To Form a More Perfect Union: Marriage Equality News

Commentary: Gay families are here, no matter what the Florida Constitution says

Link: South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
by Michael Mayo

Excerpt:

Adelle Barsky-Moore is 5, and she doesn't know about wedge politics and the Culture War. All she knows is that she loves her two dads and they love her.

Her parents, Allan Barsky and Greg Moore, have been together 10 years. They were married in Canada, Barsky's native country, in 2003. They wear wedding bands, are registered domestic partners in Broward and live in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea.

Barsky, a professor at Florida Atlantic University, is opposed to Amendment 2 on the November ballot. It would constitutionally define marriage in Florida as between a man and woman. It states, "No other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized."

A few weeks ago, Adelle tagged along as her parents campaigned against the amendment.

"Why are you telling people not to vote?" she asked.

Barsky explained they want people to vote, but were telling them to vote no on the amendment. He explained it wouldn't allow two moms or two dads to get married.

"She got really upset and started crying," Barsky said. "She said, 'If it passes, does that mean you and daddy have to break up?'"

Barsky told me this story last weekend, during a group picnic at Holiday Park in Fort Lauderdale. Adelle and other kids romped on the playground while parents kept an eye on them. There was fried chicken, macaroni salad and brownies on the pavilion tables.

"Just like anyone else on a Sunday afternoon," Barsky said.

[…]

More than anything I could say, this scene showed why Amendment 2 is irrelevant, misguided and just plain wrong.

Same-sex couples exist, and they're raising loving families.

In that respect it doesn't matter what state law, which bans gay marriage and gay adoption, or the Florida Constitution says.

Except it does matter. For these families, life would be easier, less stressful and more just if the state gave them the same rights as heterosexuals.

For now, they'll consider it victory enough if an amendment that codifies inequality doesn't get the 60 percent needed for approval.

[…]

[jw]

“SF Catholic Charities cuts ties to homosexual adoptions”

Link: Our Sunday Visitor

Excerpt:

The Archdiocese of San Francisco's Catholic Charities plans to sever its two-year funding relationship with an adoption agency, Family Builders by Adoption, that focuses on placing children with homosexuals.

"The funding from Catholic Charities is ending this [budget] year," Jill Jacobs, executive director of Family Builders by Adoption, told Our Sunday Visitor Sept. 25. Catholic Charities CYO currently provides two staff members for the agency at a cost of about $250,000 annually.

It is not clear what motivated the decision, which means the archdiocese will no longer have any involvement with adoptions. A Catholic Charities spokeswoman declined to comment.

"The CCCYO relationship with California Kids Connection [Family Builders' adoption program] was not envisioned as being long term," archdiocesan spokesman, Maurice Healy, told OSV in a one-sentence e-mail statement. He did not explain why the archdiocese did not describe the arrangement as temporary when the partnership was announced two years ago.

"I'm very happy to hear that Catholic Charities is severing its relationship with Family Builders by Adoption. I think the archdiocese now understands that Family Builders is a totally unsuitable partner," said Gibbons Cooney, a Catholic activist who operates the website SanFrancisco-Catholic.com, devoted to documenting homosexual associations within the archdiocese.

[…]

The archdiocese's relationship with Family Builders by Adoption was a compromise agreement with the city of San Francisco after Cardinal William Levada, then the Vatican's newly appointed doctrinal chief and former archbishop of San Francisco, directed the archdiocese's adoption program to stop placing children with homosexuals, as it had reportedly done in five cases since 2000. In his statement, the cardinal cited a 2003 document by his predecessor at the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, now Pope Benedict XVI, which called same-sex unions "gravely immoral" and said that allowing same-sex couples to adopt would "actually mean doing violence to these children."

'Discriminatory directive'

In response, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and city supervisors threatened to withdraw Catholic Charities funding and questioned its status as a non-profit. The board of supervisors unanimously passed a resolution accusing the Vatican of being a "meddling...foreign country"; said Archbishop George Niederauer and Catholic Charities should "defy" Cardinal Levada; and urged the cardinal "to withdraw his discriminatory and defamatory directive."

[…]

But some Catholic protest has been building as Family Builders' focus on a homosexual clientele for adoptions has become more widely known.

This summer the agency conducted an extensive billboard, bus and newspaper advertising campaign promoting adoption by homosexuals.

Same-sex success

The city of San Francisco repeatedly has lauded Family Builders for its efforts to place foster children with homosexuals. A 2008 mayor's report said the agency was meeting its goal of encouraging homosexual adoptions. Eighty-eight percent of the 16 children placed with nonrelatives were adopted by homosexuals, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

In 2006, the Boston archdiocese announced that it was cutting adoption services because of Massachusetts regulations that prohibit discrimination against same-sex couples wishing to adopt.

[jw]

Foster Dad Fights Florida Ban On Adoption

Link: WPLG Miami

Excerpt:

A gay couple from North Miami is fighting to keep two foster children who have seen them as their parents for years.

Frank Martin Gill wants to adopt his 4- and 8-year-old foster children, who know no other family.

"I'm just trying to do what I believe is the best thing and in the best interest of my kids," Gill said. "I'm trying to give them a permanent home."

To do so, Gill is challenging Florida's ban on gay adoption. The state law, which has been upheld for 32 years, passed in the climate of Anita Bryant's campaign against gay rights.

In this case, Gill has a few things going for him. The judge, Cindy Lederman, has a history of passionate child advocacy that includes standing up to state mandates she feels are wrong. Social workers and the court-appointed lawyer for the children credit Gill and his partner for taking boys from a background of drugs and abuse and raising thriving, happy, well-adjusted children.

[…]

"The fact that judges all over the state are looking at the scientific evidence and finding that gay parents serve just as well as straight parents for kids who really need it is heartening to us," said Robert Rosenwald Jr. of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Lawyers for the state and the Department of Children & Families declined to talk about the closed proceedings. They argued the position of the state that has the only blanket ban on same-sex couples from adopting.

"I'll just say I don't think the other 49 states can really be wrong, can they?" Gill said.

[…]

[jw]

Group want Arkansas to allow unmarried foster parents, defeat ballot measure

Link: The Associated Press

Excerpt:

A coalition of advocacy groups will ask Arkansas to drop its practice of barring unmarried couples living together from becoming foster or adoptive parents about a month before voters will be asked to enact a similar restriction.

Officials with Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families and other groups are making the request at a hearing Thursday before the state's Department of Human Services, which is seeking public comment on its 2005 policy barring unmarried couples living together from serving as foster parents.

Such couples can still adopt children in Arkansas, but possibly not for long. The hearing comes as a conservative group is campaigning for a measure on the November ballot that would ban unmarried couples living together from becoming foster parents or adopting children.

"We see the hearing as an opportunity to educate voters on how harmful the ballot initiative will be and that it will be even broader than the policy we're challenging," said Eddie Ochoa, president of the Arkansas chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The chapter is one of the advocacy groups involved and a representative plans to speak at the hearing.

[…]

[jw]

MT Court: Same-sex parent has custody rights

Link: Missoulian

Excerpt:

A Missoula District Court judge on Monday confirmed Michelle Kulstad's custody rights to children she raised for years with a same-sex partner, who then sought sole custody when the relationship ended.

“To discriminate further against Ms. Kulstad because of her sexual preference in this day and age is no different than telling a person to go to the back of the bus because of her skin color,” District Judge Ed McLean wrote.

In his order, McLean recognized Kulstad as a legal parent, even though Barbara Maniaci had legally adopted the two children. The judge ruled Kulstad must receive joint decision-making authority in the children's lives, including their “education, activities, health care and spiritual upbringing.”

[hj]

FL: Commentary--Chink in pointless law gives kids hope

Link: St. Petersburg Times
by Sue Carlton

Excerpt:

If you are qualified to be a foster parent in Florida, willing to take in one of our many kids in need, and you also happen to be gay, no big deal.

Our state could use the help.

But try this on for hypocrisy.

If you want to adopt a child, one of thousands in need of a stable, loving, permanent home, and acknowledge you are gay, sorry.

Thanks but no thanks.

A section of a Department of Children and Families adoption application, just below the entry for "Arrest Record," separates you from the rest of the world: Section 63.042(3), F.S., states that "no person eligible to adopt under this statute may adopt if that person is a homosexual."

I am a homosexual. YES/NO.

[…]

But even here in Florida, we get glimmers of hope. Just ask the dad from Key West.

He is not identified by name in court records, but he is a 52-year-old lawyer who is openly gay and in a longtime committed relationship. He has cared for more than 30 kids in state custody.

A boy with special needs was placed in his home in 2001. Ultimately the man was granted permanent guardianship. But the boy, 13, wanted him to be his "forever father," as he said at a hearing.

Why does that final dignity matter so much?

A lawyer who served as co-counsel in the case explained it this way: At a routine doctor's appointment, the man would be asked if this was his son. He would have to answer no.

"He described so powerfully just how absolutely deflated the child would get every time he heard that," says Miami Beach attorney Elizabeth Schwartz.

[…]

The Attorney General's Office doesn't plan to appeal the judge's decision, and without appeal, it likely will not be binding elsewhere. Similar cases have gone nowhere over the years in terms of changing the law. But lawyers hope the judge's well-reasoned ruling can be used as persuasive argument in other cases. A chink in the armor is at least a start.

Why the fear? Chris Card, who has had just about every job you can think of in child welfare, says this: "In my career, I've been involved in lots of child abuse cases and have removed children from lots of different homes due to abuse and neglect. I've not removed a child that I recall from a gay couple."

Statewide, more than 3,000 kids are available for adoption. Yearly, some 800 "age out," which is a too-kind term for those who leave state supervision at 18 without having been adopted.

How many might have fared otherwise if the law made more sense?

"We've got too many kids that need parents," Card says. "We should take anybody who's capable and interested." Judges and child advocates who deal with the raw need tend to echo that.

In spite of everything, in a county south of us, a boy got his forever father. Maybe there's hope for us, too.

[jw]

FL: For gay father, adoption ruling is ‘a defining moment’

Link: Miami Herald

Excerpt:

Wayne Larue Smith and partner Daniel Skahen are the first gay parents in the State of Florida to successfully adopt a foster child of the age of 12. Wayne Larue Smith, left, and partner Daniel Skahen, right, consider themselves good normal parents and have foster children for a number of years. They have establish a safe and lovely environment condusive for raising children. Smith and Skahen hug their foster child of seven years. (CARL JUSTE/MIAMI HERALD STAFF)

Two months after the foster child came to live in Wayne LaRue Smith's two-story Key West home, the brown-eyed 5-year-old boy looked up from the kitchen table and, in a plaintive voice, asked what seemed a simple question.

``Will you be my daddy?''

At first, Smith, a foster father who has cared for 33 children in state custody, could not say yes.

Smith, who is openly gay, could raise other people's children. But in Florida, the only state that outright bans all gay people from adopting, he could never adopt a child of his own.

Until now.

Last month, a Monroe Circuit judge became only the second judge in Florida history to allow a gay man or lesbian to adopt a child.

Smith's may be a pyrrhic victory. Though Circuit Judge David John Audlin Jr.'s order will stand, it likely will hold little sway over future cases, scholars say. Moreover, the state Attorney General's Office will not appeal the order, meaning it will never be reviewed by a higher court.

With another legal challenge set to begin next month in Miami -- one that is being contested -- Audlin's order could become a historical footnote.

To Smith and his new son, though, it has the power of a landmark decision, he said.

'I knew that in our hearts, from that moment on that, one way or another, we were going to answer that question `yes,' Smith said. ``It's seven years later, but now we can.''

''It was a defining moment,'' Smith said of the boy's request seven years ago. ``There are moments in life I won't ever forget. In that instant there was nothing I wanted more than to say yes. But this crazy state I live in won't let me.''

The Attorney General's Office, which is defending the adoption ban in the Miami case next month, has argued in court records they are upholding public morality and providing for the healthy development of foster children by ensuring they are raised by dual-sex parents.

''Chief among the interests served by Florida's adoption law is the best interest of Florida children,'' Assistant Attorney General Valerie J. Martin has written. ``Can it be seriously contended that an arguably rational basis does not exist for placing adoptive children in the mainstream of American family life?''

The state did not defend the ban, however, in Audlin's court.

In a strongly worded 67-page order signed Aug. 29, Audlin wrote that Florida's 1977 gay adoption ban arose out of ''unveiled expressions of bigotry'' when the state was experiencing a severe backlash to demands for civil rights by gay people in Miami.

''Disqualifying every gay Floridian from raising a family, enjoying grandchildren or carrying on the family name, based on nothing more than lawful sexual conduct, while assuring child abusers, terrorists, drug dealers, rapists and murderers at least individualized consideration,'' Audlin wrote, was so ''disproportionately severe'' that it violates the state and U.S. constitutions.

[…]

Smith and Skahen were, in most respects, model foster parents, state records showed.

''The applicant is seen as nurturing, stable and devoted,'' a social worker's home study concluded. ``As an individual, he is considered to hold high moral character and is known to be gentle and patient.''

The 12-year-old boy's teacher testified the couple were among the most involved and nurturing parents in her class. ''I must confess,'' she told a judge, ``the first year I had him, knowing he was of gay parents, I looked for things, and I found nothing.''

Smith filed an adoption petition on Feb. 29. State child welfare administrators wrote the application would have been a no-brainer, but for that one intractable problem: ''This home study is not approvable due to [Smith's] open disclosure of his sexual orientation, and therefore the adoption is disallowable by law,'' it concluded.

Smith and Skahen now are raising the 12-year-old boy Smith adopted, and a 10-year-old foster child whom they expect to remain with them until he reaches adulthood. There also are two cats, a dog and two hermit crabs.

The family maintains a strict routine in other areas, as well. Children open their backpacks every afternoon when they come home so the dads can inspect for homework. Homework is done promptly. The family shares dinner every night, no excuses. Quiet time after dinner and before bed. Lights out at 8:30, except on the weekend.

''We were a family going into this,'' Skahen said. ``We're just more of a solidified family now.''

[jw]

NY: County, adoption agencies recruit gay couples considering kids

Link: Lower Hudson Journal News

Excerpt:

With 900 Westchester County children needing homes, and social attitudes evolving rapidly about who's qualified to raise them, county social workers and several private adoption agencies on Thursday will meet with gay couples and singles who are considering kids.

David Juhren, a 47-year-old communications consultant who has been raising four children with his partner since they formed a household in Cold Spring six years ago, will speak about his experiences.

Juhren adopted two of the children during an earlier marriage and kept custody after a divorce; his partner has two children who visit on weekends.

"Weekends at our place are wonderfully loud and noisy," Juhren said about life with two boys and two girls, ages 10 to 18. "(Adoption) is a wonderful way of forming a family."

The 6 p.m. event, at Memorial United Methodist Church, 250 Bryant Ave. in White Plains, is sponsored by the Lesbian and Gay Child Welfare Network, which includes the county Department of Social Services, the state Office of Children and Family Services, and Family Services of Westchester.

[…]

[jw]

FL: Editorial--End gay adoption ban

Link: Palm Beach post

Excerpt:

He's 12 years old. He lives in Key West. He likes to fish and go to the beach. As his teacher says, he doesn't like schoolwork, but he's begun "looking at the girls." Nothing unusual about that, right?

No, unless you consider that this is the boy whom a gay Monroe County man wanted to adopt. A cruel, cowardly 31-year-old Florida law prevents homosexuals from adopting. But this man, who for seven years has been the boy's foster parent and guardian, challenged the law as unconstitutional. Last week, Judge David Audlin agreed. Barring an appeal by the state, the boy who asked the plaintiff, "Will you be my daddy?" will get his wish.

Neither the attorney general's office nor the Department of Children and Families intervened. If only the Legislature had been more sensible in 1977, when Tallahassee ran scared during a nasty anti-gay rights campaign in Miami-Dade County. After a "debate" that featured a Polk County senator telling gays to "get back in the closet," the Legislature passed the most restrictive adoption ban in the country, and then-Gov. Reubin Askew signed it.

[…]

Ideally, adoptive children would go to two loving, heterosexual parents. But the children whom homosexuals have tried to adopt are the hardest to place. The boy in the Key West case has a learning disability, and spent two years on the state adoption list. But as a social worker observed, the churchgoing plaintiff and his partner have an "appropriate relationship" to raise the child. This ban has more to do with hurting homosexuals than helping children. Why deprive a boy of a father?

[jw]

Portugal: Gay marriages brought to the table

Link: Portugal News Online

Excerpt:

The controversial issues of gay marriages will be debated in Parliament next month following two proposals from the Left Bloc (BE) and ‘Green’ Party, though the remaining political parties are at loggerheads as to whether or not they will allow their deputies a say in the matter.

On October 10th a conference for parliamentary leaders has been scheduled regarding the topic of legal gay unions, civil ceremonies between two people of the same sex.

BE proposed in 2006 that homosexuals should be able to legally wed, though only now is the proposal to be discussed.

The Left Bloc’s proposition suggests an alteration to the law that defines marriage as a ‘contract between two people of opposite sexes’.

BE considers that description to be ‘unconstitutional’, and that marriage should be defined as ‘a solemnly formalized meeting of wills between two people who intend to build a family in full communion of life’.

This is also a view shared by the ‘Greens’, though these disallow for an alteration for the standing law to accommodate same-sex adoption.

Adoption laws state that “to adopt, both parties must be married for more than four continuous years and have not legally separated, as long as both are over the age of 25”.

To prevent same-sex married couple from adopting, the ‘Greens’ suggest the law be changed to “both parties must be married for more than four continuous years and have not legally separated, as long as the man and the woman are over the age of 25”.

Meanwhile, socialist and democratic parties PS and PSD have not officially confirmed their stance on the matter, according to the leaders of both parties.

[…]

[jw]