RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – Independent Russ Potts voiced unequivocal support for allowing cohabiting same-sex couples to adopt children, a stance that sharply distinguishes him from his two party rivals in this year’s governor’s race.

In a wide-ranging 90-minute interview with Associated Press reporters, Potts said he saw no reason law-abiding same-sex couples who can provide good homes for children without parents should be barred from doing so.

“We’re all God’s children,” Potts said. “… I don’t think that they ought to be precluded from adopting a child.”

Potts, a 64-year-old Republican state senator from Winchester disenchanted with what he sees as his party’s turn toward right-wing extremism, said he also supported allowing gays and lesbians who live alone to adopt.

“I know of several situations in which a gay person adopted a child and [was] just a very loving, caring parent, was out there at every one of the Little League baseball games and the parent-teacher events,” he said.

Potts, chair of the Senate Education and Health Committee, said he had rarely spoken on the issue, but that he has quietly abhorred mistreatment of gays and lesbians all his life.

“I never miss being in church every Sunday at the Braddock Street United Methodist Church. But I can’t imagine that a gay person gets to the pearly gates of heaven and this loving, benevolent God is going to deny that person a place in his kingdom because he or she is gay. That happens to be my conviction,” Potts said.

He does not, however, support allowing same-sex marriages, saying he believes it is an institution sanctioned only between one man and one woman.

The Republican nominee, Jerry W. Kilgore, flatly opposes any adoptions by gays or lesbians, whether they are coupled or single.

“I’ve said that I don’t support same-sex adoption or same-sex couple adoption and I don’t favor gay adoption,” Kilgore said in a similar 90-minute interview with a panel of AP writers and editors.

“When you’re setting the public policy of Virginia, you’ve got to be striving for the idea we’ve known from generation to generation that the best place for a child is with a loving mother and a loving father,” Kilgore said.

Democrat Tim Kaine opposes adoption by same-sex couples, citing present Virginia law that couples can’t adopt unless they’re married. Virginia law forbids same-sex marriage.

“I very much believe that the law in Virginia right now is the right law,” Kaine said. “An unmarried straight couple can’t adopt, a gay couple can’t adopt, two sisters can’t adopt, a mother and a daughter can’t adopt a younger child. The only couple that can adopt is a married couple.”

Singles can adopt in Virginia if they can demonstrate to a court that they would be fit parents and if the adoption is in the child’s best interest. Kaine criticized as “mean-spirited” legislation this year that would have disqualified gays and lesbians who live alone from adopting even if they can show parental fitness and that the adoption would serve the child’s best interest.

Potts conceded that social issues such as gay adoption now dominate elections at the expense of crisis issues of the day.

“I think there’s just a tremendous overemphasis on all these social issues when, in fact, Rome is burning: We have the worst transportation challenge in America, we have all these other core services that need to be funded and we come down here and spend endless hours” debating morals and religion, Potts said.