIDS (and drug addiction) problem, to the needs of unwanted orphans, and to those commendably trying to help, including Elton John’s AIDS Foundation and his host, Olena Franchuk’s Anti-AIDS Foundation. The singer also sparked a useful debate over qualities needed to be a good parent.
In that respect, we disagree with those who think homosexuality is a moral failing. It is a natural sexual orientation for a sizeable share of the population. We also believe that a maximum age difference of 45 years between parent and adopted child, required under Ukrainian law, serves no purpose.But there would be other obstacles for John, and many of those are justified – such as preference given to Ukrainian parents to adopt Ukrainian orphans. We hope more of them step forward, perhaps inspired by John’s encounter with Lev, to give more of this nation’s unfortunate children a fighting chance at life.
