ontopmag.com, October 11, 2013
Steve Lonegan, the Republican candidate from New Jersey vying for the U.S. Senate, has described gay parenting as a “biological phenomenon.”
Appearing opposite his Democratic rival, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, during a televised debate on Wednesday, Lonegan was asked his position on marriage for gay and lesbian couples.
“Marriage between a man and a woman is the greatest institution ever devised by the minds of man to raise a child,” Lonegan answered. “And that’s what this is about. It’s about children. And I’m going to support traditional marriage.”
“However, I do believe in liberty and the rights of adults to live their lives the way they choose. Consequentially, I do not want other groups forcing their new value system down the throats of my Catholic Church, evangelical church, protestant churches, and overriding our institutional religious beliefs.”
artleonardobservations.com, October 8, 2013
The evil that courts do lives on… On October 4, 2013, the New York Law Journal published Rockland County Family Court Referee Dean Richardson-Mendelson’s opinion in Matter of A.F. v. K.H., V-00918-13, rejecting all attempts by a lesbian co-parent to obtain judicial relief against her former partner’s action of excluding her from contact with the children they had been raising together. The principal barrier to her case is the N.Y. Court of Appeal’s old decision, Alison D. v. Virginia M., 77 N.Y.2d 651 (1991), which held in similar circumstances that the co-parent was, despite her relationship parental relationship with a child since the child’s birth, a “legal stranger” who did not have standing under New York law to obtain a declaration of her parental rights, custody or visitation, and that the circumstances that the women had agreed to raise a child together did not amount to “special circumstances” required under New York law to enable a legally-unrelated third party to seek custody of a child.
In A.F. v. K.H., the parents had registered as domestic partners, but the court mentions this only in passing and does not specify the jurisdiction. A.F. and K.H. were living together as a couple when they decided to have children, using anonymous donor insemination for K.H. to conceive two children. They lived together raising the children until they separated in July 2011, but continued to live on different floors in the same house, facilitating continued contact between A.F. and the children, who lived with K.H. In February 2012 K.H. moved out with the children to her mother’s house in New Jersey, but then relocated back to another town in New York State in August 2012. A.F. continued to have visitation two days a week and alternate weekends, until a promotion at her job made weekday visitation impossible.
A.F. contributed to the support of the children financially. In May 2012, K.H. had filed a petition in Rockland Family Court seeking formal child support from A.G. In support of this claim, her petition was full of factual allegations seeking to persuade the court that A.F. was a parent of the children who should be held to this responsibility. But in August, she withdrew the petition, and the Support Magistrate marked it as withdrawn.
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10/10/2013 – GayStarNews.com
A Russian lawmaker has proposed a ban on gay people from using a surrogate mother to have children. Vitaly Milonov, co-sponsor of the ‘non-traditional relationships’ propaganda bill, has suggested an amendment to banning same-sex couples from having children. ‘At present, Russian law has a loophole through which members of sexual minorities are allowed to inform children about homosexuality,’ his office said, as translated by GSN. ‘By and large, thanks to surrogacy homosexuals have the ability to inform a child about their lifestyle, values and views on gender roles and relations.’ Milonov explained allowing gay people would ‘recruit’ children if they were allowed to become parents by ‘breaking their psyche’.
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TheLocal.se, October 4th, 2013
Russia has stopped all adoptions to Swedish parents due to a court decision banning international adoptions to countries which afford homosexual couples equal marriage rights.
“It’s terrible. We have 13 children in Russian orphanages today who have been offered to parents in Sweden who they have actually met,” said Jonas Friberg at the Adoptioncentrum agency in Sweden to Sveriges Television (SVT).
Representatives of the Russian authorities and the Swedish embassy met yesterday to discuss the legal situation with regard to adoptions of Russian children. Russia is seeking to sign agreements with individual countries to ensure that Russian children do not come to LGBT parents, according to the SVT report.
The Swedish Foreign Ministry has confirmed that no formal negotiations have begun, but the meeting concerned an attempt to clarify what the new law means in practice.
Russian politician Vitaly Milonov meanwhile called homosexuals “perverts” in an interview with SVT broadcast on Thursday, arguing that children would be better off staying in Russian orphanages.
The Modesto Bee, September 10, 2013
A woman who pleaded guilty earlier this year to defrauding clients of her Modesto surrogacy business was ordered Monday to pay them more than $1.7 million, U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced.
Court documents show that from November 2006 through March 2009, Tonya Ann Collins, 37, carried out a scheme to defraud prospective parents, surrogates and banks through her company, SurroGenesis, and the associated Michael Charles Independent Financial Holding Group.
Victims from as far as Germany lost money, some of them their life savings. Many went into debt to finance their dream of having children.
Collins used the business accounts for personal purchases including automobiles, homes, jewelry, clothing and vacations for herself and others without the clients’ knowledge or consent. Collins used client trust funds that were supposed to be held in escrow accounts to directly pay for her personal purchases.
Read more here: http://www.modbee.com/2013/09/10/2912209/woman-ordered-to-pay-17-million.html#storylink=cpy
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OneIowa.com – July 26, 2013
Only a month ago, the United States Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, granting gay and lesbian married couples more than 1,100 federal benefits and protections previously denied to them. Some people thought we were done. The struggle was over. Our families, at least in Iowa, had equal standing under the law.
Except that there is still so much work to be done. Imagine, for example, how surprised and heartbroken Joanne Abbas and Lindsey Clark were when they received their baby Thea’s birth certificate. It listed only one of the mothers as a parent. When Thea was born, these women correctly filled out the necessary paperwork and, with help from the hospital staff, both women listed their names as parents on the birth worksheet. And still, when they received the birth certificate, Lindsey’s name was missing from this important document.
Despite a previous ruling from the Iowa Supreme Court in the case Gartner v. Newton, the Iowa Department of Public Health is still refusing to immediately issue accurate birth certificates for all children born to married lesbian parents like Joanne and Lindsey. The Gartner case was decided unanimously in May of this year by the Iowa Supreme Court as part of a Lambda Legal lawsuit challenging the Iowa Department of Public Health’s refusal to issue an accurate birth certificate to MacKenzie, daughter of married same-sex couple Heather and Melissa Gartner. Iowa’s highest court ruled in favor of the Gartners, stating that the department would have to change its practice of refusing to issue accurate birth certificates listing both mothers.
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