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ing and financially and emotionally stable, the academy says.
• The academy believes that a two-parent marriage is best equipped to provide that kind of environment. Their policy says that if a child has two gay parents who choose to marry, "it is in the best interests of their children that legal and social institutions allow and support them to do so."
• The policy cites reports indicating that almost 2 million U.S. children are being raised by gay parents, many of them in states that don't allow gays to marry.
• The academy announced its position Thursday. Officials with the group said they wanted to make the academy's views known before two gay marriage cases are considered by the U.S. Supreme Court next week.
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• MYITKYINA, Myanmar (AP) -- Freshly dumped hypodermic syringes litter alleys, cemeteries and shaded corners in Myitkyina, the provincial capital of Kachin state, on Myanmar's northern border with China.
• Myitkyina is known for having one of the highest concentrations of drug addicts in the world. The Kachin Baptist Convention, an evangelical group with more than 300 churches in the state, says nearly 80 percent of ethnic Kachin youth are addicts. Their drug of choice is heroin.
• Opium is grown here, and heroin is cheap and easy to find. Help in overcoming addiction, however, is rare.
• The men who come to the Kachin Baptist Convention's rehabilitation camp, one of the few places addicts can seek help, hope to find healing in God. They warm their hands around bowls of rice in the morning chill. Then they gather to sing gospel songs, their faces lit with tears as the sun rises. Just 31 of the 49 men who came to the camp -- the first the convention has ever set up -- managed to finish the three-month program in February.
• The government also runs a drug rehabilitation hospital in Kachin state, but some here say officials have done far too little, and even accuse them of turning a blind eye to drug abuse to decimate young people who might otherwise become rebels.
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