The China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption on Thursday denied receiving an adoption application from a lesbian couple in the U.S., after an article was published claiming that the writer and her partner were not allowed to adopt a disabled Chinese boy, as reported by the Global Times.
An employee from the center said that they only found out about the case of Melissa Castro Wyatt after reading her article on The Washington Post about how her application goes against the adoption rules of the country.
Titled "I bumped into my fate, and against China's adoption rules," the article inspired a heated debate among netizens. Castro claims that she was denied a chance to adopt a 4-year-old disabled Chinese boy by a Chinese adoption agency, since she claimed that a same-sex couple adopting a child "is one thing they will not consider."
According to the employee, adoption agencies look out for the best interest of the child as its one and only priority when selecting adopters.
"Our only goal and hope is that our kids can fit into the foreign countries," the employee said.
However, the employee refused to answer questions about allowing same-sex couples to adopt a child.
On the center's website, there is an entry that explicitly states that they will not look for adoptees for same-sex couples.
According to the center's statement, China's marriage law only accepts families formed from heterosexual couples, claiming that "The Criteria for the Classification and Diagnosis of Mental Disorders" in China considers homosexuality as a psychosexual disorder.
According to the "The Criteria," homosexuality has not been considered a sexual perversion since 2001, but it is considered to potentially be a sexual orientation disorder.
The statement also claimed that the "traditional morality and customs" in China consider homosexuality against social norms. Because China's Adoption Law believes that adoption should not go against social morality, foreign same-sex couples have a major barrier preventing them from adopting in the country.
Regarding the disabled boy in question, the center has found another foreign family to adopt the boy identified as Hu in Wyatt's article.
"We are all happy for Hu. He is 4 years old now, and usually kids at such age don't need to wait for so long to find a home," said the center.