Home Study or "How Jon, Keith, and Their House Will Not Purposely Harm a Child"

As part of the adoption process, Jon and I have to complete a home study. According to Wikipedia.org, a home study is "a screening of the home and life of prospective adoptive parents prior to allowing an adoption to take place."

What does this mean for Jon and I? That a social worker will come into our home between one and three times to make sure our house is not a giant death trap. Additionally, in many cases they will come back for subsequent visits to interview Jon and I together and separately regarding our lives, our ambitions, our desires for having a child, and our plan for the child's immediate and long term future.

Here is where the complicated part comes in. Since there is no law the explicitly states that adoption for same-sex couples is legal or illegal in MN, we have to be very careful how we approach the home study. Ultimately, the home study company in MN will write up our home study report and send it to our adoption agency on the west coast which is what will be used to make sure our home is not a portal into the fiery pits of Hell and "clear" us for entering the pool of candidates to be chosen by a birth parent. From our understanding up till now, we have two options (which I am abbreviating in an extreme fashion below):

1. Find a home study agency in MN that will write the home study report listing us both as "Prospective Adoptive Fathers." This way, when we work with our west coast adoption agency, the laws of those states (which are far more liberal than MN) will allow Jon and I both to be listed on the birth certificate as the father and we will not have to do any legal tightrope walking in MN. Seems easy enough, right? Well, the problem is that most adoption agencies or home study agencies have an emphasis on religion. Most come with awesome names like ABC Christian Services, Catholic Charities of MN, Lutheran Social Services, etc. Out of about 48 agencies we found in MN, only three responded yes, they may perform a service like this.
2. If #1 doesn't pan out and a home study agency is only willing to write one of us up as the prospective adoptive father, then only one of us can legally adopt the child. We would then have to come back to MN, wait a certain amount of time and then go before a circuit court judge who would make the decision as to whether the second parent should be legally added on or not. What if the judge is Conservative?  What is the judge is anti-gay?  What if the judge has a Long Island Ice Tea hangover?  What if the judge has diarrhea and wants to make a quick decision to get to the nearest bathroom?  Ugh, we do not want to go this route.

So, we are in the process of looking at costs and determining which one of the three home study agencies in MN will be meet our needs and pray that one of them will write our home study up under the circumstances of #1 and not #2.