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September 15, 2009

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Ukraine rejects Elton John's bid to adopt child

ELTON John will not be able to adopt a 14-month-old Ukrainian child because the pop star is too old and isn't traditionally married, Ukraine's minister for family affairs said yesterday.

The pop singer toured a hospital for HIV-infected children in eastern Ukraine at the weekend as part of a charity project and said that he and his male partner David Furnish wanted to adopt an HIV-infected boy Lev.

But the country's Family, Youth and Sports Minister Yuriy Pavlenko said that adoptive parents must be married and Ukraine does not recognize homosexual unions as marriage.

John and Furnish, his longtime partner, tied the knot in 2005 in one of the first legalized civil unions in the United Kingdom.

Pavlenko also said John was too old. The singer is 62 and Ukrainian law requires a parent to be no more than 45 years older than an adopted child.

"Foreign citizens who are single have no right to adopt children ... and the age difference between the adopter and the child cannot be more than 45 years," Pavlenko said. "The law is the same for everybody: for a president, for a minister, for Elton John."



 

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