Same Sex Parenting: OK Supreme Court Landmark Ruling

Same Sex Parenting Wins Increased Rights in Oklahoma

The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday issued a landmark ruling same sex parenting increasing the rights of noncustodial parents who have been in same-sex relationships. The decision acknowledged the rights of a non-biological parent in a same-sex relationship who has acted as a parent.

The state’s high court ruled that an Oklahoma County judge improperly dismissed the case of Oklahoma City resident Charlene Ramey. The court reversed that decision and remanded the case for further proceedings so Ramey could pursue a hearing on custody and visitation of the child, who was born in 2005. Ramey was in a same-sex relationship with Kimberly Sutton. At the time of the relationship, Oklahoma did not recognize same-sex marriages, which changed following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year not to take up an appeal of Oklahoma’s marriage-equality lawsuit ruling.

The couple agreed to have a child, born by Sutton with a donor. Sutton and Ramey later separated after almost 10 years of same sex parenting, as co-parents. Sutton denied Ramey’s status as a parent and sought to end all interaction between Ramey and the child, according to the opinion.

“Ramey, the plaintiff, is not a mere ‘third party’ like a nanny, friend, or relative, as suggested by the district court,” the ruling states. “On the contrary, Ramey has been intimately involved in the conception, birth and parenting of their child, at the request and invitation of Sutton. Ramey has stood in the most sacred role as parent to their child and always been referred to as ‘mom’ by their child.”

The decision is intended to recognize same-sex couples who, prior to the U.S. Supreme Court legalization of same-sex marriage, entered into committed relationships, engaged in family planning with the intent to parent jointly and share those responsibilities, the ruling states.

“Public policy dictates that the district court consider the best interests of the child and extend standing to the non-biological parent to pursue hearings on custody and visitation,” the ruling says.

Click here to read the entire article.

 

by Barbara Hoberock, November 18, 2015 TulsaWorld.com

in Adoption / In the News / Legal / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Lesbian Couple to Keep Foster Child Utah Judge Shifts Ruling

Utah Judge Reverses Ruling in Favor of Lesbian Couple

A Utah judge on Friday reversed his order to take a foster child away from a lesbian couple because of their sexual orientation, state officials said. The judge, Scott N. Johansen of Juvenile Court, had issued an order on Tuesday saying that the child, a 9-month-old girl, had to be removed from the home of a lesbian couple by the end of the day next Tuesday, and placed with a heterosexual couple.

The foster parents, Rebecca A. Peirce, 34, and April M. Hoagland, 38, and the state Division of Child and Family Services, both filed motions Thursday asking the judge to reconsider, and said they were prepared to appeal his decision. The couple, who are married, lives in Price, southwest of Salt Lake City.A Utah judge on Friday reversed his order to take a foster child away from a lesbian couple because of their sexual orientation

The clash is the first of its kind, said Ashley Sumner, a spokeswoman for the state agency, because Utah only recently began approving foster child placements with same-sex couples, after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on gay marriage in June.

Under fire from critics including gay rights activists and the state’s Republican governor, a judge in Utah on Friday reversed, at least temporarily, his order that a foster child be taken away from a lesbian couple because it was “not in the best interest of children to be raised by same-sex couples.”

While the child may remain with the couple for the moment, Judge Scott N. Johansen signaled that the matter might not be settled. He continued to question the placement of children with same-sex parents, a matter that will be taken up at a Dec. 4 hearing on what is in the best interests of this child, a 9-month-old girl.

The judge’s actions, coming after the Supreme Court this year established a right to same-sex marriage, put him at the center of another front in the nation’s legal and culture wars: the question of whether gay men and women can get, and keep, custody of children under various circumstances.

in Adoption / Ethics / Foster / Foster Care / In the News  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

LGBT Advocates Outraged at Utah Judge

LGBT Advocates Outcry: Rights Violation!

Utah Judge Takes Foster Child From Couple Because They’re Lesbians

LGBT advocates and even Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton were outraged and April Hoagland and Beckie Peirce of Carbon County, Utah, were stunned when Judge Scott Johansen ordered their foster child removed from their home. The judge said the baby would be better off with heterosexual parents.

The couple, who legally wed in October 2014, have taken care of the 1-year-old girl for three months, and her birth mother has asked them to adopt the child. The Utah Division of Child and Family Services has been forced to find new housing for the child, but officials say they will appeal the judge’s decision.

utah-lesbians

“We love her and she loves us, and we haven’t done anything wrong,” Peirce told the Salt Lake Tribune. “And the law, as I understand it, reads that any legally married couple can foster and adopt.”

Attorneys for DCFS are currently reviewing the decision. “If we feel like [Johansen’s] decision is not best for the child, and we have a recourse to appeal or change it, we’re going to do that,” DCFS director Brent Platt said. “For us, it’s what’s best for the child.”

“Any loving couple if they are legally married, and meet the requirements, we want them to be involved,” he added.

The child’s state-appointed attorney supports the couple. The birth mother’s lawyer, who was in court with the couple when the decision was handed down, has said the mother is upset and wants her baby to stay with the women.

Judge Johansen, who the Tribune reported has repeatedly been reprimanded by the Utah Judicial Conduct Commission for “demeaning the judicial office,” claimed to have research proving children are better off when raised by heterosexual parents. In reality, all credible major studies show that a parent’s sexual orientation has no effect on a child’s social development and mental health.

Click here to read the entire article.

Advocate.com, November 12, 2015 by Bill Browning

in Adoption / Ethics / Foster / Foster Care / Foster Parenting / In the News / Legal  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Colombia’s Gay Adoptions Ruling

Colombia’s Constitutional Court ruling found that barring gay adoptions had deprived children of the right to be raised by families.

In a landmark gay adoptions ruling that eliminated a glaringly discriminatory policy, Colombia’s highest court ruled on Wednesday that gay individuals and couples may adopt children. In a 6-to-2 decision, the Constitutional Court found that barring gay people from adopting had unreasonably deprived children of the right to be raised by families.

The decision was the latest victory for gay activists in Colombia who have challenged discriminatory policies in a string of smartly litigated cases. The ruling will make it easier for gay individuals and couples to adopt children in state foster care. It also will allow people to be legally recognized as the parent of a same-sex partner’s biological child.

Anticipating criticism from political and religious leaders, the justices wrote that “doubts and fears about whether society is ready to accept this decision won’t be dissipated by being blind to an irrefutable reality.” The judges argued that there was no evidence that same-sex couples were unfit parents and no compelling reason to bar them from the universe of potential adoptive families.

Wednesday’s decision sparked criticism from Catholic Church leaders, who argued that the issue should have been decided by Congress or approved in a referendum. While some Colombian lawmakers have introduced bills seeking to expand the rights of gay people, those initiatives have stalled. The country’s top court has picked up the slack. In doing so, it has set a commendable example in a region where gay people continue to face widespread discrimination and scorn.

Click here to read the entire article.

A version of this editorial appears in print on November 10, 2015, in The International New York Times. Today’s Paper|Subscribe

 

New York Times, November 9, 2015

in Adoption / In the News / International / Legal  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Second Parent Adoptions Suggested & Needed

 Second Parent Adoptions Are Suggested & Needed

Second parent adoptions are essential in protecting the right on the non-biological parent in every case of same sex union, marriage or cohabitation and here’s why! One tenet of the debate surrounding same-sex marriage has focused on whether same-sex parents provide poorer conditions for raising children compared with different-sex parents. Political and public dialogue ensures that this notion remains pervasive and persuasive, even though the Supreme Court decision this summer ensured marriage equality in the U.S.

Second Parent Adoptions are Needed. . . And it isn’t just talk: Laws exist that implicitly reflect the rhetoric that somehow same-sex parents are different.

For example, even though same-sex couples make decisions together to have a child, and even if both parents appear on the birth certificate, the non-biological parent may have limited legal rights over the child. In Texas, two parents of the same sex are even prohibited from being listed on supplemental birth certificates, only allowing for parents where “one of whom must be a female, named as the mother, and the other of whom must be a male, named as the father.”

Although all states offer second parent adoption to same-sex parents in legally recognized unions, only 15 states and the District of Columbia offer second-parent adoption to same-sex parents in cohabiting relationships. This means that in cases where the parents are not married, the non-biological partner may be denied access to the children.

An underlying assumption about parents in same-sex couples seems to be that same-sex parents are less invested or are unable to follow through on the types of parenting that matter for children.

This type of argument is often rooted in the idea that biological parents who are partnered with each other have an advantage over a parent partnered with someone other than their child’s biological parent, with non-biological parents less likely to invest or commit to children who are not their “own.”

This is wrong and must stop! Second Parent Adoptions are Needed As Policies Against Same Sex Parenting Are Not Science Based

Laws and policies that undermine the rights of same-sex parents are more based on politics than on actual science of how they parent. Same-sex parents who conceive children via assisted reproductive technology, for example, should have the same parental rights as heterosexual parents who conceive via assisted reproductive technology and do not have to jump through the same legal hoop.

Very little research has directly tested whether there are different types of parenting investments by same-sex couples. However, in one study that we conducted, we found no difference in the amount of time parents spend with children between same-sex parents and different-sex mothers. But there is a catch.

Mothers in same-sex relationships, fathers in same-sex relationships and mothers in heterosexual relationships spent about the same amount of time in child-focused activities, about 100 minutes a day. Men in heterosexual relationships, however, spent significantly less child-focused time than all three other groups of parents — about 50 minutes per day. That means the only difference that we found tended to favor same-sex couples (and heterosexual mothers).

Importantly, these differences persisted when we controlled for factors that have well-known influences on time spent with children, including parent’s education, the number of children, the age of the children, and parent’s time spent working or commuting. Here’s the catch to this “no difference” conclusion. When combining estimates across mothers and fathers to look at time investments at the family level, not just by individual parents, children raised in same-sex families would receive an average of 3.5 hours of child-focused time a day, compared with 2.5 hours for children in heterosexual families.

Click here to read the entire article.

 

By Alexa Martin-Storey,Kate Prickett – Special to the American-Statesman

November 3, 2015

in Adoption / In the News / Parenting / Religious / Science  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Gay Parents, Is This Country Still Not Ready?

This Country Is Apparently Still Not Ready for Gay Parents

In a couple of weeks, our nation will turn to celebrate the 20th anniversary of National Adoption Month. It’s a time of year marked with an annual proclamation by our president, special events, family gatherings, and mass adoption finalizations. Television and radio programs will burst with stories both heartwarming and horrifying in an effort to draw attention to the glaring need to find homes for the 400,000 children that linger, on average, for nearly two years in the foster care system.

As someone who’s lectured at the university level about this system, of which I am a product, I have to admit I’ve never understood why so many of my foster care brothers and sisters continue to languish in the foster care system. In truth, they should have found homes a long time ago. At this very minute, there are an estimated 2 million potential gay parents, many of whom would love to do so through adoption. Research also shows that children growing up with gay parents fare as well as children raised by heterosexual parents. That means that in the LGBT population alone there may be more than enough ready and capable parents to provide families for our nation’s foster children.

And yet 11 states continue to bar same-sex couples and LGBT individuals from adopting. That means we have enough children needing homes to fill a city the size of Cleveland or Minneapolis. We have a surplus of parents who would like to adopt them. But we’re still seeking ways to prevent them from finding each other. That makes no sense.

It makes even less sense when you consider that foster care programs cost American taxpayers $22 billion each year. That’s about $68 out of the pocket of every one of the estimated 320 million people in the United States every year.

This is but one of the many ways that nation’s love affair with homophobia is devastating our nation’s foster children. And it gets worse when we consider the effects of homophobia on LGBT children in foster care. Consider this:

• LGBT children are over represented in the foster care system. In Washington alone, an estimated 19 percent of foster children identify as LGBT — a figure that is nearly double that of the general LGBT population.
• Once in foster care, LGBT children often receive worse treatment than their non-LGBT peers. A recent study in Los Angeles County found that LGBT children experience more foster care placements and are three times more likely than non-LGBT foster children to have been hospitalized for emotional reasons.
• Many foster care caseworkers and LGBT children report that foster care is not a safe place to question your orientation, and many foster homes and families are not thoroughly assessed to see if they can support LGBT children.
•In some areas, an estimated 56 percent of LGBT children end up running away from foster care when they encounter violence and rejection. Some have even been forced to endure so-called conversion “therapy” and exorcisms.

Click here to read the entire article.

 

by Dashanne Stokes, TheAdvocate.com, October 20, 2015

in Adoption / Anonymous/Known Donation / Parenting / Second Parent Adoption / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Historical Gay Adoption Debate: Adult Adoption

Historical Gay Adoption Debate: The Lost History of Gay Adult Adoption

Whether you’re aware of it or not the historical gay adoption debate has been raging for years as LGBT advocates and individuals attempted to secure legal rights to property, family, security and most importantly; one another. In 1977, 27-year-old Walter Naegle was planning to go to San Francisco. He was living in New York City, which he found awful, when, while waiting for a light to change in Times Square, he saw an unusually handsome reason to stay: Bayard Rustin.

Rustin, who once said, “I believe in social dislocation and creative trouble,” organized the antisegregation Journey of Reconciliation protest, a sort of early Freedom Ride, in 1947. He was in charge of logistics for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and he worked to integrate New York City schools. “I’m not much dazzled by celebrity,” Naegle said recently, “but I had known who he was since I was in high school.”

Naegle and Rustin were attracted to each other immediately — they kissed for the first time that day — and became a couple thereafter. During their 10 years together, marriage was not discussed; it simply wasn’t imaginable. (The term “gay marriage”’— where ‘gay’ doesn’t mean ‘lighthearted’— would not appear in this paper until 1989.) Had Rustin lived long enough, however — he died in 1987 — he would have definitely been game. “Oh, yes,” Naegle said, “he was much older than I was, and his generation of people were into that kind of thing.”

Gay Adoption Debate: Shrewd Legal Play – “The adoption proved a shrewd decision!”, Naegle, as next of kin, had visiting privileges when Rustin was hospitalized.

In 1982, when Rustin wanted to ensure that Naegle — who, at 37 years his junior, would surely outlive him — would inherit his estate, he availed himself of the least-bad option: adoption. There had been an article in The Advocate about a couple in the Midwest who unsuccessfully tried to adopt each other in order to forge a legal bond. “Maybe we should try that,” Rustin said he suggested.

Naegle recalled the adoption process: First, his biological mother had to legally disown him. Then a social worker was dispatched to the Rustin-Naegle home in Manhattan to determine if it was fit for a child. “She was apprised of the situation and knew exactly what was happening,” Naegle told me. “Her concern, of course, was that he wasn’t some dotty old man that I was trying to take advantage of, and that I wasn’t some naive young kid that was being preyed upon by an older man.”

The adoption proved a shrewd decision. Naegle, as next of kin, had visiting privileges when Rustin was hospitalized for a perforated appendix and peritonitis and was eventually executor of the will. Despite the oddness of the arrangement, it was, all things considered, legally seamless.

Now that marriage equality is an American right, the gay adoption debate seems a little silly to be including partner adoptions, which are hard to fathom, an artifact of an earlier societal paradigm that, in a remarkably short period of time, has come to seem inconceivable. “People today really have a hard time remembering, let alone feeling, what it was like to be an outlaw — to be truly strangers to the law — shoved out of every legal system, and then persecuted,” said Evan Wolfson, founder of Freedom to Marry, an organization that, for more than a decade, has played a large role in the passage of same-sex marriage legislation. It is easy to forget that an American state would not decriminalize sodomy until 1961; that as late as 1966, gays and lesbians could not legally buy a drink in a New York City bar; that even after the Stonewall riots, in 1969, the American Psychiatric Association considered homosexuality a mental illness. As recently as 2000, civil unions were still not widely available and domestic partnerships didn’t offer federal protections.

Click here to read the entire article.

 

by Elon Green, October 19, 2015

in Adoption / Estate Planning / In the News / Legal  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Adoption rights for gay couples advance in Kansas

Adoption rights for gay couples advance as State agrees to issue birth certificates listing same-sex couples as parents

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment has agreed to issue birth certificates listing same-sex couples as parents in two cases, advancing adoption rights for gay couples even further. But KDHE spokeswoman Sara Belfry said that decision does not reflect a general policy change.

“We are still reviewing these applications on a case-by-case basis,” she said.

She said the decisions to issue birth certificates in two specific cases that were part of pending legal actions in state and federal court were based “upon consideration of applicable law and review of the impact of existing court orders.”

“My clients are pleased,” said David Brown, a Lawrence attorney who filed a lawsuit on behalf of one local couple. “It’s unfortunate that they had to go to this extent, but we are happy that the state of Kansas has decided to comply. I just hope they change policy so everyone doesn’t have to sue the state.”

Brown has handled several cases involving gay rights and same-sex marriage. Last week, he filed what is called a “parentage action” in Douglas County District Court on behalf of a Lawrence couple, Casey and Jessica Smith, seeking an order directing KDHE to issue a birth certificate listing both women as parents of their child.

The Smiths were legally married in California in 2013. Casey Smith conceived a child through artificial insemination around the first of this year, using sperm from an anonymous donor and gave birth to a son in September.

Douglas County District Judge Sally Pokorny granted the order directing KDHE to list both women as parents on the birth certificate. But KDHE objected at first, saying it had not been notified of the action and had not been notified of the petition and it wanted an opportunity to respond.

A hearing in that case had been scheduled for Nov. 6.

A few days after that case was filed, the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas filed affidavits in U.S. District on behalf of the Smiths as well as another same-sex couple, Christa Gonser and her wife Carrie Hunt, who live in the Kansas City area. They were married in Canada in 2007.

Hunt also became pregnant through artificial insemination and gave birth to twins at Kansas University Hospital in Kansas City, Kan., on Sept. 22.

Click here to read the entire article.

 

 

by Peter Hancock, LJWorld.com, October 8, 2015

in Adoption / In the News / Legal / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Gay Parents Adopting Face Issues

Gay Parents Adopting Face Issues With Birth Certificates In Some States

Gay parents adopting in a handful of states are seeing issues where the state is refusing to name both parents from a same-sex couple on a birth certificate, even though its among the benefits named in the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage.

DAVID GREENE, HOST: In the state of Kentucky, Kim Davis, the Rowan County clerk, made big news when she refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses. But this is not the only controversy since the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage earlier this year, as NPR’s Jennifer Ludden reports, a handful of states are refusing to name both parents from a same-sex couple on birth certificates.

JENNIFER LUDDEN, BYLINE: Miami attorney Elizabeth Schwartz brought the case that legalized same-sex marriage in Florida in January. And she’s still getting high-fives from this summer’s Supreme Court decision.

ELIZABETH SCHWARTZ: Congratulations. We’re done. You know, crossed the finish line. And that it’s wah-wah (ph) not exactly.

LUDDEN: Last month, one of Schwartz’s plaintiffs called back. Cathy Pareto and her longtime partner were the first same-sex couple to legally marry in Florida, but Pareto says they got a rude awakening when her now-wife, Karla, delivered twins last month. A hospital staffer came to take information for the birth certificate.

CATHY PARETO: What’s the name of your child? Who’s the father? Oh, gee, there’s no father. Oh, but I want my wife listed. Oh, well, let me get back to you on that.

LUDDEN: Turns out the state’s vital statistics office said the hospital could not put Pareto’s name on the certificate. It pointed to the Florida statute that still said the state did not recognize same-sex marriage.

PARETO: At this point, I am nothing legally for my children. My twins and I are not the legally connected in any way.

LUDDEN: Pareto worries she’d lose custody if something happened to her wife. She also can’t sign for the twins at a doctor’s office, day care or to get a passport. So her attorney, Schwartz, has filed another suit on behalf of Pareto and two other couples.

SCHWARTZ: It’s a terrible waste of resources, of our resources and of the state’s resources. I mean, they ought to follow the law.

LUDDEN: Florida’s health department says it can’t comment on pending litigation. In court documents, it doesn’t actually make a case for not issuing same-sex birth certificates. The state simply says it has asked a judge to clarify whether it can. In recent months, courts in Utah, Texas and Ohio have ruled in those states can and must. The U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage specifically mentions birth certificates as a benefit to which gay and lesbian couples are now entitled. Lawsuits in another handful of states are pending. But even they won’t be the last word for same-sex couples with children.

Click here to read the entire interview.

 

NPR.org by Jennifer Ludden, September 21, 2014

in Adoption / In the News / Legal / Second Parent Adoption  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Gay and Lesbian Adoption: Alabama Court Refuses

Alabama Supreme Court Refuses to Recognize Lesbian Mother’s Adoption from Another State

Today, there was a blow to gay and lesbian adoption rights when the Alabama Supreme Court refused to recognize an adoption by a lesbian mother of her three children granted by a Georgia court in 2007. Even though she had raised the children from birth and adopted them over eight years ago, the Court ruled that Alabama does not need to respect her adoption because it found that the Georgia court didn’t properly apply Georgia law when it granted her adoption.

Although the Alabama Supreme Court recognized that full faith and credit prohibits a state from inquiring into the laws applied by a court from another state, it ruled that Alabama did not have to respect the Georgia court’s adoption because the Court believed that Georgia law did not allow same-sex parents to adopt. One Justice dissented from this opinion, explaining that full faith and credit prohibits Alabama from considering whether the Georgia court correctly applied its own laws, and that this ruling puts all adopted children in Alabama at risk if it is later discovered that there was some small error in the adoption.

In E.L. v. V.L., two women in a long term relationship had three children through donor insemination. The non-biological mother, V.L., adopted the children in Georgia. The biological mother participated in that process and consented in writing to the adoptions. When the parents later broke up, the biological mother, E.L., kept V.L. from seeing the children. V.L. sought visitation in Alabama, where the family lives. E.L. opposed her request, arguing that the Georgia adoption was invalid in Alabama.

V.L is represented by the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), and Alabama attorneys Heather Fann of Boyd, Fernambucq, Dunn & Fann, P.C., and Traci Vella of Vella & King, Attorneys at Law.

“It is extremely difficult to see the distress in my children as they realize that the courts who are tasked with putting their best interests first won’t recognize our family,” said V.L. “I am just a Mom who wanted and prayed for these children and raised them from birth, and I hope every day that we can be together again.”

Alabama Supreme Court refuses to recognize gay and lesbian adoption(s)

from outside the state

“The Alabama Supreme Court’s refusal to recognize an adoption granted eight years ago harms not only these children, but all children with adoptive parents,” said NCLR Family Law Director Cathy Sakimura. “Children who are adopted must be able to count on their adoptions being final—allowing an adoption to be found invalid years later because there may have been a legal error in the adoption puts all adopted children at risk of losing their forever families.”

“The biological mother in this case chose my client as a second parent to these children, before their births, during their conceptions, and in formal adoption proceedings intended to ensure my client’s rights — wherein she stated that having my client as a parent was in the children’s best interests,” said Heather Fann. “Because, many years later, she chose to contradict her own decision-making regarding the establishment of a family for those children, a court ruled today that my client is not a parent. Not only is that not true, its harm extends far beyond my client, to children who have called her mother their entire lives, and now to adoptive families throughout Alabama. It’s beyond unfortunate that the Alabama Supreme Court has disregarded the recommendations of the children’s own lawyers and national adoption organizations in arriving at this result.”

“As a mother myself, my heart is breaking for my client, who loves her children as much as any other mother. Gay and lesbian adoption provides children with every bit as much love as those with a biological connection to a parent,” said Traci Vella. “Ask any adoptive parent how horrifying it would be to think his or her adoption could be overturned years after it was final. That is exactly what has happened in this case.”

The children’s Guardians Ad Litem are Breauna R. Peterson and Tobie J. Smith of the Legal Aid Society of Birmingham.

The American Academy of Adoption Attorneys and the Georgia Council of Adoption Lawyers filed an amicus brief in support of rehearing.

 

NCLR.Org – September 18, 2015

(Montgomery, AL, September 18, 2015)—

in Adoption / In the News / Legal  by Anthony Brown 0 comments