Uruguay law may not enable gay adoptions after all

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A closer reading of an adoptions law promoted by Uruguay's gay rights groups suggests it might not enable adoptions by gay and lesbian couples after all.

With the law awaiting President Tabare Vazquez's signature, gay rights groups have been celebrating the prospect that Uruguay could become the first country in Latin America to give gay and lesbian couples the opportunity to adopt.

But nowhere in the law does it specifically say that homosexual couples have a right to adopt. And in some places, it suggests otherwise — for example by specifying how the child should take a mother and father's surnames.

Lawyers, judges and even the law's own authors now have doubts about how the law will be applied.

Under Vazquez, Uruguay already legalized gay civil unions and ended a ban on homosexuals in the military, despite strong disapproval from the Roman Catholic Church.

The church also campaigned against the adoptions law, which shifts much of the decision-making to the national Institute of Children and Adolescents, and away from a system in which individual lawyers, notaries and religious groups had a central role.

The new law would drop a requirement that children can only be adopted by legally married couples or single parents.