I just learned that Virginia is dead last in terms of placing children in adoptive homes before they age out of the system - nothing to be proud of. We can and should do better. Obviously, the larger the pool of potential adoptive families, the more children will be placed. There is simply no moral justification for using any criteria other than the best interests of those children in finding stable, loving, permanent homes.  

The claims no doubt being made by some commenters here that heterosexual people somehow make superior parents have been debunked many times over. The "research" to which they refer always turns out to be the same old discredited primary source, which they have twisted and misrepresented to serve their own selfish agenda of preventing LGBT people from fully participating in society by any means necessary - even at the expense of children in need. That source is a study which compared intact, two-parent families with families broken by divorce or abuse. It didn't even include any subjects who were gay, yet these activists (such as the "Virginia Family Foundation") continue to distort its conclusion for their own purposes. Their behavior is dishonest, misguided and mean-spirited.

I have been following the research in this area (and its misuse) for many years. Legitimate, peer-reviewed studies have consistently supported what people in the real world already know - that children thrive when they have parents who love and support them. The gender and sexual orientation of those parents matters not one iota in terms of parenting outcomes. Any statement to the contrary is an outright falsehood. Please do not allow the purveyors of such falsehoods to deny good homes to children by corrupting the public policy of the Commonwealth. Consider only the evidence and the children.