Parental Rights and Why Right-Wing States Are Hazardous to Your Health

Mombian – 2.24.2011

What a day yesterday, hmm? The Department of Justice says it won’t defend the Defense of Marriage Act. Not to mention that Maryland is edging closer to marriage equality (expect a final vote in the next day or two), and civil unions are now legal in Hawaii. (That is, the governor has signed the bill—it doesn’t go into effect until January 1, 2012.)

Equality marches on, but it hasn’t been and still won’t be an easy path. When you need a break from all the DOMA pieces flying around the LGBT blogosphere today, I hope you’ll go read two pieces I’ve written for Keen News Service recently that cover parenting-specific issues. The first, “Same-sex parents’ rights: It’s not Hollywood, it’s war,” looks at a number of court cases around the country, and the second, “Warning: Anti-Gay States May be Hazardous to Your Health,” at some new research showing that same-sex couples with adopted children living in states with anti-gay adoption laws and attitudes had more mental health issues in their first year of parenthood than same-sex adoptive parents living in more accepting states. It may seem obvious to us, but I’m all for backing up the obvious with science when necessary.

in Legal / Legislation / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Rules on Cameras in Delivery Rooms Stir Passions

February 2, 2011
New york Times

CASCADE, Md. — When Laurie Shifler was expecting her eighth child, she was so upset about a local hospital’s new policy restricting photographs of births that she started an online petition. Hundreds of people, near and far, signed it, many expressing outrage that a hospital would prevent parents from recording such a momentous occasion, one that could never be recaptured.

The hospital, Meritus Medical Center, in nearby Hagerstown, bars all pictures and videos during birth — cellphones and cameras must be turned off — and allows picture-taking to begin only after the medical team has given permission.

“It’s about our rights,” Ms. Shifler, 36, said the other day at her home here in rural Maryland as she cradled her newborn daughter, Kaelii, in her arms and the rest of her brood roughhoused around her. Her husband, Michael, 37, a police officer, was able to take pictures 30 seconds after Kaelii’s birth last month, but Ms. Shifler is still fighting the hospital to change its policy.

“It’s my child,” she said. “Who can tell me I can take a picture or not take a picture of my own flesh and blood?”

For the hospital, the issue is not about “rights” but about the health and safety of the baby and mother and about protecting the privacy of the medical staff, many of whom have no desire to become instant celebrities on Facebook or YouTube.

Their concerns take place against a backdrop of medical malpractice suits in which video is playing a role. A typical case is one settled in 2007 that involved a baby born at the University of Illinois Hospital with shoulder complications and permanent injury; video taken by the father in the delivery room showed the nurse-midwife using excessive force and led to a payment to the family of $2.3 million.

Nationwide, photography and videography have been allowed in many delivery rooms for decades. But in recent years, technology creep has forced some hospitals to rethink their policies as they seek to balance safety and legal protection with the desire by some new mothers to document all aspects of their lives, including the entire birth process.

“Hospitals are struggling with it,” said Dr. Joanne Conroy, chief health care officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges. “Cellphones have exponentially increased the ability to take a picture — a high-quality picture — in a hospital setting.”

Mike Matray, editor of The Medical Liability Monitor, a newsletter based in Chicago, said the issue had been moving up on hospital agendas.

“I have certainly heard this issue discussed more often than I ever have previously,” he said. “And it’s certainly true that some risk managers in hospitals are advising doctors to stop allowing video in the delivery room.”

There are no national standards regarding cameras in the delivery room, so each hospital sets its own rules, creating a patchwork of policies. No national organization, including the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Hospital Association, keeps track of how many hospitals allow photography, so it is hard to tell whether restrictions are on the rise.

Many hospitals allow and even encourage recording because modern cameras, particularly those taking video, are so unobtrusive. But that same technology has introduced a wild card into a fraught scene that could shock a jury — with the mother screaming and staff responding (or not) to what may look like an emergency — all of which can be edited to misrepresent what actually took place.

The restrictions at Meritus went into effect in November, after the hospital began reviewing all of its policies because it was moving to a new facility and learned that six other hospitals in the region had barred photography and videography during births. Georgetown University Hospital in Washington has a similar policy.

“Deliveries are complicated,” Dr. William C. Hamilton, chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Meritus, said in an interview at the hospital, adding that no one wanted to be distracted. “I’m not a baseball catcher with a mitt, just catching a baby,” he said.

Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston also bans cameras during births, said Dr. Erin E. Tracy, an obstetrician there who also teaches at Harvard Medical School.

“When we had people videotaping, it got to be a bit of a media circus,” Dr. Tracy said, adding that the banning of cameras evolved through general practice rather than a written policy. “I want to be 100 percent focused on the medical care, and in this litigious atmosphere, where ads are on TV every 30 seconds about suing, it makes physicians gun shy.”

But many other hospitals are taking the opposite approach and accommodating families (except during Caesareans or if complications arise). St. Luke’s Hospital in Boise, Idaho, which serves a large military population, even uses Skype to connect mothers with soldier-fathers overseas. Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston, began allowing photography and videography of births in 2008.

“Our hope is that the family will film it and it will lead to a closer bonding and a feeling of joy and success,” said Dr. Robert Barbieri, chairman of Brigham’s department of obstetrics and gynecology. He said the mother and clinicians must agree to be filmed and the photographer must use a hand-held camera with an internal light so equipment is not in the way.

“We’re trying to be as transparent as we can,” Dr. Barbieri said. “If something goes wrong, we try to explain immediately what happened. A video is not inconsistent with the goal of trying to be transparent.”

Dr. Elliott Main, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, which also allows filming of births, said, “The modern approach is not to ban cameras but to do drills and practice.”

“Where you get into trouble is where people panic or don’t know what to do next and have blank looks on their faces,” he said. Videotaping simulated births, he said, can help the medical staff adjust their behavior.

Obstetricians are sued more often than doctors in other specialties and pay among the highest insurance premiums. They can also be more wary than other doctors, whose every move is not recorded.

Video is a particular worry because it picks up actions that a still camera might not catch and the sound can make a situation seem worse than it is.

“The first consideration for a trial attorney is how this plays to a jury,” said Paul Myre, a lawyer in St. Louis who has defended doctors and hospitals in malpractice cases for 25 years.

In one case in which he was involved, a man on the jury fainted when a simple instructional video of a birth was shown. “Just a normal childbirth can look fairly traumatic to a lay person,” Mr. Myre said. He said he defended a doctor in another case in which the video showed that his client “had done everything right,” but the jury still felt “the child needed to be taken care of.”

In a case in which the audio was crucial, mentioned in a 1998 article in the Journal of Family Practice, a father’s recording picked up complaints by nurses that a doctor would not get off the phone to attend to a delivery. It also picked up warning signals from the fetal monitor. Another time, a father taped a complicated delivery and then pretended to be congratulating the staff while recording their responses about the complications, which were later used as evidence against them.

Matthew Dudley, the lawyer who won the $2.3 million settlement in Illinois, said that without the video, he probably would not have won the settlement. He also said that without video, some trial lawyers were less willing to take a case, adding to the reasons for hospitals to ban it. At Meritus, Dr. Hamilton said no particular incident had prompted the new restrictions, adding that the threat of lawsuits was not new.

“I openly admit to my co-workers that I practice defensive medicine,” he said. But he said he “takes offense” that “now I have to be videoed to prove that I’m providing good care.”

Aggravating the situation at Meritus, which prides itself on its new family-friendly obstetrics unit, were statements from officials last month that families had to wait five minutes before taking pictures. Dr. Hamilton said that those statements resulted from “miscommunications” and that “there is no five-minute rule.”

Brittany Saunders, 17, who was sitting upright in her hospital bed at Meritus recently with her newborn daughter, Meliyah, said her mother was able to take video within a couple of minutes of birth. (Ms. Saunders had not seen it yet because her mother “ran off with the phone too quick.”)

Still, Ms. Saunders was disappointed not to have video of the actual birth because her friends had posted their deliveries online and she wanted to do the same.

But some mothers who think they want the whole experience recorded change their minds. Robin Dobbe, 27, was angry when she first learned about the Meritus policy (“It’s my body”), and she signed the petition.

But once she was giving birth to her son, Charlie, she wanted her mother by her side, not taking pictures. Her mother was allowed to start shooting within 30 seconds.

“I look like a complete mess,” Ms. Dobbe said. “I wasn’t decent for Facebook.”

She said she now supported the policy, was glad the staff was focused on the task at hand and that she would never forget the experience.

Andrew Keh contributed reporting from New York.

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

Federal Court to Re-Hear Same-Sex Couple’s Challenge After Louisiana Refuses to Respect Out-of-State Adoptions

 Lambda Legal, January 14, 2011

Five-year-old son raised by two fathers still without accurate birth certificate.

(New Orleans, January 14, 2011) – The full 16-member U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments on Wednesday, January 19, 2011, regarding the New York adoption of a Louisiana-born baby boy by a same-sex couple.

Lambda Legal represents Oren Adar and Mickey Smith in their case against Louisiana State Registrar Darlene Smith. Adar and Smith are a gay couple who adopted their Louisiana-born son in 2006 in New York, where a judge issued an adoption decree. When the couple attempted to get a new birth certificate for their child, in part so Smith could add his son to his health insurance, the registrar’s office told him that Louisiana does not recognize adoption by unmarried parents and so could not issue it.

Lambda Legal filed suit on behalf of Adar and Smith in October 2007, saying that the registrar was violating the Full Faith and Credit Clause and Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution by refusing to recognize the New York adoption judgment because the child’s parents are unmarried.  The Constitution requires that judgments and orders issued by a court in one state be legally binding in other states. Further, a state may not disadvantage some children over others simply because the child’s parents are unmarried. The Louisiana attorney general disagreed, and advised the registrar that she did not have to honor an adoption from another state that would not have been granted under Louisiana law had the couple lived and adopted there. In 2009, U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey ruled against the registrar and issued a summary judgment ordering her to issue a new birth certificate identifying both Oren Adar and Mickey Smith as the boy’s parents, saying her continued failure to do so violated the U.S. Constitution. In 2010, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed and affirmed the judgment. The attorney general requested a rehearing by the full Court of Appeals, which was granted.

WHO:          Kenneth Upton Jr., Supervising Senior Staff Attorney for Lambda Legal

WHAT:        Oral Arguments, Adar v. Smith

WHERE:          John Minor Wisdom U.S. Court of Appeals Building
                600 Camp St.
                New Orleans, Louisiana

WHEN:        Wednesday, January 19, 2011
                9:00 a.m.

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

Wisconsin court leaves stand a parentage order for a nonbio mom but precludes such orders in the future

Wednesday, January 12, 2011 – Beyond Gay and Straight Marriage – Nancy Polikoff

The most horrific part of last month’s North Carolina Boseman v. Jarrell opinion against second-parent adoption was that it said the court that granted the adoption lacked “subject matter jurisdiction,” which means that the order was void, along with all second-parent adoption orders, the moment it was granted. That wiped out every second-parent adoption in the state.

Well, within days of that opinion a Wisconsin appeals court ruled in Dustardy H. v. Bethany H. that the state does not allow a nonbio mom to obtain a parentage order, but it refused to vacate the order that a court had granted in 2004. The trial court did have subject matter jurisdiction, the appeals court ruled, and therefore, although the order was erroneously granted, it remains in effect because the bio mom did not challenge it in enough time.

Wisconsin does not permit second-parent adoption. So when Dusty and Beth had a child, Christian, by donor insemination in 2004 they filed a parentage petition and obtained an order from a trial judge that Dusty, the nonbio mom, was also Christian’s parent. The trial court had two theories. First, it applied the state’s donor insemination statute, which makes a husband the legal parent of a child born to his wife using donor insemination. It also used the “de facto parent” standard established in a 1995 visitation case and named Dusty a legal parent because she met that standard. These are both plausible theories supporting recognition of both of the Christian’s parents. The couple’s lawyer clearly sought some mechanism to protect Christian’s emotional and economic security and the intent of this couple that their child have two parents.

When the couple split up they informally shared custody of the child, but in 2008 Dusty filed for joint custody and Beth responded by asking that the parentage order be declared void. Beth won, and Dusty appealed.

The appeals court said Beth was right on the law. It limited the insemination statute to husbands, and it said the “de facto parent” test could only support a visitation order, not a parentage petition. On the insemination issue, I blogged a little over a year ago about an Oregon appeals court ruling interpreting a similar statute to apply to the lesbian partner of a woman who gave birth through donor insemination. Unfortunately, the Wisconsin court ruled differently.

But — and here is where it differed from the North Carolina court — the Wisconsin court said the trial court that issued the parentage order DID have subject matter jurisdiction to do so. Therefore, it was a valid order unless appealed or unless Beth used a different statute to file for relief from that order within a “reasonable time,” which she did not do. So Dusty remains Christian’s mother. And similar parentage orders from Wisconsin courts, at least if they are several years old, cannot be challenged by a bio mom trying to get rid of her child’s other parent. And if the couple remains together and has such an order it is valid for purposes of determining the right to government benefits, inheritance, or other matters flowing from the parent-child relationship.

It’s worth mentioning again that this bio mom has destroyed a source of legal security for children of lesbian couples in Wisconsin while gaining nothing for herself. In the North Carolina case, the court vacated the adoption but ruled that the nonbio mom met the standard for obtaining a visitation order for her child, so the bio mom didn’t get what she wanted there either. Instead she wiped out every second-parent adoption in the state, even for happily-still-together families.

And a note for gay male couples: Wisconsin has a surrogacy statute that allows a nonbio dad to obtain a parentage order when the child is born using a donor egg to a gestational surrogate. One of the country’s most reputable surrogacy agencies is The Surrogacy Center in Madison, and they happily work with gay male couples.

in Legal  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Supreme Court lets stand New York ruling for Debra H.

Beyond Gay and Straight Marriage – Nancy Polikoff – January 11, 2011
I wrote extensively about the dreadful New York Court of Appeals decision last year that refused to recognize parentage of a nonbio mom based on the couple’s creation of a two-parent family. That court did, however, find that Debra H. was the parent of the child born to Janice R. because the couple was in a Vermont civil union when the child was born. The fact that a child in New York has two parents if the couple is married or in a civil union but otherwise has one parent, no matter how much that couple planned for and raised the child together, was a major impetus for the conference I’m hosting in March on the “New Illegitimacy.”

Anyway, Janice asked the US Supreme Court to hear her case, claiming that granting parental status to her civil union partner violated her Constitutional right to raise her biological child. Yesterday, the Court denied her petition. That’s what I expected. The Court hears very few cases at all, and very few specifically in the area of family law, which is generally a matter of state law and varies so much from state to state. Other nonbio moms have also been turned away when they’ve asked the Court to hear their cases. Refusing to hear a case — which is called a denial of certiorari in legal-speak — has no legal significance. In other words, it doesn’t add anything to the New York ruling or make it more meaningful in any way. It just leaves it alone.

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

Landmark State Supreme Court decision establishes parentage for Gay Parents

Boston, Massachusetts January 7, 2011 — In an unprecedented decision, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that two gay men could be recognized as legal parents on the birth certificate of their twins born through surrogacy. This is the first time in U.S. history that a state high court has acknowledged the parentage of two men while stating the relevant statute “confer(s) parental status on an intended parent who is a party to a valid gestational agreement irrespective of that intended parent’s genetic relationship to the children.” It “has created a new way by which persons may become legal parents.”

“This is the single most important decision in the history of gay men having children through surrogacy,’ said John Weltman, Esq., president of Circle Surrogacy, and author of an amicus brief in the case. “For a state high court to recognize the right of two gay men to be legal fathers of a child from the outset of the surrogacy process sets an incredible precedent. Furthermore, it positions Connecticut as one of the best states in the country for couples – gay and straight – to pursue gestational surrogacy with egg donation to create their family.”

Anthony Raftopol and Shawn Hargon, an American couple residing in Hungary, had a daughter through surrogacy, and were both recognized as her child’s legal father on the birth certificate. They then had twins in April 2008 through the same gestational surrogate and egg donor. When the couple petitioned the court to be named as the children’s legal parents, the court granted their petition. However, this time the Attorney General, acting on behalf of the Connecticut Department of Health, attempted to block the creation of the birth certificate, stating that parentage could only be established through conception, adoption or artificial insemination.

The Supreme Court rejected this claim, noting that according to the Department of Health’s argument, a child born to an infertile couple who had entered into a gestational agreement with egg and sperm donors and a gestational carrier would be born parentless. “The legislature cannot be presumed to have intended this consequence,” the Court declared, “which is so absurd as to be Kafkaesque.” The revolutionary decision acknowledges that entry into a valid gestational agreement creates a fourth method to establish parentage, regardless of biological relation.

in Legal / Parenting / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Second-parent adoption no longer available in North Carolina, but nonbio mom can obtain custody; all previously granted adoptions void

Post by Nancy Polikoff – Beyond Gay and Straight Marriage – December 21, 2010

The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled yesterday that second-parent adoption is not available in the state. Any such adoption previously granted is now void. The case was widely watched in North Carolina because, among other reasons, the nonbio mom, Julia Boseman, is the first openly gay member of the North Carolina General Assembly. (She did not seek reelection this year and leaves office at the end of this month). The opinion voided her adoption of the son born to her partner, Melissa Jarrell. The court ruled that North Carolina’s adoption statute does not allow an adoption in which the legal parent retains parental rights unless that parent is married to the person petitioning to adopt the child. In other words, Boseman could become the child’s mother only if Jarrell entirely gave up her parental rights.

This statutory construction issue has faced most appeals courts looking at the availability of second-parent adoption. While most states considering the issue have ruled that second-parent adoptions are allowed, some have ruled as this court did. After similar rulings in Connecticut and Colorado, the legislatures of those states amended their adoption laws to allow second-parent adoption. Republicans are about to take control of the North Carolina legislature and are considering a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Thus it seems unlikely they would change the adoption law to favor children raised by same-sex couples.

The opinion noted the practice of obtaining second-parent adoption decrees in Durham County but not in other parts of the state. It is common for lawyers to file adoption petitions in a county, and before judges, who have already construed the state’s adoption code to allow second-parent adoption. The adoption decrees stand because no one appeals them. This case reached the North Carolina Supreme Court because Boseman filed for custody after the couple split up, and Jarrell defended by arguing that Boseman was not a parent because the adoption decree should not have been granted. In a case I commented upon last week, a Minnesota appeals court ducked the question of whether that state allows second-parent adoption because it ruled that the bio mom waited too long to challenge the validity of the adoption. No such luck for Boseman and her son. The NC court ruled that the judge granting the adoption had no subject matter jurisdiction to do so, and therefore the decree was void from the outset. This means that all second-parent adoptions granted in North Carolina are void, a devastating result for the state’s children, who now lose the economic and emotional security of having two legally recognizaed parents. The opinion had two dissenting judges, who did not think Jarrell should have been allowed to challenge the adoption.

The case has a silver lining, as the court found that Boseman does have a right to seek custody of the child under a “best interests of the child” standard because Jarrell acted “inconsistently with her paramount parental status.” Here is the court’s reasoning:

The record…indicates that defendant [Jarrell] intentionally and voluntarily created a family unit in which plaintiff [Boseman]was intended to act–and acted–as a parent. The parties jointly decided to bring a child into their relationship, worked together to conceive a child, chose the child’s first name together, and gave the child a [hyphenated] last name. The parties also publicly held themselves out as the child’s parents at a baptismal ceremony and to their respective families. The record also contains ample evidence that defendant allowed plaintiff and the minor child to develop a parental relationship [and] created no expectation that this family unit was only temporary. Most notably, defendant consented to the proceeding before the adoption court relating to her child. As defendant envisioned, the adoption would have resulted in her child having “two legal parents, myself and [plaintiff].”

This means that all those gay and lesbian parents whose parental status ended as a result of this court ruling are at least not in danger of entirely losing a relationship with their child. Boseman herself retains joint custody of her son as awarded by the trial judge who heard her case.

But the right to custody and visitation is only one aspect of legal parentage. The child has lost the right to survivors benefits (e.g., social security, workers compensation) should Boseman die and to inherit from Boseman and her relatives in the absence of a will. For other children in similar circumstances, a nonbio mom might be able to walk away without any obligation to provide financial support. These are cruel results.

I want Jarrell to face serious chastisement from her community. She wanted to get rid of Boseman — a task she did not accomplish — and to do so she made an argument with enormous cost to North Carolina’s children of same-sex couples. She accepted help in the form of friend of the court briefs from the usual right-wing organizations that oppose any recognition of gay and lesbian families. What she did was abhorent and unforgiveable. The law couldn’t stop her, but her peers may have been able to. She has caused substantial damage, and I want someone to remind her of that constantly. Do I sound angry? I am. There are numerous states with no appeals court ruling on the validity of the hundreds or thousands of second-parent adoptions granted by trial judges. The next time a bio parent thinks to argue as Jarrell did someone needs to try to stop it. It’s bad for the individual child and for gay and lesbian families in general.

in Adoption / Legal  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

In Schools’ Efforts to End Bullying, Some See Agenda

November 6, 2010
New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM

HELENA, Mont. — Alarmed by evidence that gay and lesbian students are common victims of schoolyard bullies, many school districts are bolstering their antiharassment rules with early lessons in tolerance, explaining that some children have “two moms” or will grow up to love members of the same sex.

But such efforts to teach acceptance of homosexuality, which have gained urgency after several well-publicized suicides by gay teenagers, are provoking new culture wars in some communities.

Many educators and rights advocates say that official prohibitions of slurs and taunts are most effective when combined with frank discussions, from kindergarten on, about diverse families and sexuality.

Angry parents and religious critics, while agreeing that schoolyard harassment should be stopped, charge that liberals and gay rights groups are using the antibullying banner to pursue a hidden “homosexual agenda,” implicitly endorsing, for example, same-sex marriage.

Last summer, school officials here in Montana’s capital unveiled new guidelines for teaching about sexuality and tolerance. They proposed teaching first graders that “human beings can love people of the same gender,” and fifth graders that sexual intercourse can involve “vaginal, oral or anal penetration.”

A local pastor, Rick DeMato, carried his shock straight to the pulpit.

“We do not want the minds of our children to be polluted with the things of a carnal-minded society,” Mr. DeMato, 69, told his flock at Liberty Baptist Church.

In tense community hearings, some parents made familiar arguments that innocent youngsters were not ready for explicit language. Other parents and pastors, along with leaders of the Big Sky Tea Party, saw a darker purpose.

“Anyone who reads this document can see that it promotes acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle,” one mother said at a six-hour school board meeting in late September.

Barely heard was the plea of Harlan Reidmohr, 18, who graduated last spring and said he was relentlessly tormented and slammed against lockers after coming out during his freshman year. Through his years in the Helena schools, he said at another school board meeting, sexual orientation was never once discussed in the classroom, and “I believe this led to a lot of the sexual harassment I faced.”

Last month, the federal Department of Education told schools they were obligated, under civil rights laws, to try to prevent harassment, including that based on sexual orientation and gender identity. But the agency did not address the controversy over more explicit classroom materials in grade schools.

Some districts, especially in larger cities, have adopted tolerance lessons with minimal dissent. But in suburban districts in California, Illinois and Minnesota, as well as here in Helena, the programs have unleashed fierce opposition.

“Of course we’re all against bullying,” Mr. DeMato, one of numerous pastors who opposed the plan, said in an interview. “But the Bible says very clearly that homosexuality is wrong, and Christians don’t want the schools to teach subjects that are repulsive to their values.”

The divided Helena school board, after four months of turmoil, recently adopted a revised plan for teaching about health, sex and diversity. Much of the explicit language about sexuality and gay families was removed or replaced with vague phrases, like a call for young children to “understand that family structures differ.” The superintendent who has ardently pushed the new curriculum, Bruce K. Messinger, agreed to let parents remove their children from lessons they find objectionable.

In Alameda, Calif., officials started to introduce new tolerance lessons after teachers noticed grade-schoolers using gay slurs and teasing children with gay or lesbian parents. A group of parents went to court seeking the right to remove their children from lessons that included reading “And Tango Makes Three,” a book in which two male penguins bond and raise a child.

The parents lost the suit, and the school superintendent, Kirsten Vital, said the district was not giving ground. “Everyone in our community needs to feel safe and visible and included,” Ms. Vital said.

Some of the Alameda parents have taken their children out of public schools, while others now hope to unseat members of the school board.

After at least two suicides by gay students last year, a Minnesota school district recently clarified its antibullying rules to explicitly protect gay and lesbian students along with other target groups. But to placate religious conservatives, the district, Anoka-Hennepin County, also stated that teachers must be absolutely neutral on questions of sexual orientation and refrain from endorsing gay parenting.

Rights advocates worry that teachers will avoid any discussion of gay-related topics, missing a chance to fight prejudice.

While nearly all states require schools to have rules against harassment, only 10 require them to explicitly outlaw bullying related to sexual orientation. Rights groups including the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, based in New York, are promoting a federal “safe schools” act to make this a universal requirement, although passage is not likely any time soon.

Candi Cushman, an educational analyst with Focus on the Family, a Christian group, said that early lessons about sexuality and gay parents reflected a political agenda, including legitimizing same-sex marriage. “We need to protect all children from bullying,” Ms. Cushman said. “But the advocacy groups are promoting homosexual lessons in the name of antibullying.”

Ellen Kahn of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, which offers a “welcoming schools” curriculum for grade schools, denied such motives.

“When you talk about two moms or two dads, the idea is to validate the families, not to push a debate about gay marriage,” Ms. Kahn said. The program involves what she described as age-appropriate materials on family and sexual diversity and is used in dozens of districts, though it has sometime stirred dissent.

The Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, which runs teacher-training programs and recommends videos and books depicting gay parents in a positive light, has met opposition in several districts, including the Chicago suburb of Oak Park.

Julie Justicz, a 47-year-old lawyer, and her partner live in Oak Park with two sons ages 6 and 11. Ms. Justicz saw the need for early tolerance training, she said, when their older son was upset by pejorative terms about gays in the schoolyard.

Frank classroom discussions about diverse families and hurtful phrases had greatly reduced the problem, she said.

But one of the objecting parents, Tammi Shulz, who describes herself as a traditional Christian, said, “I just don’t think it’s great to talk about homosexuality with 5-year-olds.”

Tess Dufrechou, president of Helena High School’s Gay-Straight Alliance, a club that promotes tolerance, counters that, “By the time kids get to high school, it’s too late.”

Only a handful of students in Helena high schools are openly gay, with others keeping the secret because they fear the reactions of parents and peers, students said.

Michael Gengler, one of the few to have come out, said, “You learn from an early age that it’s not acceptable to be gay,” adding that he was disappointed that the teaching guidelines had been watered down.

But Mr. Messinger, the superintendent, said he still hoped to achieve the original goals without using the explicit language that offended many parents.

“This is not about advocating a lifestyle, but making sure our children understand it and, I hope, accept it,” he said.

in Legal / Legislation / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Obama Recognizes Gay Dads

  • By Candace Chellew-Hodge – 6.21.10

  • When President Obama issued his statement this past weekend in recognition of Father’s Day, he mentioned one class of fathers that no other president before him has acknowledged: gay dads.

    Nurturing families come in many forms, and children may be raised by a father and mother, a single father, two fathers, a stepfather, a grandfather, or caring guardian.

    His acknowledgement of the labor of love two men may put into their relationship with their children drew quick reaction from the “pro-family” but anti-gay set. Christian Broadcasting Network White House Correspondent David Brody tsk-tsked the president, warning he’s alienating religious folks:

    First of all, by putting “two fathers” in your proclamation you are really running the risk of alienating networks of pastors and church goers who may buy into the President’s overall but draw the line when it comes to traditional marriage. You put these normally supportive pastors in a tough situation because the fact of the matter is the whole ‘two fathers’ scenario DOES NOT play well in most Churches in America. And that is completely understandable.

    My first reaction to that concern was, “welcome to our world.” The LGBT community has been alienated from most of the world for the majority of history, so pastors and churchgoers who balk at the president’s words can enjoy, just for a moment, our reality. Alienation is something we’re familiar with — kicked out of our families, kicked out of our churches, fired for being who we are, denied housing for being who we are, denied the rights and responsibilities of marriage. You want alienation? Mr. Brody, the line starts behind me.

    Of course, Brody’s reaction is tame compared to Peter LaBarbera over at Americans for Truth about Homosexuality who gives his usual rant about how gay men are promiscuous (because no straight men are, right?).

    But even if two homosexual men keep their disordered relationship “faithful,” homosexual parenting would not be worthy of celebration, LaBarbera said: “It is wrong to force children into a situation where they have two men modeling immoral behavior — condemned by God and all major religions — as the most important role models in their lives.”

    Aside from the “scare quotes” around the word “faithful,” LaBarbera makes no sense here. What “immoral behavior” is he talking about? Does he really believe gay dads have sex in front of their children? Do LaBarbera and his wife do “immoral” things in front of their children? Or, perhaps, LaBarbera believes it’s immoral for kids to see their gay dads go to work every day, take out the trash, and instruct their children to clean their rooms and make their beds. What horrible fathers!

    There is not a shred of proof that gay men are worse fathers than

    straight men. In fact, a recent study, quoted in the Advocate, showed that “gay fathers were more likely to scale back their careers in order to care for their children. Another difference was that gay fathers also saw their self-esteem and relationships with their extended families greatly improve when they had children.” Far from being “immoral” it seems that fatherhood is good for gay men, just as it is for straight men. But, LaBarbera and his “pro-family” cohorts won’t ever let facts get in the way of a good scare tactic.

    Even if President Obama has, by and large, disappointed our community since his election with his foot-dragging on issues like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), it feels good to be acknowledged, even in a boiler-plate proclamation. It feels good to have the leader of your country acknowledge not just your existence, but your humanity — your extreme normalness.

    If that makes the religious right feel alienated, it really shouldn’t. It simply means that we finally have a commander-in-chief who can acknowledge the reality of the American family and see the humanity of everyone, even if politics prevents him from fully enacting a fairer agenda.

    A belated Happy Father’s Day, Mr. President.

in Adoption / Foster Parenting / Legal / Legislation / Second Parent Adoption / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Parenting should be a nonissue in gay marriage debate

Supporters of Proposition 8 have made child-rearing a focus of the trial. But no other group is prohibited from marrying because of parental abilities, or lack thereof.

June 16, 2010 – LATimes.com

It wasn’t surprising that the federal trial on Proposition 8 in January confirmed that the same-sex marriage ban is destructive to family life and discriminatory toward a group that has historically been subject to abuse. What did surprise us: Some of the strongest arguments in favor of same-sex marriage were made by those opposing it.

Closing arguments in the case will be heard Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, more than four months after testimony ended. Even so, it’s easy to recall some of the startling moments of the trial. One witness who had been hired to testify that gay men and lesbians wield significant political power — and therefore were not a group that had especially suffered from discrimination — ended up conceding that at least some people voted for Proposition 8 because of prejudice against homosexuals. The witness, Kenneth Miller, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, also had made statements in the past that minorities were vulnerable to harm from ballot initiatives, and that courts should protect them from such harm — an argument that seemed to weaken the case for his side.

Then there was David Blankenhorn, the founder and president of the Institute for American Values, who testified that preserving traditional marriage should take priority over the rights of gays and lesbians — but then offered no proof that same-sex marriage would in any way harm the institution of marriage, and admitted that marriage would be beneficial to families headed by same-sex couples.

The objective of the lawyers arguing for Proposition 8 before Judge Vaughn R. Walker is to show that voters had rational reasons for approving it rather than being motivated by bigotry. And a key reason, one of the lawyers said, is that children fare best when raised by a married couple of opposite genders.

The premise itself is dubious. A longitudinal study published online this month in the journal Pediatrics found that the adolescent children of lesbian couples fare very well. In fact, they “rated significantly higher in social, school/academic and total competence and significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking, aggressive and externalizing problems” than others their age.

The premise also is irrelevant. Just as we wouldn’t propose taking marriage away from heterosexual couples even though their children might not do as well as those of lesbians, there is nothing reasonable about denying marriage to same-sex couples based on judgments about child-rearing or anything else concerning the perceived quality of their marriages. Despite what Proposition 8 supporters have tried to argue during the trial, marriage is not solely about procreation and raising children; for many couples, that’s not even a factor. And same-sex couples who want children will have them whether or not they have a marriage license.

We’re sorry that Walker has even asked for a discussion of this issue at Wednesday’s session. Specifically, he wants to delve into the question of whether voters were acting rationally if they believed the marriage ban was in the best interests of children, even if their belief wasn’t backed up by facts. Society doesn’t force single parents to marry, even though there’s a general presumption that having two parents would be better for the children. It doesn’t force teenagers, still children themselves, to give up their children to older couples, or forbid people with kooky parenting theories to wed. Only gay and lesbian couples are singled out for this judgment of whether they’re good enough to marry and have children.

Walker refused to allow a video broadcast of Wednesday’s closing arguments after defenders of Proposition 8 opposed allowing the session to be aired. It’s a puzzling decision, especially considering that the judge favored allowing cameras during the trial. But the U.S. Supreme Court rebuked him for that decision, agreeing with Proposition 8 supporters that witnesses who oppose same-sex marriage could face harassment or worse if their testimony were televised. Yet the pro-Proposition 8 witnesses already had made themselves public figures.

Prohibiting cameras in the courtroom makes even less sense for the closing arguments, when there are no witnesses to feel intimidated. In this instance, the theory is that lawyers might play to the cameras instead of to the judge. If they were foolish enough to do so, after investing this much time and passion on both sides, they could only lose ground by alienating the judge. The millions of people who have been watching with intense interest as the story of same-sex marriage unfolds have a legitimate stake in seeing and hearing the arguments that will determine whether gays and lesbians in California are granted the basic right to form families with the same legal status as all other families.

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