Amendment: Gays could be denied as foster or adoptive parents in Texas

by Christy Hopp, May 25, 2015 – The Dallas Morning News

Gays and same-sex couples could be turned away from adopting children or serving as foster parents under an amendment filed by a social conservative House member and expected to be heard Tuesday.

The measure also would allow child welfare providers to deny teenagers in foster care access to contraception or an abortion under a wide umbrella of religious protections for the state contractor.

Rep. Scott Sanford, R-McKinney, has filed the measure that gives state contractors for child welfare services the right to sue the state if they are punished for making decisions based on their religious beliefs.

The state could not force contractors to follow policies providing for contraception or allowing same-sex couples to adopt, for instance. If the state tried to terminate a contract or suspend licensing for the state contractors’ failure to abide by such polices, the contractor could sue, win compensatory damages, relief from the policy and attorneys fees against the state, according to the proposal.

Sanford tried to pass as separate bill earlier in the session, but it failed. The proposal now has resurfaced as an amendment to the sunset bill that would reconstitute the Department of Family and Protective Services.

Civil rights and gay equality groups fought a similar measure earlier in the session, saying, “If enacted into law, Rep. Sanford’s amendment would allow child welfare providers to discriminate against not just gay and transgender families seeking to provide loving homes for children who need them, but also against people of other faiths, interfaith couples and anyone else to whom a provider objects for religious reasons. This would seriously weaken the state’s child welfare system by further shrinking the pool of qualified parents who can provide a safe, loving home for children.”

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

French Court OKs Adoption by Lesbian Partners

Associated Press – April 16, 2015

PARIS — A French court has authorized four lesbian women to adopt children born to their wives abroad through artificial insemination.

While France has legalized gay marriage and adoption, only heterosexual couples are allowed to have medically assisted fertilization. Supporters of gay rights praised Thursday’s ruling, which allows these children to have two legal parents.

The Versailles appeals court overturned a ruling delivered by a lower court a year ago, according to the lawyer for one of the four couples.

In April 2014, a lower court in Versailles had said the birth mother in that case had committed fraud by having artificial insemination in Belgium. It was then the first court ruling against adoption by a lesbian couple since the gay marriage law had been enacted in May 2013. Several other ones had followed since then.

France’s highest court later ruled that seeking fertilization abroad is “not an obstacle” to allowing lesbian women to adopt the children of their partners, even if this way of having babies is forbidden to lesbian couples in France.

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

Florida Legislature Repeals State Ban on Gay Adoption

New York Times, April 14, 2015 by AP

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida’s ban on gay adoption is getting tossed out by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature.

The Florida Senate on Tuesday voted 27-11 for an adoption bill that repeals the law first passed in 1977. It now heads to Gov. Rick Scott.

Sen. Don Gaetz, the sponsor of the bill, called the current ban “meaningless” because it is no longer enforced. An appeals court ruled it unconstitutional in 2010.

But Sen. Alan Hays called the repeal of the ban “a poison pill.” He urged legislators to consider the long-term implications of repealing the ban.

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Alabama Judge Refuses To Approve Adoption Of Lesbian Couple Who Fought Gay Marriage Ban

ontopmag.com, February 26, 2015

Less than two weeks after a lesbian couple won the right to have their marriage recognized in Alabama, Mobile County’s probate judge has refused to process the couple’s adoption petition.

Cari Searcy and Kimberly McKeand, together over 15 years, exchanged vows in California in 2008.

In 2005, McKeand gave birth to the couple’s son, K.S.

In 2012, Mobile County Probate Judge Don Davis denied Searcy’s request to adopt K.S., citing the state’s law that only married couples may adopt their partner’s children. Davis determined that Searcy was not a “spouse” of McKeand because Alabama does not recognize their out-of-state marriage.

The women challenged the state’s marriage ban and won. U.S. District Judge Callie “Ginny” Granade declared unconstitutional an Alabama law and constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples. Her ruling took effect on Monday, February 9 after the Supreme Court refused to block its implementation.

Davis refused to comply with the ruling until Granade ordered him to begin issuing marriage licenses to gay couples.

According to AL.com, Davis has indicated that he will not process the women’s adoption petition until the Supreme Court rules in a case challenging marriage bans in four states.

A lawyer for the couple called Davis’ decision “disappointing.”

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Adoption hope for same-sex couples in Bermuda

February 6, 2015 – The Royal Gazette By Owain Johnston-Barnes

Unmarried and same-sex couples can apply to jointly adopt children, according to a recent judgment in the Supreme Court.

Under the Adoption Act 2006, unmarried couples have been unable to jointly adopt children. Bermuda does not recognise same-sex marriage, so the Act also indirectly banned same-sex couples from joint adoption.

But in a judgment dated February 3, Puisne Judge Stephen Hellman ruled that section of the Act represented unlawful discrimination.

The ruling came after an unnamed same-sex couple wanted to adopt a nine-month-old child they had been raising together.

They were told by the Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) that, as an unmarried couple, they would have to make separate applications, which would be processed and considered separately. The couple argued that requiring a separate process was discriminatory and sought a declaration from the Court that the Adoption Act should be read in a manner which is consistent with the Human Rights Act, which forbids discrimination on the grounds of marital status and sexual orientation.

The department argued that having the couple processed separately would not constitute less favourable treatment. In the judgment, Mr Justice Hellman found that “marital status” included both the state of being married and unmarried.

“If one is a status so, too, is the other,” he stated. “Permitting a joint application by a married couple but not an unmarried couple is discriminatory in that it involves treating the unmarried couple less favourably than the married couple by providing adoption services to the one couple but not the other.

“For the reasons given by the plaintiffs, I therefore reject the defendants’ submission that processing the plaintiffs’ applications separately, with the possibility of a separate adoption order in the case of each plaintiff, would not constitute less favourable treatment.

“It would, however, constitute a refusal to provide them with adoption services of a like quality, in the like manner and on the like terms on which the DCFS normally makes them available to other members of the public, namely applicants who are married couples.

“It is in any case doubtful whether the Act would permit the court to entertain two applications for the adoption of the same child.

“The argument that it would involve a strained construction of the statutory language to which a court would likely only have recourse if it were necessary to avoid applying that section in an unlawfully discriminatory way.

“As it would not achieve that end, there is no good reason to construe the section in this way.”

He ruled that the statutory ban on the couple to adopt was unlawful, noting that the same position had already been taken by courts in Britain, Canada, Gibraltar, and South Africa.

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Utah Supreme Court lifts same-sex adoption stay

By Jennifer Dobner The Salt Lake Tribune – October 23, 2014

The Utah Supreme Court on Thursday lifted a stay which had barred from completion four pending adoptions of children by their same-sex parents.

The action clears the way for the Utah Department of Health to issue birth certificates that list the same-sex parents as the children’s legal parents. It will also restart countless other adoptions that were left in limbo by Utah’s contention that the cases should be on hold until it was clear that gay marriage would be legal in the Beehive state.

“The families involved are obviously relieved and thrilled,” said Laura Milliken Gray, an attorney who represented one of the four families, and who also had six other adoptions in process when the stay was put in place.

The court’s action was not unexpected, she said.

The Utah Attorney General’s Office asked the state’s high court to lift the stay and any pending petitions for extraordinary relief.

Utah’s reversal on the issue came two weeks ago when the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ended Utah’s legal battle over the recognition of same-sex marriages and its associated rights, including adoption.

Previously, so-called second parents had no legal rights to their children.

That followed an Oct. 6 move by the U.S. Supreme Court, which let stand appeals court rulings upholding marriage equality in five states, effectively legalizing gay marriage in Utah and 10 other states.

“This rectifies a major injustice,” said Troy Williams, executive director of Equality Utah. “Families all over Utah are celebrating having their families united.”

About 26 percent of Utah’s same-sex couples are raising children, data from the University of California, Los Angeles-based Williams Institute shows. In the two weeks since same-sex marriage became legal in Utah, gay couples have rushed to start or finalize adoption petitions, so that their children will have two legal parents and full protections under state law, Gray said.

“I probably have a dozen new families from here to Cedar City,” she said. “They’re hurrying because some families worry that the Legislature is going to try and do something that will once again interfere with their rights.”

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Gay parenting: How to talk to young children about adoption

September 21, 2014 – by gaystarnews.com, David Hudson

Thinking about adoption? Children will always have questions about being adopted, and knowing how to respond with honest answers is essential. We asked Beth Friedberg of New York’s Modern Family Center for advice.

Beth Friedberg is the Associate Director of Parent Preparation and Education at the Modern Family Center at Spence-Chapin. The center provides services for parents of adopted children, adoptees, families formed through adoption, and families brought together through remarriage – including same-sex couples and LGBTI parents.

Beth has been in the adoption and parenting field for over 20 years. We asked her to give the #GSNFamily section some advice on talking to young children about adoption.

Beth, do you have any general advice for speaking to children about adoption?

BF: There are some basic well-known practices that adoptive parents should know about talking with their children about how they became a family: start early, share information slowly over time in a way that meets your child’s developmental age, and talk in a balanced way about birth family being some of the most important.

But all of these sound ideas miss one critical piece that has less to do with talking and everything to do with listening.

This is a hard thing for many parents to do – we want to say the right thing and protect the ones we love from disappointment or loss. So we can often rush in with too many words to fix things before we really know what’s on our child’s mind.

Listen for what is behind your child’s questions and slow down a bit to both tune in to your child’s ‘emotional temperature’ and also consider what their questions brings up for you.

This last part is especially important so you don’t confuse what your child is asking to talk about with what you may actually want or need to talk about.

For instance, if your child asks you why their birth family couldn’t take care of them, you might respond with something simple like: ‘Why do you think some people aren’t able to take care of a baby?’ When your child gives you their own answers, you have a great place to start the conversation.

If your child is not asking any questions, lay the groundwork to give permission for the conversation. Simply saying, ‘If you ever have any questions or want to talk about your adoption that would be OK with me,’ can open a door for a child who may feel nervous bringing the topic up on their own.

What sort of questions might adopted children themselves ask about adoption – with regard to their background, history and biological family?

BF: Children are generally curious and want to know about everything that’s happening in their world. Asking questions about their beginnings and how they came to be in their family is a natural and necessary part of their development, so a goal for adoptive families is to support and encourage this wondering.

The types of questions that children ask will depend on the specific circumstances of their placement and your child’s own character and personality.

As much as each child has their own unique experience, questions do tend to fall into some general categories such as: ‘Why did I have to be adopted? Why couldn’t anyone in my family take care of me?’, ‘Will I ever meet my birth mother/siblings?’, ‘Will I ever see my friends from the orphanage again?’, ‘Is my birthmother alive?’, and, very commonly ‘I wonder who I look like’.

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European human rights court orders France to recognise surrogate-mother children

By RFI – June 26, 2014

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ordered France to recognise children born to surrogate mothers abroad even though surrogacy is banned on French territory. Refusal to do so undermines children’s identity, the court ruled in cases brought by two French families.

France has the right to ban surrogate parenthood but not to refuse granting legal to parent-child relationships of children born to surrogate mothers, the ECHR ruled on Thursday.

The “legal guinea pigs”, as one father described them, were two families, the Mennessons and the Labassees, who have children born to surrogate mothers in the US, where the practise is legal in some states.

Twins, Valentina and Fiorella Menesson, were born in 2000 in California, having been conceived from their father’s sperm and a donor’s oocyte, and have US citizenship.

Juliette Labassee was born in Minnesota in 2001 in similar circumstances, and is also a US national.

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

Poll: Majority of Americans Support Adoption by Same-Sex Couples

The Advocate – June 2, 2014

Most Americans support marriage equality, but even more of them believe same-sex couples should be able to legally adopt children, according to a new poll.

The Gallup poll, released last month, shows a clear majority of respondents in support of adoption equality. This finding holds across all major demographics, although there are definite spans across party lines — 80% of Democrats, 61 percent of independents, and 51 percent of Republicans support adoption rights — and age groups, with 77 percent support among 18-29 year olds, and 52 percent among those 65 and older.

Gallup notes that support for equal adoption rights has been steadily increasing since 2008. When Gallup first started polling Americans on this question in 1992, the findings were a direct opposite, with 63 percent of respondents opposed to same-sex couples being allowed to legally adopt. Today, more than 16,000 American same-sex couples have adopted an estimated 22,000 children, according to the polling agency.

In its assessment, Gallup points out that public support for equal adoption, currently at 63 percent, has remained higher than public support for equal marriage, currently at 55 percent. That’s to be expected, says LGBT public policy expert Gary Gates, of the University of California Los Angeles School of Law’s Williams Institute.

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

Utah Supreme Court Grants Stay In Gay Adoption Rulings

By Carlos Santoscoy
Published: May 18, 2014

The Utah Supreme Court on Friday granted a stay in several lower court orders requiring the Department of Health to issue birth certificates in adoptions involving married gay couples.

According to Salt Lake City’s Fox 13, the stay was granted in response to a Utah attorney general’s office request for clarity in the cases.

“Enforcement of the district court orders mandating or authorizing Petitioner to issue birth certificates is stayed until the Court can address the petitions for extraordinary relief,” the court wrote.

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