Lesbian Couple to Keep Foster Child Utah Judge Shifts Ruling

Utah Judge Reverses Ruling in Favor of Lesbian Couple

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

The foster parents, Rebecca A. Peirce, 34, and April M. Hoagland, 38, and the state Division of Child and Family Services, both filed motions Thursday asking the judge to reconsider, and said they were prepared to appeal his decision. The couple, who are married, lives in Price, southwest of Salt Lake City.

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

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

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

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

LGBT Advocates Outraged at Utah Judge

LGBT Advocates Outcry: Rights Violation!

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

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

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

utah-lesbians

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

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

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

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

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

Click here to read the entire article.

Advocate.com, November 12, 2015 by Bill Browning

in Adoption / Ethics / Foster / Foster Care / Foster Parenting / In the News / Legal by Anthony Brown 12 Nov 201508 Mar 2016 0 comments

Do gay parents parents spend more time with kids?

Study finds gay parents spend significantly more time with kids

Gay parents spend significantly more time with their kids, according to a new study that challenges biases against same-sex parenting.

Researchers from the Population Research Center at the University of Texas found that women in lesbian relationships spend 40% more time engaged in child-focused activities than their straight counterparts, largely because both mothers typically offer as much time as mothers in straight relationships.

Fathers in straight relationships spend only about half as much time on child-focused activity. However, fathers in gay relationships spend roughly the same time as the mothers (around 100 minutes a day).

Lesbian couples invest 40% more time in their children

‘Our findings support the argument that parental investment in children is at least as great – and possibly greater – in same-sex couples as for different-sex couples,’ Kate Prickett, the lead author of the study, wrote on the Child and Family Blog.

‘On measures of child-focused time, children with two parents of the same sex families actually seem to receive more time investment. They received more focused time from their parents – 3.5 hours a day, compared with 2.5 hours by children with two different-sex parents.’

Child-focused activities are those that support their physical and cognitive development, such as reading to them, playing with them, helping with homework, bathing them and taking them to the doctor.

It does not include watching television or doing housework while a child is around. Child-focused activities, as well as certain family events such as eating meals together or reading books, are associated with better child outcomes. The study used 11 years of census data from 2003-2013, with a sample of more than 40,000 parents, 55 parents of whom were in gay relationships.

Click here to read the entire article.

gaystarnews.com – by Darren Wee, October 21, 2015

in Parenting / Science by Anthony Brown 20 Oct 201508 Mar 2016 0 comments

Known Donor Dad Perspective

As a known donor Dad, my daughters have 2 moms and 2 dads – how does this work?

My family can best be described as a forest. When my daughter created her “Family Tree” for a class project, there were so many branches that it covered an entire poster board. My heart soared. I am lucky enough to be called “papa” by three amazing kids. My son, 9 years old, is the biological child of my husband who we had with the help of a gestational surrogate. I adopted him and he lives with my husband and me. My daughters are 13 and 8 and they live with their mothers, who happen to live in our neighborhood in Manhattan.

ivf, known donor, sperm donor, anonymous donor I call them my daughters because I am their biological father through sperm donation, but the truth is that I am not their parent. This is a critical distinction that any donor dad must make. I am not a co-parent with my daughters’ mothers. But that doesn’t mean that I do not have a meaningful and reciprocally fulfilling relationship with them, it just means that the major life decisions that relate to my girls are made by their mothers, the two amazing women who taught me how to be a dad.

To highlight the enormity of this journey for me, I need to give you some background. In the 70’s as a closeted teenager and in the 80’s as a closeted young man in my 20’s, if you had told that one day I would have three children, I would have felt relief and seen it as affirmation that I could change my orientation. I desperately didn’t want to be gay and after running from my true self for what seemed to me to be ages; I did what many young people who grew up in my era did: I tried to end my life. My parents walked me around the back yard of our house for hours attempting to allow the effects of the pills I had taken to wear off. I am thankful every day that they did.

That moment changed my life because, with a lot of help from a lot of people, I learned that I could be a happy gay person. Once that switch was flipped, life turned on. My family is the culmination of that awareness and of so much love. But that love had to start with me. I don’t think anyone who doesn’t truly love themselves could be a donor dad. It requires patience, responsibility and, most of all, faith. I had to have faith that my daughter’s moms would allow me to have a relationship with them. They also had to have faith that I would be a man of my word and surrender my parental rights to the non-biological mother. We all had to have faith that we would be able to conquer whatever parenting trials would come our way.

But that faith is constantly tested. When my first daughter was born, my husband and I would babysit for her about once every other week and, once she was old enough, we would have sleepovers roughly once a month. I remember one time right after the adoption hearing had taken place where I formally surrendered my parental rights getting a call from one of her mothers after we returned her from a sleepover night. She was asking about a small burn mark on my daughter’s leg. Neither my husband or I could remember anything that could have caused it. But then remembered one moment when we were all in our tiny NYC kitchen and I was holding her when I turned and brushed up against an open toaster oven door. I didn’t think it had touched her. She didn’t cry and I didn’t think anything of it at the time. But when I realized that I had done this, I was so scared that my husband and I wouldn’t be allowed to see her again. I had hurt my own child! I went through a very short lived freak out until we actually talked to her moms again and they told us of how she had fallen off the changing table, a couple of times, and that I shouldn’t worry.

It is moments like that one when you truly understand perspective. But the one person’s perspective that really was tested by my being a donor dad was my husband’s. He often considered himself the odd man out. While I was busy going to clinics and running out of events because “mom was ovulating,” he was often left alone and feeling out of touch with the whole process. If I could have done anything differently, I would have made sure that he was more involved and included him more in the process. The reality, now that the kids are older, is that all three of them refer to my husband as “daddy” and to me as “papa.” When asked, they are the first to tell you that they have “two mommies and two daddies.” This, to me, is one of the coolest things ever.

Because we are honest with all three kids about where they come from, they feel special. They understand that their mommies and daddies loved them so much that they worked together to make our family a reality. If I can offer any new perspective on being a donor dad, it is that anything is possible with honesty, careful preparation and love. You can have the family of your dreams, no matter what it looks like.

June 2, 2014 – by Anthony M. Brown

Thanks to Our family Coalition in San Francisco for asking me to write this piece!

in Anonymous/Known Donation / Family Stories / Known Donor / Parenting / Personal Stories by Anthony Brown 02 Jun 201419 Oct 2018 2 comments

Miracle at the Walmart

by Anthony M. Brown, 12/26/09

It was 3:00 in the morning on December 26th in a West Virginia Walmart parking lot when it happened. For me, disco changed to diapers a long time ago when I became a donor dad to lesbian friends, but the reality of fatherhood was enjoyed from a distance. Now, with the arrival of Nicholas in September, I am a full-time dad and this fun-gay-New Yorker-activist shops at Walmart. I am officially no longer a gay man.

I will always be a husband-loving kind of guy at heart, but my identity, which has been founded on my sexual orientation, now comes from love for my son. That’s why I was in a Walmart parking lot. Nicholas suffered his first illness on Christmas day when he caught my sister’s cold. When you have no immune system, even the common cold can rock your world. I set out to find Infant’s Tylenol at 2:30 AM, full well knowing that it was a long shot to even find a store that was open, much less stocked with exactly what I needed. After my third 7-11, which only carries Children’s Motrin (for ages 2-11) I saw the Walmart and a few employees standing outside the front door. I decided to swallow my politically correct pride and go for it.

After parking and walking towards the door, I was informed by a man named Paul that the store would open at 6 AM. I asked if anyone knew where I could get Infant’s Tylenol. All three pointed to the 7-11 across the parking lot. I told them about the Motrin and that I had a sick three-month-old at home, and I guess I looked a little freaked out because Paul told me to wait where I was. He disappeared into the closed Walmart and 10 minutes later returned with a bag containing Infant’s Tylenol, Cherry flavored, and a receipt with his name on it.

He told me that someone once helped him out when his infant was sick and that he wanted to pay it forward. I thanked him with a tear in my eye and felt an undeniable bond with this Christmas stranger, who gave me much more than medicine for my son. I realized in that moment why the gay marriage misinformation campaign staged by The National Organization for Marriage in California, Maine, New York and New Jersey was so successful.

Gay Marriage Taught in Schools? National Organization for Marriage lies and mis-truths run rampant!

Most any parent you meet will tell you that their greatest concern in life is the health and welfare of their children. I am gay by design, but a father by choice and I know that I would do anything for Nicholas. When NOM told Americans that gay marriage would somehow be taught in schools, as if traditional marriage is taught in schools, voters on the fence erred on the side of concern for their children. This tactic is particularly repugnant because the implication of their message was that even the slightest tolerance for gay people and gay marriage is unacceptable. God forbid being gay is normalized in any way!

When I was in school, I was teased mercilessly by my classmates because they figured out I was gay before I did. Teachers and administrators watched the taunting and did nothing, perhaps because they had no tools to deal with this kind of harassment. When it got so bad that my parents had to remove me from that school, I heard that the administration finally did address that matter. If they had done so when I was there, perhaps I would not have had such a difficult time later in my education. But I was lucky. School children killing themselves due to gay taunting has finally stepped out the closet and more people know about Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover and Keheem Herrera, two such children, or Lawrence King, the California 15-year-old who was murdered by a classmate because he was gay.

The coordinated resistance to tolerance in schools continues to be seen in the backlash to gay straight alliances today. Case after case filed to stop these alliances is being heard by courts all over the country and, thankfully, courts are honoring their existence. But the problem in schools continues. Mayor Bloomberg, our so called ally, still refuses to fully implement DASA (The Dignity for all Students Act of 2004) which would outlaw bullying based on, among other things, sexual orientation and gender identity.

The National Organization for Marriage knows that when today’s youth have children, the atmosphere in schools inevitably bends toward acceptance and they will have lost their keynote anti-equality claim. I say good riddance, and I say thank you Paul from Walmart for helping me and my son in our hour of need.

Anthony M. Brown is the head of the Nontraditional Family and Estates Division of the law firm of Albert W. Chianese and Associates. He is also the executive director of The Wedding Party.

in Family Stories / Personal Stories by Anthony Brown 31 Dec 2009 0 comments