LGBT adoption in the United States

Laws regarding LGBT adoption in the United States vary, as adoption in the United States is regulated and licensed at the state level. In 2006, adoption by gay couples was illegal in Nebraska, Florida, Michigan, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Utah. Adoption by single LGBT individuals is now legal in every jurisdiction in the United States, while adoption by same-sex couples is also legal in all the 50 states and the District of Columbia as of June 26, 2015.

On April 6, 1999 the American Civil Liberties Union produced an Overview of Lesbian and Gay Parenting, Adoption and Foster Care. Within this document, the organization addressed research results on Lesbian and Gay Parenting, some key findings include:

Many families in which a child would have parents who identified as lesbian or gay and then grew up in a same-sex relationship were those brought about from a previous heterosexual relationship. As such, many prior legal disputes were over the custody of a child in cases of a divorce. Biases were then seen against the parent in a now same-sex relationship which caused courts to not favour them in giving custody and visitation rights. The sexual preference of the LGBT parent was viewed as impacting the upbringing of the child and not the actual ability to provide for the child's needs. Following the introduction of In vitro fertilisation lesbian couples were able to rear children of their own who weren't born from heterosexual relationships and the child being the biological offspring of one of the partners. Sprouting from this is the development of the issues of co-parent adoption and, in cases of separation, child custody in some lesbian relationships.

For male same-sex couples, becoming a parent can be more costly as, if there is a desire to have a biological child of one of the partners, the only method is surrogacy. As such, adoption serves as a more cost effective alternative.

More recently, the amount of same-sex couples adopting in the 21st century has tripled since the 1990s. U.S. Census data from 2010 revealed an emerging trend in American adoptions; despite considerable prejudice in some quarters and legal barriers in states; same-sex couples are adopting children in growing numbers. According to these figures, of the 115,064 same-sex households with children, about 16 percent or 18,400 were bringing up one or more adopted children.

According to the Williams Institute, as of 2009 "an estimated 20,000 same-sex couples are raising nearly 30,000 adopted children." As of 2011, approximately two million children in the United States were being raised by LGBT parents and unable to establish a legal relationship with both their LGBT parents. The 2010 U.S. Census reported that same gender couples are raising approximately 115,000 children, 18 years and younger and are living in essentially all counties of the United States.

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