A married couple would not be entitled to preference in adoptions.¹³ Right now, homosexual couples in Connecticut cannot adopt, with one exception: a homosexual partner can adopt his or her partner's child.¹⁴ In adoption policy, Connecticut law has always favored married couples and, in doing so, has supported the ideal of a child's being raised by a committed mother and father. The new law would abandon this ideal.

Married couples will not be entitled to preference in the foster-care system. Passage of same-sex marriage in Connecticut or its equivalent, civil unions, would mean that foster children, boys and girls, would be placed with homosexual couples, a possibility that exists now but would become more common. It is true that there is a shortage of foster parents in Connecticut; people of faith and others do need to respond to assist these children in crisis and their parents. But though this problem needs to be answered, the answer is not to change the definition of marriage or abandon the ideal of marriage.