Same-sex adoption now legal across the US

A federal court has struck down the final remaining state ban on same-sex adoption in the US.

On Thursday, US District Court Judge Daniel P. Jordan III declared Mississippi’s law outlawing adoption by gay and lesbian couples unconstitutional.

He cited the 2015 Supreme Court marriage equality ruling as the basis for his decision and said that the anti-gay law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the constitution.

The decision effectively means that adoption by same-sex couples is now legal in all 50 US states.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) welcomed the ruling as affirming the primacy of the “well-being of children in our state who need loving homes.”

HRC Mississippi State Director Rob Hill commented: “Judge Jordan has repudiated reprehensible efforts by our elected leaders to deny legal rights to our families.

“They are on the wrong side of history, and today’s decision confirms, yet again, that they are also on the wrong side of the law.”

Mississippi remains a problematic state for LGBTI people. On Wednesday, the state’s senate approved a new bill dubbed the “Religious Liberty Accommodations Act”.

If it is signed into law by the governor, it would allow individuals, religious organisations and private associations to use religion to discriminate against LGBT Mississippians at work, at schools, in their family life and more.

Shockingly, the HRC said that it is currently monitoring nearly 200 anti-LGBT bills in 34 states, many of them described as “freedom of religion” bills.