Strollerderby : same-sex adoption

Adoption Tide Turns in Florida?

Shannon LC Cate — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:54:00 GMT

Another chink has developed in Florida's ban on gay adoption. A state appeals court ruled Wednesday that the state must recognize adoptions to gay and lesbian parents that occurred outside the state, under the U.S. Constitution's full faith and credit clause.

The decision was reached in the case of a lesbian couple who had children together in Washington State, moved to Florida and broke up, agreeing to coparent. When one mom became engaged to a man she cut off visitation for the other mom, saying the relationship between them was unhealthy. The second mom sued for custody. A lower court ruled against her, saying the Washington adoption was invalid in Florida where all adoption by gays and lesbians is banned. But the appeals court disagreed.

The opposition plans to appeal the case to Florida's Supreme Court, which has already been asked to consider a circuit court judge's decision to grant an adoption to gay foster parents, against the gay adoption ban. If the Court accepts this case, that will make two gay adoption cases on its docket. Is the tide turning in favor of Florida children?

My fingers are crossed, how about yours?

Second Parent Adoption Legislation Moving in Michigan

Shannon LC Cate — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:32:00 GMT

Families in Michigan are hopeful that legislation to legalize second-parent adoption will make it to law before the session ends this year. (Last year, similar proposed legislation died.) Michigan, like most states, does not have an explicit law allowing the adoption of a child by a parent's unmarried partner (same or different sex) and while some judges will agree to such adoptions, many will not. A law would protect the rights of a single parent to choose a second parent for her child, whether or not that second parent was her legal spouse.

Same-sex parents in de facto nuclear families are obvious beneficiaries of such law, but are not the only ones. Unmarried heterosexual couples would be able to protect and provide for each other's children this way as well. Depending on how the law is written, it could allow a person who is not in a romantic relationship with the parent to adopt too.

This is the kind of law we need to see nation-wide. Right now, most often, families depend on the whims or prejudices of individual judges to rule on whether or not a second-parent adoption will be allowed. A law protecting people from discrimination in second-parent adoption based on marital status is the best way to, in turn, protect their children and allow them to have the stability of two parents responsible for their support and protection.

It is high time family law in the United States recognized the many situations in which children grow up these days, and strengthened those situations for the benefit of the children, rather than prescribing one family style and punishing children who don't happen to have it.

Good luck to those parents and children in Michigan who could benefit immeasurably from this law.

See also:

Lose the Guilt and Shame, Lose the Pain: Open Adoption Records

Iowa Mulling Same-Sex Birth Certificates

The Orphan Trade and International Adoption

image: nontraditionalfamilylaw.com

Making More Marriages Versus "Making Marriage Matter Less"

Shannon LC Cate — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:00:00 GMT

A recent report tells us that half of all new babies born in Scotland last year were born to unmarried parents. And those statistics are indicative of a growing trend in many places of families that do not meet the imaginary norm of two opposite-sex married parents and their biological children.

Oddly enough, this lesbian mom thought first of all those Scottish babies when I heard all the good news about legal marriage expanding in the past two weeks. My partner and I can now have our Canadian marriage recognized in Sweden, Iowa and Vermont and depending on the U.S. Congress's response to the city's decision, the District of Columbia. Add these to a growing list that includes Spain, Belgium, Massachusetts, New York and of course, Canada.

Marriage is indeed a handy thing for us to have. It protects us in the event of death or accident, making sure we can care for each other in extremity and inherit from each other easily. It protects the children that come into our family while we are married, making sure we are both recognized as their parents, and thus responsible for them. But marriage isn't the only way to obtain those kinds of benefits. And same-sex marriage does nothing at all for children born to unmarried parents, whatever their gender configuration.

There are many reasons families other than the Leave it to Beaver model need recognition, care and protection from the government, but even exclusively focusing on children's needs quickly alerts us to the many ways in which marriage is not the answer to these needs.

No, a child with a de facto, but nonlegal parent can't be covered by that parent's employer-based health insurance. But even when that de facto parent becomes a legal one by caveat of a marriage to the first parent or through second-parent adoption (when available) the child will remain uninsured if that parent has no coverage herself, as many don't.

Marriage allows its members to visit each other in the hospital in emergencies, but same-sex marriage doesn't help the mother and father, unmarried to each other in such emergencies.

Marriage means any child born into the family of a married couple is automatically the legal child of both. This doesn't help live-in, unmarried partners of any sex who raise each other's children.

Marriage offers special rights to an ever decreasing percentage of the population and the children born to that group. But rather than expanding who can obtain these special rights, the government should be designing family law to protect all families in their ever-increasing variety.

Some great suggestions for doing that, based on models from countries that do it better, as well as her own brilliant legal thinking, can be found in Nancy Polikoff's book, Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage. Polikoff's central idea is that we should strive to make marriage "matter less" to the well being of families, allowing it without discrimination, but only as a personal, spiritual and symbolic ritual that is not required to protect and defend families and their dependents (whether those dependents are children or dependent adults).

Universal health coverage, court arbitration for non-martial family break ups, parenting rights for all of a child's acting parents, and other reforms would go much further and protect many more people than merely extending marriage rights and privileges. Furthermore, same-sex marriage, under Polikoff's plans would cease to be a cultural or political dividing force. Why? Because families could get what they needed without "marriage" leaving marriage itself to be defined in whatever way legally toothless groups wanted to define it. If a certain church wanted to restrict marriage to women and men, it could (as all churches can now, by the way) and if another wanted to marry groups of more than two people in a spiritually meaningful ritual, it could do that as well. But access or lack of it to any of these ceremonies would have no impact on the rights of any given family.

Polikoff's ideas are simple, common sense ones and I am glad to see them in print. I hope I'll see them in law someday. I hope it more than I hope for gay marriage, however convenient that would be for my particular family.

Challenge to Arkansas Adoption Ban Okay'd by Judge

Shannon LC Cate — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:04:00 GMT

A judge ruling in a challenge to the Arkansas voter-approved ban on unmarried couples fostering or adopting children told an ACLU lawyer that the his claim that the ban violates constitutional rights to equal protection is a compelling one.

The ACLU argued before the judge that not only are foster children harmed by reducing the pool of available foster and adoptive parents by banning unmarried couples (both same and opposite sex), but also harms children whose parents would prefer to name such a couple as a guardian for their children in their wills.

The judge at the hearing set 7 December to hear the case in which the Arkansas Department of Human Services is the defendant.

Kentucky Bill Would Ban Same-Sex Foster Parents

Shannon LC Cate — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:00:00 GMT

A bill in the Kentucky state senate would restrict foster care and adoption in the state to married couples or single people living alone. A similar bill passed in Arkansas last November. If Kentucky passes this one, it will be the seventh state with an essential ban against same-sex foster and adoptive parents.

In every time, everywhere, foster parents and those interested in adopting older children from the public system are too few and far between. Kentucky has over 7,000 children currently in foster care, about 2,000 of which are available for and awaiting adoption. The state, like most, is trying to recruit more foster and adoptive parents for these kids.

Restricting the available homes for children in the greatest need, with the steepest odds against ever being adopted is not just a matter of being unfair to gay and lesbian couples, it's a matter of outrageous disservice to children. In difficult economic times, not only are more children likely to face losing their homes due to being removed on the grounds of "neglect" (often resulting from parents' extreme poverty), but fewer people are likely to step up and sacrifice some of their family budget to bring in another child on a temporary basis. This is no time to be rejecting possible homes for kids who need them, on the basis of blind homophobia.

California Cutting Assistance to Foster Families

Mother and Daughter Parted By Court after Lesbian Break Up

Mother and Daughter Parted by Court after Lesbian Break Up

Shannon LC Cate — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 23:15:00 GMT

In a sad story that's been back-and-forth in the Maryland courts for three years, a lesbian mom has been denied visitation with her child after the girl's other mother changed her mind about their post-break up arrangements. A brief summary of the story here misleadingly describes the second mom as someone who "helped raise" the child.

And here's where I go into my standard lecture about marriage really being all about divorce. Because when things go well in a same-sex headed family, folks may miss tax breaks, opportunities to insure each other and experience many other headaches, but it's when things fall apart through death or break up that tragedies happen. And most often, these tragedies happen to children.

"Helped raise" is a real misnomer in this case, because the child was adopted from India. As with pretty much all countries that "send" adoptive children to the United States, India forbids same-sex parents to adopt. Therefore when a same-sex couple adopts internationally, one partner must do the adopting as a single parent while the other sits in the closet, appearing on the homestudy paperwork--if at all--as a roommate; going to visit or collect the child as a "sister" or "friend."

If the child is not--or more often cannot be--second-parent adopted by the silent partner back in the States, the child is stuck forever with one legal parent and one "de facto" parent, whom a court may or may not choose to recognize in an emergency.

Thus it is that same-sex parents lose their children to the legal parent's parents after a death; to the legal parent after a break up.

The fact is that most same-sex parents in the United States do not have access to means to both become legal parents. The law is inconsistent, most often depending on the kindness of any given judge on any given day in court, and same-sex parenting is, at times, outright forbidden by law.

Currently Maryland, in which this sad case has been unfolding offers second-parent adoption to a same-sex partner somewhat commonly in some jurisdictions, but not so commonly in others. (It is a case of each judge's discretion.) I am unclear on whether these women had access to second-parent adoption when they got their daughter ten years ago. But regardless, 10 years of parenting makes a parent, not the luck of the draw regarding who had the best profile to try a single-parent adoption when the couple decided to become moms.

And the one who really loses here, is, of course, their daughter. Somewhere there's a ten-year old girl who's just been told by a judge that her mom is not her mom, and that her relationship to her mom will not be protected by responsible, unbiased adults.

Put yourself in that child's shoes and tell me same-sex marriage is a bad idea.

Arkansas Adoption Ban Passes, Fails to Eliminate Queers and their Spawn from the Earth

Shannon LC Cate — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:01:00 GMT

The saddest thing about the anti-gay ballot initiatives that passed Tuesday in California (banning same-sex marriage), Florida (banning even same-sex civil partnerships) and Arkansas (banning foster care and adoption by unmarried couples ie: same-sex couples) is the effect they have on the children of same-sex parents.

I don't think my partner and I would feel much need for legal marriage if we didn't have children. If we didn't have children, I'd be working full-time for my own benefits and wouldn't need hers. I'd have my own retirement security, probably be able to make the house payments if anything happened to her.

But we have two children and being able to both be their legal parents is critical to their well-being. As adoption attorney, Jennifer Fairfax points out in this article from US News and World Report,

"Adoption gives the child two legal parents, two people who have to support the child, two people that the child can inherit from. If the parent dies, the child can get security from either."

Considering the high value social conservatives place on stay-at-home parents, one would think that helping families support a stay-at-home parent by making sure that either parent can provide health benefits and other legal protections to the family's children would be a priority, leading to support for same-sex adoption and/or marriage.

My partner and I are lucky. We were able to adopt in one of a handful of jurisdictions that have strong court precedents for granting same-sex co-adoptions, though this jurisdiction does not have a law protecting these adoptions specifically. As such, either of us can give our children what straight parents take for granted. Our children can rely on the fact that if anything happens to one of us, their lives will not be further disrupted by legal questions about the status of their surviving parent.

Marriage would grant these rights automatically, as married couples always have the right to petition to adopt together and a married woman who gives birth can automatically name her legal spouse the child's other parent--regardless of whether or not the second parent is biologically related to the child. Marriage would also save us between $50,000 and $100,000 in taxes and other "fees" associated with cobbling together legal protections for our family over the years of raising our children. College fund, anyone?

When people oppose same-sex adoption, what they oppose is an idea that falls short of their ideal of two married, opposite-sex parents. But the plain truth of fact is that millions of children do not live in these kinds of families already. Banning their actual family structures from legal recognition and protection does not help those children magically attain the two-opposite-sex-parents ideal, even if you want to believe (against the word of authorities like the American Academy of Pediatrics) that ideal really is best.

What opponents of same-sex marriage and/or adoption do not understand is that these arguments are not theoretical. Banning various people from various institutional protections will not make those people go away. In fact, the "gayby" boom continues boomingly on unchecked. Every young queer high school or college student I talk to these days simply assumes that she or he will someday be a parent. It is not just a double-standard for adults gay rights opposition upholds, but a double-standard for increasing numbers of children (at least 90% of whom, for the record, will grow up to be heterosexual). When you deny me the right to marry or the right to adopt with my partner, you deny my children the same security yours take for granted. You may not like it, but my children are here now and they aren't going anywhere. Don't they deserve the same protection as their playmates?

Image note: Which child deserves the protection of two legal, married parents?

McCain Talks to the Gays: Part Two, Adoption

Shannon LC Cate — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:46:00 GMT

First of all, let's review what John McCain told the New York Times when first asked about the question of gay adoption in July:

Q: President Bush believes that gay couples should not be permitted to adopt children. Do you agree with that?

Mr. McCain: I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no I don’t believe in gay adoption.

Q: Even if the alternative is the kid staying in an orphanage, or not having parents.

Mr. McCain: I encourage adoption and I encourage the opportunities for people to adopt children I encourage the process being less complicated so they can adopt as quickly as possible. And Cindy and I are proud of being adoptive parents.

Q: But your concern would be that the couple should a traditional couple.

Mr. McCain: Yes.

McCain tried to backpeddle a bit later when he found out how very uncool was his assertion that a kid would be better off in an orphange than with gay adoptive parents. But last week, he told the Washington Blade:

"I hope my comments are not misinterpreted. I respect the hundreds of thousands of gay and lesbian people who are doing their best to raise the children they have adopted. As someone who adopted a child, Cindy and I know better than most couples the amazing satisfaction that comes from providing love to an unwanted child. I believe a child is best raised by a mother and father because of the unique contributions that they make together to the development of a child."

It sounds pretty much the same to me, except to add that he respects us for doing our "best" in spite of being second-class parents (unlike him and Cindy). I guess that probably means he's not in favor of actually taking our existing kids out of our homes. How very reasurring.

But my real problem with McCain's words is his characterization of adopted children as "unwanted." My two adopted children were not unwanted. They were not unwanted by their first mothers who were forced by circumstances into placing them for adoption, and who still very much love and want them in their lives. They were not unwanted by us or the long list of waiting prospective parents at our adoption agency. Assuming that children placed for adoption--even abandoned--are "unwanted" is a leap to claiming to know the minds and hearts of any number of people with very little to go on. It is to paint a child--in McCain's case, his own child-as somehow less deserving of love, or as "lucky" to have a family.

This attitude, common though it is (and, as adoptive parents reading this know, it is all too common), hurts adoptees. How do you think McCain's daughter feels when she hears her father call her "unwanted?"

Does he mean it the way I've written about it here? He'd probably insist that he certainly doesn't. But he clearly intends to portray himself as heroic--loving above and beyond the call of biological duty--for being an adoptive parent. Adoptive parents are not heroic. They are just parents, like any others. Their children are not lucky (in fact, adoptive children have experienced unfortunate losses by definition), they deserve a loving family as much as anyone else. If after all these years of adoptive parenting, McCain still doesn't get this, it's not surprising he doesn't get same-sex adoption either.