Iowa, USA: State Supreme Court Rules in Landmark Gay Adoption Case

The Iowa state Supreme Court ruled that the state must issue birth certificates to same-sex couples showing both spouses as parents. Lambda Legal reports:

In the decision, Justice Wiggins wrote, “By naming the nonbirthing spouse on the birth certificate of a married lesbian couple’s child, the child is ensured support from that parent and the parent establishes fundamental legal rights at the moment of birth. Therefore, the only explanation for not listing the nonbirthing lesbian spouse on the birth certificate is stereotype or prejudice.”

“The Court meant what it said in the Varnum decision: same-sex couples and their families must be treated equally under the law,” said Camilla Taylor, Marriage Project Director in Lambda Legal’s Midwest Regional Office based in Chicago. “Same-sex couples and their children do not get marriage-lite. Marriage is marriage and equal is equal. We take for granted that a husband is the father of a child born to his wife through reproductive technology – regardless of whether he is his child’s genetic parent. The same marital protection for both parents’ relationships to their child holds true for same-sex couples and their children.”

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

Paul Ryan Reverses Course On Gay Adoption; Says He Regrets 1999 Vote

By    On Top Magazine Staff            Published:    May 01, 2013

Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan on Monday reversed course on gay adoption, saying that he regrets a 1999 vote.

During a Wisconsin town hall, Ryan was asked to explain his long record of voting against gay rights.  Ryan rates a zero percent by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) for not co-sponsoring any of the 11 gay rights-related bills currently before Congress, including the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and Uniting American Families Act (UAFA).

Ryan said he would undo a 1999 vote against adoption for gay and lesbian couples in the District of Columbia.

“Adoption, I’d vote differently these days. That was I think a vote I took in my first term, 1999 or 2000. I do believe that if there are children who are orphans who do not have a loving person or couple … I think if a person wants to love and raise a child they ought to be able to do that. Period. I would vote that way,” he said.

 

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

Push to Include Gay Couples in Immigration Bill

April 30, 2013
New York Times

This has been a good year for gay rights advocates — with public opinion shifting in their favor and same-sex marriage advancing in the states — but not when it comes to immigration.

An 844-page bill introduced in the Senate in mid-April by a bipartisan group of eight lawmakers includes measures to make legal immigration easier for highly skilled immigrants, migrant farmworkers and those living here illegally. It has no provisions that would help foreigners who are same-sex partners of American citizens to become legal permanent residents.

Gay advocates were sharply disappointed to find that same-sex couples were excluded from the legislation, since the Democrats who wrote it included two of their most consistent champions, Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second highest-ranking Senate Democrat. Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, where the bill is under consideration, has offered, since as far back as 2003, a separate measure that would allow immigrants in long-term same-sex relationships to obtain residency with a green card.

But in the lengthy closed-door negotiations that produced the overhaul proposal, the four Republicans in the bipartisan group made it clear early on that they did not want to include such a hot-button issue in a bill that would be a challenge to sell to their party even without it, according to Senate staff members. The Republicans are Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona, and Marco Rubio of Florida.

Many Republicans in both houses of Congress oppose any recognition of same-sex unions.

Now, with the immigration bill scheduled to advance next week toward a vote in the Judiciary Committee, Democrats are in a quandary about whether to offer an amendment that would give green cards to same-sex partners.

Republican sponsors of the overhaul warned on Tuesday that such an amendment would sink the entire measure.

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Australian Bill Seeks To Recognize International Marriages Of Gay Couples

By    On Top Magazine Staff                                 Published:    April 18, 2013

An Australian senator is expected to propose legislation which would recognize the international marriages of gay and lesbian couples.

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said she would introduce the bill next month.

The move comes a day after nearby New Zealand approved a gay marriage bill.

“Australia same-sex couples are now lining up to get married in New Zealand and the sad thing is they are not going to be recognized here,” Hanson-Young told ABC News 24. “They shouldn’t have to leave their marriage at the customs gate.  Let’s recognize overseas marriage here in Australia.”

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France’s Senate approves adoption for gay couples

GayStarNews.com – April 11, 2013 by Joe Morgan

The French Senate has approved adoption for same-sex couples.

On the evening of 10 April, the second article of the ‘Marriage for All’ bill was adopted by the upper level of French parliament.

The vote came just one day after the Senate approved Article 1, the provision allowing gay couples to marry.

The Senate must now complete a review of the legislation in its entirety, although passage of both articles almost guarantees gay couples will soon be able to marry and adopt in France.

Once approved, the bill will go back to the National Assembly in late May for final approval. It will then go to the French President François Hollande to sign into law.

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U.S. Says Study of Babies Failed to Disclose Risks

April 10, 2013
 New York Times

The lead investigators on a large study of the effects of oxygen levels on extremely premature babies failed to inform the infants’ parents that the risks of participating could involve increased chances of blindness or death, the federal Department of Health and Human Services has warned in a letter.

The Office for Human Research Protections, which safeguards the people who participate in government-funded research, sent a letter to the University of Alabama at Birmingham last month, detailing what it said were violations of patients’ rights.

The university, which was a lead site for the study, had not detailed the risks in consent forms that were the basis of parents’ participation, the office said in the letter. Specifically, babies assigned to a high-oxygen group were more likely to go blind and babies assigned to a low-oxygen group were more likely to die than if they had not participated. Ultimately, 130 babies out of 654 in the low-oxygen group died, and 91 babies out of 509 in the high-oxygen group developed blindness.

Some of the 1,300 infants who participated in the study, which took place between 2004 and 2009, would probably have died or developed blindness even if they had not taken part. They were born at just 24 to 27 weeks gestation, a very high-risk category. But being assigned to one or the other oxygen group in the study increased their chances further, a risk that was not properly disclosed, the office said

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in In the News / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

The Child, the Tablet and the Developing Mind

By NICK BILTON – The New York Times,
March 31, 2013
 
I recently watched my sister perform an act of magic.

We were sitting in a restaurant, trying to have a conversation, but her children, 4-year-old Willow and 7-year-old Luca, would not stop fighting. The arguments — over a fork, or who had more water in a glass — were unrelenting.

Like a magician quieting a group of children by pulling a rabbit out of a hat, my sister reached into her purse and produced two shiny Apple iPads, handing one to each child. Suddenly, the two were quiet. Eerily so. They sat playing games and watching videos, and we continued with our conversation.

After our meal, as we stuffed the iPads back into their magic storage bag, my sister felt slightly guilty.

“I don’t want to give them the iPads at the dinner table, but if it keeps them occupied for an hour so we can eat in peace, and more importantly not disturb other people in the restaurant, I often just hand it over,” she told me. Then she asked: “Do you think it’s bad for them? I do worry that it is setting them up to think it’s O.K. to use electronics at the dinner table in the future.”

I did not have an answer, and although some people might have opinions, no one has a true scientific understanding of what the future might hold for a generation raised on portable screens.

“We really don’t know the full neurological effects of these technologies yet,” said Dr. Gary Small, director of the Longevity Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of “iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind.” “Children, like adults, vary quite a lot, and some are more sensitive than others to an abundance of screen time.”

But Dr. Small says we do know that the brain is highly sensitive to stimuli, like iPads and smartphone screens, and if people spend too much time with one technology, and less time interacting with people like parents at the dinner table, that could hinder the development of certain communications skills.

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Science led to gay families: Law should follow

By Debora L. Spar. Special to CNN
Wed April 3, 2013

(CNN) — Of all the arguments swirling around the legality of same-sex marriage, it’s clear that a major concern is, as always, the kids.

Supporters argue that same-sex parents need to provide their children with a stable and supportive family home, complete with the legal protections afforded heterosexual married couples. Opponents claim that children raised by same-sex parents are wounded in some fundamental way by being denied the “normal” benefits of having both a mother and father at home.

What is lost, remarkably, in both these arguments is the science that enabled families headed by same-sex couples to exist at all.

Until recently, families had to consist, at least at the outset, of a mommy and a daddy, each biologically necessary to bring children into being. Even if the mother died in childbirth or the father disappeared shortly thereafter, the physiological basis of the nuclear family remained intact: one mother, one father, and a child conceived of their union.

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Hillary Clinton Endorses Same-Sex Marriage

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG – March 18, 2013 – New York Times

Saying that “gay rights are human rights,’’ Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former secretary of state and potential 2016 presidential candidate, has endorsed same-sex marriage.

“I believe America is at its best when we champion the freedom and dignity of every human being,’’ Mrs. Clinton said in a video posted Monday on the Internet by the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group. Her announcement comes as the Supreme Court is about to hear two landmark gay rights cases that advocates hope will make same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states.

Mrs. Clinton had not previously come out in favor of same-sex marriage, but she did take steps to protect gay couples when she was secretary of state, work that she said “inspired me to think anew” about the values she held.

“L.G.B.T. Americans are our colleagues, our teachers, our soldiers, our friends, our loved ones, and they are full and equal citizens and deserve the rights of citizenship,’’ she said in the six-minute video, using the abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. “That includes marriage.’’

Mrs. Clinton spoke in the video of the recent wedding of her own daughter, Chelsea, saying, “I wish every parent that same joy.’’

Mrs. Clinton and her family have longstanding ties to the Human Rights Campaign. The group’s executive director, Chad Griffin, was born in Hope, Ark. – Bill Clinton’s hometown – and got his start in politics volunteering for Mr. Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. The former president and Chelsea Clinton expressed their support for same-sex marriage when it was under consideration in the New York State legislature.

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Top Anti-Gay Attorney Insults Chief Justice Roberts And Justice Thomas’ Decisions To Adopt Children

ThinkProgress.org, By Ian Millhiser on Mar 14, 2013

When President Bush announced his decision to nominate future-Chief Justice John Roberts to the Supreme Court, his wife Jane stood nearby holding the hands of two beautiful children — Jack and Josie Roberts. Both of these children were born in Ireland, and later adopted by the future Chief Justice and his wife. Justice Clarence Thomas also has an adopted son, his grandnephew Mark Martin, Jr., who Thomas adopted when Martin was six.

So it is a bit hard to understand why a top anti-gay advocate decided to insult adoptive parents in general — and Chief Justice Roberts in particular — as the justices are preparing to hear two cases that will decide whether same-sex couples will enjoy the same right to marry as all other Americans. According to John Eastman, a law professor and chair of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage, Roberts and Thomas’ adopted children are only growing up in the “second-best” environment:

The justices also are not immune to considering how they might be affected by the course one side or the other is advocating in a dispute before them. . . . [Johns Hopkins Sociology Professor Andrew] Cherlin, who does not follow the high court especially closely, wondered whether the gay marriage cases might take on a similar dynamic. “If justices consider their own family lives in these cases, it may change the way they rule,” he said.

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