The Canadian Press – ONLINE EDITION
SALT LAKE CITY – Rep. Christine Johnson will serve an additional role when the Utah Legislature convenes this month. The lesbian lawmaker announced she’s a surrogate mother, carrying a baby for two gay men.
Johnson said she decided to become artificially impregnated with sperm from one of the men after the two close friends expressed frustration over the difficulty of adopting a child.
Utah law prohibits unmarried couples from adopting and does not recognize gay marriage.
Johnson, 41, who has a 17-year-old daughter from a two-year marriage, is four months pregnant and expecting on June 21.
“I can very much empathize with their desire to become parents and share their lives with and open their hearts to a child,” Johnson told the Salt Lake Tribune. “I’m immeasurably grateful to be a mother.”
Johnson offered to be a surrogate at no cost to save the men the prohibitive cost of hiring one – as much as $100,000.
The men, who were married in California when gay marriage was legal, will pick up the medical costs.
Johnson said she’s aware that many lawmakers in conservative Utah think a child does best with both a mother and a father. She predicts the men will be “wonderful parents.”
“Gender or sexual orientation is less important than children being welcomed into a supportive, loving home,” she told the Deseret News. “This child is going to have an amazing life.”
She has declined to identify the men.
Sen. Howard Stephenson said he thinks having both a mother and father in the home “is the optimum, and what every baby deserves.”
But he added: “I do respect any woman who will carry and bear a child for a childless couple … It’s my responsibility to show respect and love for one of God’s daughters.”
House Speaker David Clark also a Mormon, agrees. “At the end of the day, it’s the gift of life” that is important, he said.
Johnson said the child will know her as the mother, but that she will have an “aunt-type relationship.”
The man whose sperm was used to impregnate Johnson will have the same rights to the child as any biological father. But under Utah law, his partner cannot be an adoptive parent.
Testing has shown the baby is free from genetic disorders that are more common with later pregnancies. The baby’s sex is still unknown.
Johnson was born on the East Coast and moved with her family to Provo when she was 8. She later left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Johnson said she doesn’t think her constituents will react negatively to her pregnancy. She plans to seek a third term this year.
Lisa Miller, an ‘ex-gay’ evangelical Christian who was in a lesbian relationship in Vermont for four years, has abducted the former couple’s 7-year-old daughter following a court order awarding sole custody to her former partner.
Miller renounced being gay in 2004 and took the child, Isabella, from Vermont to Virginia. A judge awarded her former partner, Janet Jenkins, liberal visitation rights at the time. However, Miller failed to allow Jenkins to visit with Isabella, and a judge found Miller in contempt of court on November 20, 2009, awarding Jenkins sole legal custody of Isabella.
The girl was supposed to be handed over to Jenkins on January 1, 2010, but Miller failed to show up and has apparently absconded with Isabella. Miller has reportedly ceased contact with her attorneys.
Jenkins’ attorney said, “She’s very disappointed, obviously. She’s very concerned about Isabella and asks that if anybody sees Isabella, that they please contact the authorities.”
According to Ex-Gay Watch, in a 2008 interview with a right-wing Christian website, Miller accused Jenkins of verbal and physical abuse towards her and neglect of the Isabella. Miller also made insinuations of sexual abuse, saying Jenkins took a naked bath with the child, and claimed Isabella had started “openly masturbating.”
Miller called homosexuality a “sin,” and became an evangelical Christian upon ending her relationship with Jenkins. Miller said in court documents, “Isabella knows that Ms. Jenkins’ choice to continue to live a homosexual lifestyle is a sin.”
Miller now faces possible criminal charges. Miller’s last known address was in Forest, Virginia. It’s unclear at this time whether or not Virginia police will search for Miller and Isabella, although a warrant for her arrest will likely be issued for contempt of court.
BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD
Published: Thursday, August 6, 2009 5:09 PM CDT – Gay City News
Last week, the Senate narrowly defeated a proposed amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill, under which people who had licenses to carry concealed weapons issued by their home state would be allowed to carry such weapons everywhere in the US, including those states with stricter licensing criteria or outright bans.
The main argument against the amendment was that states should be allowed to establish their own policy on who, if anybody, can carry concealed weapons. Giving nationwide effect to any particular state’s licenses would therefore invade the right of each state to decide what is necessary to preserve public order in its own jurisdiction.
I was struck by the fact that during the debate nobody invoked the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the US Constitution (found in Article IV, Section 1), which provides that “Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.” No senator chose to make the argument that the proposed amendment was unnecessary because the FFCC already requires states to honor concealed weapons licenses issued by other states.
This question occurred to me because in 1996 a frenzy over the Full Faith issue regarding the recognition of same-sex marriages led Congress to rush through, by huge margins, the federal Defense of Marriage Act. At the time, it was argued, Congress needed to pass what became Section 2 of DOMA because Hawaii was on the verge of allowing same-sex couples to marry. Because Hawaii had no residency requirement for marriage, same-sex couples from all over the country could flock to Hawaii, marry, and then demand that their home states recognize their marriage under the FFCC, DOMA’s proponents warned. Its enactment was necessary, they said, to preserve the right of individual states to resist marriage equality from invading their jurisdictions.
In the case of both guns and marriage, we are talking about a license issued by the state after a state clerical employee determines that the specified requirements are met. After a license is issued, a copy of it is on file in some government office — or more likely today, retained as an electronic record in a state database. The statutes and regulations governing license requirements probably meet the definition of “public acts,” and the filed licenses are undoubtedly “public records.” But in neither case — the issuance of a concealed weapon license or the issuance of a marriage license — is a judge involved, so my bet is that neither qualifies as a “judicial Proceeding.” Even when a judge officiates at a civil wedding ceremony, that is not a formal court proceeding.
Given the similarities of these two licensing procedures, I think it is fair to conclude that the recent gun debate illuminates the ignorance rampant during the ’96 DOMA hysteria.
My own research led me to write, in a law review article more than a decade ago, that the FFCC does not compel marriage recognition by the states, because a marriage itself is not a public Act, a public record, or a judicial Proceeding. The case law on marriage recognition suggests that one state recognizing the marriages of another is a matter of comity — courtesy or mutual civility between them, in popular parlance — not of compulsion under the FFCC. States have always been free to refuse to recognize marriages that could not have been performed in their own jurisdiction if they concluded that according recognition would be inconsistent with their own public policies, as articulated in statutes, regulations, and state judicial opinions.
Those who argued that Section 2 of DOMA, which provides that states are not required to recognize same-sex marriages from other states, was necessary to protect states from being compelled to recognize such marriages were just plain wrong. In its FFCC jurisprudence, the Supreme Court has never ruled that states are required to recognize marriages from other states.
States are required to recognize divorces and adoptions from other states, mind you, because in those instances there is a “judicial Proceeding” — a divorce or an adoption results from a court order based on a judgment exercised by a duly authorized judicial officer, so the FFCC literally applies. This has been dramatically confirmed recently by state appellate decisions in Florida and Louisiana holding that adoptions by same-sex couples judicially approved in other jurisdictions would be recognized pursuant to the FFCC, regardless of the fact that neither Florida, which bans all adoptions by gay people, nor Louisiana allows same-sex couples to adopt children within their states.
And that, by analogy, explains why in the absence of the proposed gun amendment, states are free to ignore or refuse to recognize permits to carry concealed weapons issued by other states. A permit or license does not come within the FFCC. The permit or license is not a “public Act,” a “public record,” or a “judicial Proceeding” as those terms are used in the FFCC. My license to practice law in New York does not entitle me to practice law in New Jersey by virtue of the FFCC. The same is true of medical licenses, and other licenses to engage in various professions regulated by the states, including teaching. I don’t think anybody has ever successfully argued that the public schools of other states are required to honor licenses issued by the New York State Education Department.
The lesson to be learned from the gun debate, however, is not only important for DOMA’s proponents to understand — it is also relevant for advocates seeking to undo it. In an interview with the Bay Area Reporter this week, New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler made clear that legislation he intends to introduce shortly would repeal not only Section 3 of DOMA — which bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages — but also Section 2. Should the federal government choose to recognize valid same-sex marriages, they would likely extend the corresponding federal rights and benefits regardless of whether a married couple’s marriage is recognized by their home state — and it appears as though Nadler intends to make this policy explicit through what he termed a “certainty provision.”
Repealing Section 2, however, would still not have the effect, in my view, of compelling any state to recognize same-sex marriages from another jurisdiction; arguments about the FFCC would not affect the rights of states to decide which marriages to accord their recognition to. It might, however, remove a psychological barrier, empowering judges to analyze the issue using comity principles rather than just reflexively refusing recognition by citing DOMA.
Interestingly, the lawsuit recently filed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts challenging the constitutionality of DOMA’s bar on federal recognition of same-sex marriage relies on the view that the federal government has no say constitutionally in what kinds of marriages a state can or must recognize. DOMA’s requirement that the US government not recognize gay marriages from that state infringes on Massachusetts’ rights, guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment, to define marriage as it sees fit, the Commonwealth’s attorney general has argued.
Arthur S. Leonard, Gay City News’ legal correspondent, is professor of law at New York Law School, founder and editor of Lesbian/Gay Law Notes, a publication of the Lesbian and Gay Law Association of Greater New York, and author of “Sexuality and the Law: An Encyclopedia of Major Legal Cases.”
By Susan Spencer-Wendel Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
November 29, 2009
For Starbucks manager Steven Mayer, 29, it’s a dream: a gay man in Florida one day adopting a child.
He and his partner, together about a year now, are making plans to adopt in 10 years.
“We’re kind of hoping society will catch up by then,” Mayer said.
More than 32 years after its passage, Florida’s blanket ban on gay adoption stands as the last one left in the nation. After a few failed legal challenges, now comes a case that advocates of gay adoption have pinned their hopes and legal prowess on.
And opponents are digging in — including Attorney General Bill McCollum, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, whose current office is required to defend the law.
The case springs from Miami-Dade County, considered one of the more liberal legal bastions in the state. A gay North Miami man, Martin Gill, asked a judge to adopt two boys, half-brothers whom he’s cared for as a foster parent for nearly five years, since they were 4 years old and 4 months old.
Seeking the ideal case to challenge the ban, lawyers for gay rights groups and the American Civil Liberties Union found it in Gill and the children. The boys live with Gill, a flight attendant, his partner of nine years and the partner’s own son. All the social workers monitoring the foster family agreed: The brothers thrived with Gill, and he would be approved for adoption but for the law, according to court records.
For years, gay people have been fostering children in need. In Palm Beach County, child welfare agencies began publicly soliciting for homosexual foster parents in 2001.
Social science debate
ACLU attorney Rob Rosenwald Jr. of Miami, who represents Gill, describes the case as “the most extensive legal challenge to the ban, presenting for the first time the world’s foremost scientific authorities on children’s welfare to demonstrate that gay households are as conducive to raising children as straight ones.”
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman agreed and approved Gill’s adoption of the boys. Concluding that sexual orientation is not a predictor of a person’s ability to parent, she declared the law unconstitutional.
An appeals court’s review of her decision could come at any time. If the 3rd District Court of Appeal concurs, the case would automatically move to consideration by the Florida Supreme Court — placing the hot-button topic of gay adoption at the forefront again.
“The Florida Supreme Court asked for a complete presentation of the science on parenting by gay people,” Rosenwald said. “We put together the nation’s best legal talent and the world’s most respected scientific experts in order to give the court what it wanted and finally overturn this shameful ban once and for all.”
A recent public opinion poll surveyed 1,370 Floridians on the subject in January. The Quinnipiac University poll found that Floridians oppose the ban on homosexual adoption 55 percent to 39 percent.
But public opinion and the law are two different planets, and judges are bound by the law.
In challenging Lederman’s ruling, McCollum’s attorneys, including Solicitor General Scott Makar and his deputy Timothy Osterhaus, are arguing that it is not in the best interests of children to be raised by homosexuals. In Osterhaus’ brief, he wrote that the social science experts on both sides of the legal battle have acknowledged that homosexuals have higher rates of psychiatric conditions, that their children are more sexually active and endure peer bullying, and their relationships appear less stable than those of heterosexuals.
They are thoughts not lost on Mayer.
“I appreciate the laws being so strict even though I am gay,” he said. “I understand. Most homosexuals that I personally know don’t have relationships longer than six months or a year.”
A fight within a fight
But influential organizations have joined the legal fight to argue that there is no difference in homosexual parenting on the adjustment of children. They include nationally recognized psychiatry, psychology, pediatrics, social work and child welfare groups.
A legal organization also is girded for battle — the 3,582-member Family Law section of the Florida Bar. The Bar’s Board of Governors unanimously voted to allow the voluntary-membership section to file a friend-of-the-court brief — spawning another legal battle. Liberty Counsel, a conservative, nonprofit litigation group, appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, attempting unsuccessfully to block the section’s involvement.
Attorney Scott Rubin of Miami, the Family Law section’s head during the decision-making, said the family lawyers wanted to make a statement: that it is in the best interest of Gill’s boys that they remain with Gill.
And that for other children like them, placed in good homes, the sexual orientation of the parent “should be of no moment.”
Soon after the Bar section’s entry, the vast opinion divide unfolded on the pages of the Florida Bar News — the fiery letters a reminder that before a legal opinion always comes a personal one in the debate over gay adoption.
“Thus, it is clear that God, the giver of law, hates the practice of homosexuality and His law and His will are to keep children and those practicing homosexuality apart,” wrote a longtime Leesburg attorney.
A Broward attorney contravened:
“Florida’s children deserve good parents and if they happen to be gay — so what? It is time for Florida’s gay adoption ban to be taken off the books and become just a reminder of how hateful human beings can be toward each other so that we may strive to be better.”
By The Associated Press
11.06.2009 3:30pm EST
(San Francisco) In one ad after another, voters in California and Maine were besieged with images of what would supposedly happen if same-sex marriage were legal: Students on a field trip to a lesbian wedding, elementary kids gobbling up books featuring gay couples, kindergartners learning about homosexuality from their teachers.
The strategy worked. Overruling the courts and lawmakers, voters defeated gay marriage ballot measures in California last year and in Maine this week after conservatives convinced residents that same-sex unions would become common classroom fodder without any say from parents.
The punch-to-the gut claim has emerged as the latest tool in the ever-evolving playbook of same-sex marriage opponents, and the Achilles’ heel of the gay-marriage movement. Voters seem to be swayed by the notion that gay marriage will be a corrupting force among children, even though critics blasted the message as a blatantly misleading case of fear-mongering.
“It was very effective. It’s drawing on the fears of the unknown,” said Sandy Maisel, director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement at Maine’s Colby College. “There’s no evidence that it’s going to happen, but there’s very clear evidence that it’s an effective campaign tactic.”
Gay marriage opponents discovered the effectiveness of the schools message in last year’s successful effort to pass Proposition 8 to outlaw gay marriage in California.
After signing up to lead the campaign, political consultants Frank Schubert and Jeff Flint knew they had a problem: Polls were showing that residents tended to not have much of a problem with gay relationships.
With the help of focus groups, surveys and ammunition unwittingly supplied by their opponents, Schubert and Flint soon found a new way to frame the issue, by focusing on education.
It was a departure from past elections when the issue was defined in simpler terms – that marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman. The various strategies have helped conservatives win 31 consecutive ballot initiatives on gay marriage.
“We bet the campaign on consequences, especially on education,” Schubert recalled in March when he and Flint were named the “public affairs team of the year” by the American Association of Political Consultants for their work in California. “Education from the beginning, while it was one of three consequences, it was the one that was the most emotionally charged and the most powerful.”
In California and Maine, gay marriage supporters countered the claims with spots featuring prominent elected officials – California’s chief of public instruction, Maine’s attorney general – who insisted that same-sex marriage had nothing to do with schools.
They also angrily denounced as deceptive the visuals the Sacramento team employed, including a Massachusetts couple who lost a lawsuit seeking parental consent before same-sex families are discussed in elementary classrooms.
But the response did not defuse the hot-button issue, advocates on both sides of the issue observe, in part because they failed to address what many parents knew to be true: Many public schools already have lessons that include references to gay families in the younger grades and confronting anti-gay discrimination for older students. Although the topics usually are broached in the context of appreciating diversity and tolerance, for some parents any discussion of gay people is too close to talking about gay sex.
“The trend that we are seeing is homosexuality is being promoted more and more in schools, and the increase in this is creating a hostile environment for kids with Christian or socially conservative viewpoints,” said Candi Cushman, education analyst for the Christian group Focus on the Family.
Cathy Renna, a public relations consultant in Washington who is married to a woman and has a 4-year-old daughter, said that equating references to gay parents with sex is “like saying that introducing someone’s mother and father to a class means you are talking about heterosexual sex.” But Renna agrees that same-sex marriage supporters need a different comeback to the kids-and-schools argument.
“This idea that gay people are coming to eat your children is a long-standing tactic of the right wing,” she said. “The response to those ads that not only has more truth, but more integrity, is that we live in a diverse world and our kids know that and it’s irresponsible for us not to talk about the world we live in in age-appropriate ways. Dismissing them as lies actually does a disservice not only to the people in our community, but to the public that knows better.”
In California, some gay rights groups want to try to repeal Proposition 8 at the ballot box next year. There has been talk about including language in the new measure that would state that nothing in it is meant to mandate the teaching of same-sex marriage in schools. Some gay rights advocates fear, though, that the wording could be used to undermine the way gay subjects are treated in schools now, said Chaz Lowe, founder of Yes! on Equality.
Melissa Murray, an assistant professor at the UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law who researched the messages used in the Proposition 8 campaign, said gay marriage advocates underestimated how deeply Schubert and Flint’s carefully crafted schools message resonated with the public.
One reason it resonated so deeply is it changed the debate from one of equal rights to the equally cherished notion of individual rights, something gay activists should keep in mind as the marriage moves to other states, Murray said.
“Parents are always thinking about how do I keep unwanted influences out of my children’s lives, and it’s a lot harder to do that as a parent if that influence is the state,” Murray said. “That’s the fear they are tapping into. … and they are just going to keep repackaging it, because it works.”
BOSTON — The Maine attorney general is prodding a national group that fights same-sex marriage to reveal its donors by Election Day, after a federal judge on Wednesday denied the group’s request for a restraining order.
Voters will decide on Tuesday whether to repeal Maine’s law allowing same-sex marriage, a ballot question that has been the focus of a heated battle this fall. As of last Friday, the group, the National Organization for Marriage, had supplied more than half of the $2.6 million raised for the repeal effort.
The National Organization for Marriage, based in Washington, also played a central role in last year’s successful effort to ban same-sex marriage in California. It is waging similar battles in Iowa, New Jersey, New York and other states.
Supporters of same-sex marriage have pressured opposition groups to disclose their donors — and even people who have signed their petitions — as the national battle over the issue has intensified. In Maine, a state ethics commission announced in early October that it would investigate whether the National Organization for Marriage was flouting campaign finance laws to keep its donors anonymous.
In response, the National Organization for Marriage sued the state last week in Federal District Court in Bangor, Me., on the ground that Maine’s financial reporting requirements violate the First Amendment and are therefore unconstitutional. Maine law requires any individual or group that raises or spends more than $5,000 to influence a ballot question vote to disclose donors who gave more than $100 for that purpose.
The group also sought a temporary restraining order because “the election is imminent,” Judge D. Brock Hornby wrote in his ruling, “and they wish to make solicitations and expenditures that exceed the $5,000 limit without registering or reporting.”
According to the latest filings, the National Organization for Marriage has contributed about $1.6 million to Stand for Marriage Maine, the group leading the repeal effort.
The Maine ethics commission decided to investigate the National Organization for Marriage after a California group argued that it was essentially “money laundering” by soliciting donations for the repeal effort without disclosing donors. The complainant, Californians Against Hate, also prompted an ongoing investigation in California of the Mormon Church, which it accused of not reporting significant contributions it had made to the campaign against same-sex marriage there, partly through the National Organization for Marriage.
While Judge Hornby allowed the lawsuit to proceed, he denied the motion for a restraining order on the ground that the suit was unlikely to succeed.
“Maine has a very strong interest in providing its voters with information about the source of money that funds the campaign on either side of a ballot issue,” he wrote.
The National Organization for Marriage maintains that it did not break the law because it solicited donations to fight same-sex marriage in general, not the Maine statute in particular. James Bopp Jr., a lawyer for the group, said Thursday that it was not subject to Maine’s reporting law because it had contributed the $1.6 million to Stand for Marriage Maine, which has reported its donors to the state.
But the state attorney general, Janet T. Mills, said the National Organization for Marriage had an obligation to reveal its donors.
“We think they should file immediately,” Ms. Mills said in an interview. “We expect and trust that they’ll do the right thing.”
Mr. Bopp said that the law punished people for exercising First Amendment rights and that its requirements were burdensome.“To the extent that it requires reporting of contributors or people associated with the organization,” he said, “that’s an invasion of their privacy and it certainly chills First Amendment activity.”
Measure would penalize states with anti-gay laws
A federal lawmaker is touting an adoption anti-discrimination bill he recently introduced as a way to find more homes for children living in the welfare system.
U.S. Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) on Oct. 15 introduced the Every Child Deserves a Family Act, which would restrict federal funds for states that discriminate in adoption or foster programs on the basis of marital status, sexual orientation or gender identity.
Stark said in an interview that he introduced the legislation, H.R. 3827, in part because thousands of children each year “age out” of the child welfare system without finding homes.
“We got 25,000 kids a year maturing out of the welfare system without permanent foster care or adoptive care, and the prospects of those children having a successful adult life are diminished greatly,” he said. “These are kids who end up in the criminal justice system, or end up homeless.”
States with explicit restrictions on adoption that the pending legislation would affect are Utah, Florida, Arkansas, Nebraska and Mississippi. Florida, for example, has a statute specifically prohibiting gays from adopting, and in Arkansas, voters last year approved Act 1, which prevents unmarried co-habitating couples, including same-sex partners, from adopting children.
The legislation, Stark said, also would restrict funds for states where restrictions are put in place by agencies, individual social workers or judges, or where restrictions are part of the common law of the state.
For states that don’t comply with the law, federal officials could withhold from the states funds provided to them for child welfare services. The bill also calls for a Government Accountability Office study within five years to examine how states are complying with the new rules.
The bill is modeled after the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act, a law Stark helped shepherd through Congress in 1994 that prohibits racial discrimination in foster care and adoption placements.
Stark said discrimination is “bad in any situation,” but is particularly heinous in adoption because it’s actually “discriminating against kids who need the support” and it denies adults the personal fulfillment of raising a child.
“I’m not going to talk about all the problems it brings because — having three young children under the age of 14 — I can tell you it ain’t all roses, but nevertheless, there is a benefit, I think, a great benefit to the adult,” he said.
Stark said in some circumstances, when children are orphaned, a state could deny giving them to a grandparent to be raised if the grandparent is gay. Such a case, Stark said, would carry discrimination “to its ridiculous extreme.”
Despite the purported benefits the legislation would bring, there are few voices in Congress supporting the bill. The legislation had no co-sponsors as of Monday.
Still, the legislation has the backing of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Drew Hammill, the speaker’s spokesperson, said Pelosi shares the view of child welfare groups that children “should have the security of two fully sanctioned and legally recognized parents, whether those parents are of the same or opposite sex.”
“Denying a child a loving home solely on the basis of a couple’s sexual orientation is wrong and ultimately harms the child,” Hammill said. “With that in mind, we are encouraged that Rep. Stark is taking up the issue and will be monitoring the legislation’s progress.”
The bill also enjoys support from LGBT organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign and the Family Equality Council.
Trevor Thomas, an HRC spokesperson, said his organization supports “all efforts to remove artificial barriers to finding permanent families for children and youth.”
“We know that lesbian and gay families can be a great resource for children and youth in foster care and should be fully welcomed and supported as foster [or] adoptive parents,” he said.
Thomas said if the bill gains traction in Congress, HRC would lobby in its support.
Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of the Family Equality Council, said her organization is still looking at the bill’s particulars, but is generally in favor of it because of the education opportunity it affords.
“Anything that is a vehicle to educate members of Congress and the American public about the issue of adoption in this country and the need of children waiting in foster care is one that we’re going to be paying attention to and helping make sure gets discussed in a positive way for the LGBT community,” she said.
Shin Inouye, a White House spokesperson, said the White House has not had a chance to review the bill, but noted the president “generally believes that gays and lesbians should have equal rights in regards to adoption and foster care.”
Stark said the chances of the legislation passing this Congress are “pretty good” and said a hearing could take place this year in a House Ways & Means subcommittee, although nothing has been scheduled.
The committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether a hearing would occur.
He said he’d like to find a Republican co-sponsor for the legislation, then work on getting Senate companion legislation introduced.
Stark said the chances of his proposal succeeding would be better if he could “keep it separate from the marriage and the military issue” and emphasize how the bill would benefit children.
“I’d like to counter early on the arguments that will come up — sexual orientation will train the children to assume a gay lifestyle, and you know the claptrap that I’ll get,” he said. “But I think if we can have the hearings in a rather calm approach, we could put those issues to rest.”
Stark is encouraging people who support the bill to reach out to their lawmakers and to encourage friends who live in conservative states to do the same.
“If your readership is interested, wants to help, they can contact someone in a ‘red’ state and ask them to contact members of Congress or their senators, pointing out that this will help the children, reduce homelessness, reduce crimes,” he said.
Advocate.com, Julie Bolcer, October 7, 2009
Sources say that Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, is pregnant with her second child.
The staunch Republican and her partner, Heather Poe, expect the baby in mid to late November, according to True/Slant, which spoke with a source close to the Cheney family.
“Cheney has worked as a principal at Navigators Global, a bipartisan communications firm, but recently announced that she would be leaving the company for maternity leave and to begin a new consulting firm with her sister, Liz. Close friends were informed that she was expecting a second child about four months ago and she is now visibly showing her pregnancy, the source says,” according to True/Slant.
Cheney, 40, gave birth to her first child, Samuel David Cheney, in May 2007. She and Poe live in Virginia.