Sir Elton Wants to Adopt a Ukrainian Baby

I know this blog is about Russia and not the Ukraine, but being that the Ukraine and Russia are so closely tied, I felt that I had to comment on this story.

If you haven't heard, Sir Elton John is looking to adopt a 15-month-old Ukrainian boy. The trouble is the kid's parents aren't too thrilled with the idea.

The deal is that the boy, who is HIV positive, has been taken out of his parents' custody and placed in an orphanage. His parents, both of whom are also HIV positive, lost custody of their boy and their other child for various reasons (the mother is an alcoholic and the father is reportedly a drug addict who served eight years in prison for murder). Enter Sir Elton and his homosexual partner, David Furnish, who say they fell in love with the young boy after visiting him in an orphanage last month.

Despite their desire to raise the boy as their own, Sir Elton and Furnish were denied their request to return with the boy to England. Ukrainian officials cited a number of technical reasons for forbidding the adoption, most notably that Ukrainian law prohibits adoption by homosexual couples. Add onto this the fact that the boy's mother hopes to eventually regain custody of her son. Though the father reportedly will allow Sir Elton to take the boy as long as the father can live with him in England.

Maybe I'm wrong, but the whole thing seems wrong on so many levels. What right does Elton John have to take a young boy away from his natural parents? Just because he's a rich foreigner, what extra right does that give him?