With Elton John considering adoption is the media changing how they cover gay celebrities?

Photo: AP

Could Elton John and his partner David Furnish be looking at adopting a child? That's the question asked in articles accompanying adorable pictures of the singer showering a 14-month-old Ukrainian toddler with hugs and kisses like a doting uncle.

Sir Elton met the child, Lev, at an orphanage where he performed for his AIDS Foundation. The singer said that Lev had stolen his and his partner's heart, even though he had previously dismissed the idea of adding to his family through adoption.

The couple faces a number of hurdles, including age (John is 62 while, at 46, Furnish falls within guidelines that adoptive parents be no more than 45 years older than the child), no adoption treaty between the UK and the Ukraine as well as the illegality of gay adoption in the Ukraine.

Lev with Sir Elton and David Furnish

Interestingly, initial reports overlooked the issues John and Furnish face as a same-sex couple. Instead, most stories compared Sir Elton to celebrities like Madonna and Angelina Jolie who have adopted children from other countries. Similarly, the initial criticism has seen groups say that John and Furnish should consider adopting closer to home.

Is this a refreshingly post-gay approach to the story or an example of the media overlooking the kinds of discrimination gay people face? Either way, it's encouraging to see that the media's first instinct was to try to make readers go "Aw" with stories of possible fatherhood.