Jon and Kate Gosselin’s marriage ended not with a bang, but with the estranged couple whimpering in front of the camera — separately, of course — about the inevitability of growing apart. …
“Inevitability of growing apart”? “Inevitability”? What “inevitability”? If some people were mature enough for marriage, maybe they wouldn’t factor in divorce as an inevitability.
June 15, 2009 President Barack H. Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:
I have had the privilege of meeting you on several occasions, when visiting the White House in my capacity as president of the Human Rights Campaign, a civil rights organization representing millions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people across this country. You have welcomed me to the White House to express my community’s views on health care, employment discrimination, hate violence, the need for diversity on the bench, and other pressing issues. Last week, when your administration filed a brief defending the constitutionality of the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act,”[1] I realized that although I and other LGBT leaders have introduced ourselves to you as policy makers, we clearly have not been heard, and seen, as what we also are: human beings whose lives, loves, and families are equal to yours. I know this because this brief would not have seen the light of day if someone in your administration who truly recognized our humanity and equality had weighed in with you.
So on behalf of my organization and millions of LGBT people who are smarting in the aftermath of reading that brief, allow me to reintroduce us.
As Bill 44 passed early Tuesday morning, Alberta became the last province to formally recognize gay rights and the first to recognize the controversial idea of parental rights.
“Tomorrow the sun will rise, teachers will conduct their classes, and all will be right with the world,” claimed Alberta Progressive Conservative Culture and Community Spirit Minister Lindsay Blackett. Many in Alberta disagree.
Blackett spoke at 1:30am Tuesday morning at the third reading of Bill 44, which formally adds sexual orientation to Alberta’s Human Rights Act at the cost of also enshrining “parental rights.” Section 9 of Bill 44 will allow parents to remove their children from class when lessons on religion, sex or sexual orientation are being taught.
In reaction to Bill 44, David Swann, leader of the official opposition said that when it comes to democracy, he is “profoundly disappointed with Alberta today.”
The day leading up to the vote was dubbed the “Day of Protest Against Bill 44″ by Edmonton’s queer community, who were out in visible force throughout the day. …
During the press conference [police commissioner Murray Billet] noted that this all started 11 years ago with the Vriend vs Alberta Supreme Court ruling when “a teacher was fired for being gay.” Now, the province is “making it so a teacher can be fired for teaching gay,” he says. …
Before the vote even happened Alberta NDP leader Brian Mason vowed “the battle to repeal Bill 44 starts tomorrow.” Later Swann suggested calling for a referendum on parental rights.
Among the 24 bills Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski signed into law a couple of days ago:
HB 2509: Directs school districts to provide age-appropriate sex education courses in all public elementary and secondary schools as part of health education curriculum. Requires that sex education instruction be medically accurate. Mandates that schools promote abstinence, for school-age youth, and mutually monogamous relationships with an uninfected partner, for adults, as the most effective way to prevent pregnancy and the transmission of STDs. Requires that the course include a discussion of the characteristics of the emotional, physical and psychological aspects of a healthy relationship and the benefits of delaying pregnancy beyond the adolescent years. Requires that students be provided statistics-based and up-to-date medical information regarding the efficacy of all methods of sexual protection in preventing HIV and other STDs. Directs schools to provide students with information about Oregon laws that address young people’s rights and responsibilities related to childbearing and parenting. Establishes applicability to the 2009-2010 school year. Declares an emergency, effective July 1, 2009.
“That most evangelicals were satisfied to celebrate the end — six miraculous lives — rather than assess the morality of the means whereby those lives were created, betrays the thinness of evangelical reflection on reproductive ethics. Too often our ethics have focused so singularly on the question of abortion that we have given comparatively little attention to the morally-significant issues surrounding infertility, reproductive technology, childbirth, and parenting.”
If you think this is just another Schadenfreude-y dig at Christians Gone Bad, well, it is… and it’s not. We’ll start out with the breathless, juicy, gossip-y stuff, and then turn to the seriousness of what all this actually means.
And, in the course of curious coincidence, the meaning is sharpened to crystal clarity as the abortion debate has ramped back up to full bore in the wake of the assassination of Dr. George Tiller yesterday morning.
We’re sure this is all because the gays are getting married. We don’t know how, exactly, but we’re sure one of the Radical Righties will come up with a reason it’s Teh Gheyz’ fault!
One Desmond Hatchett in Tennessee, US, has become a superdad by having fathered a record 21 children at the age of 29.
The ages of the kids Hatchett has had with 11 different women range from a newborn to 11 years.
Hatchett even boasted of fathering four children by different women in the same year.
It was when authorities in Knoxville, Tennessee, dragged Hatchett to court for non-payment of child support that his giant brood came to light.
Hatchett claims that he never intended to set a record.
“It just happened,” the Daily Star quoted him as saying. …
Hatchett’s lawyer Keith Pope said: “The children can’t be supported all by Desmond, so the state of Tennessee has had to step in.”
People living in Knoxville gave bitter response over Hatchett’s court appearance, with some calling for him to be castrated.
“It just happened.”
“Sure, sure, it just happened. Could happen to anybody. It was an accident, right? You tripped, fell on the floor and accidently stuck your d*ck into my wife. ‘Oops, I’m sorry, Mrs. H, I guess this just isn’t my week.’” — Joe Hallenbeck (Bruce Willis), The Last Boy Scout (1991)
This afternoon in Toronto, former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush shared a stage for a “conversation with presidents” at Toronto’s Convention Centre, in a ticketed event (with a hefty payday for both ex-presidents) that was open to the general public. …
…while President Clinton mostly kept to his promise to “thwart” efforts to get 42 and 43 to tangle with each other, he offered an interesting insight into his thinking on gay rights.
On the issue of gay marriage — which Clinton, like President Obama, personally opposes — Clinton said of his position: “Frankly, it’s evolving” as he sees more committed gay couples raising kids. …
Christ on a crutch, Bill, will you puh-leeeze ditch that right-wing crap — that marriage is about nothing but children?
“I love my daughter! She’s my baby girl, come on! So what if she’s gay? She’s my daughter and she’s an amazing woman and a good kid. I raised her, she better be good.”
“I glanced at HC and saw an unusual expression on her usually placid face, one which I will not easily forget, and she asked, ‘Mom I don’t get what is wrong with other kids learning about my type of family?’”
I use “our” to mean “our community’s children,” of course.
And, of course, when they scream, “Think of the children!” they don’t mean our children.
Read it and weep — and that’s not a figure of speech:
Wanda Sykes, who brought the house down at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, didn’t show a bit of the exhaustion she must have been feeling. The Curb Your Enthusiasm star’s wife of seven months, Alexandra, gave birth to fraternal twins on April 27, and we have heard that two-week-old babies can be a lot of work, so we now have even more respect for the splendid performance she turned in at the dinner.
Wanda and Alex named their new son Lucas Claude and daughter Olivia Lou…
So, I’m reading this article from the NYT about the way hospitals treat same-sex couples, and I expect to find a few examples of grossly unfair treatment — the usual “Partner A was not allowed to be with Partner B while Partner B was dying” — and I expect the stories to come solely from Louisiana, or Alabama, or any number of other overtly gay-hostile states.
As expected, the NYT summarizes the heartbreaking tragedy that befell Washington couple Janice Langbehn, Lisa Pond, and three of their children, made even worse by the cruel homophobia of a Florida hospital:
A woman from Washington collapsed while on vacation in Miami. Although her partner had an advanced health care directive, hospital officials told her she wasn’t a family member under Florida law. The woman spent hours talking with hospital administrators to prove that the document from her home state was, in fact, still valid in Florida. Although she eventually prevailed, her partner’s condition deteriorated and the woman died. Because of the problem, the children the patient had been raising with her partner weren’t able to see her before she died.
What I didn’t expect to see was this story from California:
John Aravosis (whose AMERICAblog has finally been remodeled from Web 1.0 — much nicer, John, much nicer) explains — albeit with a headline that barely scratches the surface:
Don’t tell me you’re still guiltily sneaking into Mall-Wart, after knowing all these years that the success of Big Box Crap, Inc., relies on crushing the competition — that is, the Mom-and-Pop stores you miss, but which you let fail by availing yourself of Big Box’s low, low prices. (Don’t even get me started on the way Mall-Wart treats its employees, or the games the company has played with the LGBT community in the past, or… Eh, here’s one place to start reading.)
If this doesn’t put an end to your secret, guilt-ridden forays to Mall-Wart for cheap Chinese crap, then nothing will — but, hey, it’s your conscience:
Mike Duke, Newest CEO of WalMart, Inc. Is Listed As a Signer of The Anti-Gay Adoption and Foster Care Petition
A one, Mike Duke of 16 Pinnacle Drive, Rogers, Arkansas with the birthdate of 12/07/49 appears on a petition sheet for the Anti-Gay Arkansas Adoption and Foster Ban or Act 1. The actual petition sheet may be viewed here and on KnowThyNeighbor.org where one may find the alleged signature of Mr. Duke and the check mark put on by the State of Arkansas indicating that this name was verified and counted for the advancement and ultimate success of the anti-gay legislation in Arkansas in 2008 otherwise known as Act 1.
Thanks to the notation of a commenter, Concerned Arkansas Citizen, on the KnowThyNeighbor blog this was brought to our attention. Mike Duke became acting CEO of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. on February 1, 2009 though he was with Wal-Mart since 1995. …
Wal-Mart claims to have an environment of “diversity” within its stores though the HRC only ranked Wal-Mart at 40% in its Corporate Equality Index in 2008. …
More at the link.
So, are you going to keep paying this man’s salary?
Me? I haven’t set foot in a Mall-Wart for years. Swear to Shiva.
I remarked (”remarked” being a subjective word; my verbosity IRL even surpasses my verbosity online) to my lovely wife this evening that I never imagined, at this stage in my life, I’d be trying to understand all the peculiar (and I do mean “peculiar”), under-the-radar quirks and rules and code words and the like of religions I neither believed in, nor cared much about. Oh, it’s very important to know a thing or two about religion in general (that Passover has nothing to do with Easter, for instance) just to keep from making a fool of yourself, and very helpful to have a good grasp on others’ belief systems, if for no other reason than to understand what you believe or not, and why (or why not), and to prevent you from getting suckered into snake handling.
But here I am, feeling, in the immortal words of Edina Monsoon, like I hit an oil patch at 35, and have been sliding toward the grave ever since — and, when I’d much rather be gardening, or engaging in hot monkey love, I’m learning about strange, usually bizarre, belief systems I’d rather have kept only at the furthestmost outer fringes of my peripheral vision.
“Know thine enemy” goes the oft-quoted and nearly always mis-cited saying. As I wrote some months ago to Mormons at large, I was quite content to leave you and your church be, and blithely ignore your missionaries on my doorstep. Now, I know more about Mormonism than I ever wanted to, because the Salt Lake PTB decided they weren’t content to leave me be, and barged into my home to rip up my marriage license. Thus, I need to know about Mormonism, so I know what I’m dealing with. And, besides, when you know all about a thing, it ceases to be scary. The Mormon church is no longer scary; the more I know, the more it’s like that fine piece of advice to folks who fear speaking in public: Picture your audience naked. (Granted, I now picture Mormons in their magic underwear — or, since that episode of “Big Love,” in their baker hats and green aprons — which is far less taxing on my imagination. News flash: Gay people do not want to see everyone naked. In fact, most of us want to see very few people naked.)
(Oh, while I’m thinking about it: Our friend and tireless freedom fighter Chino left a comment explaining some Mormon code that flew right past me; if you’d like to know about the “White Horse prophecy,” see his comment here.)
Anyway… I stumbled across a fairly new blog that offers a fascinating look into the mindset of the “Quiverfull” Christians — the sort of “biblical patriarchy” cult (spread through the usually disturbing homeschooling movement) I think Maggie Gallagher would belong to if she weren’t constantly compelled to run off at the mouth, unlike a submissive little wife shouldn’t. It’s called “No Longer Quivering,” written by one Vyckie Garrison, who, after quite the unstable childhood, dove headfirst into the wifely-submission role (she “adored” her role model, Michelle Duggar), popping out as many babies as possible for her ungrateful and domineering husband, even at risk to her own life, because, well, of course, God wants women to be miserable (and gender equality is the tool of Satan).
Vyckie — thank God — emerged from this destructive lifestyle after a year’s correspondence with her un-believing uncle (yes, Christians, g’head, blame the atheist; you will anyway), not unscathed, but definitely far more rational. She takes you through her ongoing journey in lengthy, well-thought-out posts, with, as a big bonus, comments from readers who are, overall, smart, articulate, and compassionate.
Rather than just hit the main link, you might want to start with this article about Vyckie first: “All God’s children” by Kathryn Joyce, author of Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.
There are also some good related articles linked downpage, particularly “Submit, woman!,” which explores the line (is there one?) between “wifely submission” and domestic abuse. Within this second article is another link, this time to Joyce’s article, “Biblical Battered Wife Syndrome: Christian Women and Domestic Violence,” also a worthy read — especially if you want to know where Rick Warren is coming from.
If you read these pieces first (and they’re quite riveting and digestible, albeit infuriating to anyone with even a shred of self-worth), you’ll go into Garrison’s blog with a good overview of what Garrison herself endured — and more importantly, why.
Joyce writes: “The experience of Garrison’s friend Laura — a mother of 11 who collapsed under the demands of the lifestyle — also helps explain why many unhappy women are afraid to turn their backs on the movement, when they’ll be left with scant financial resources, years without work experience, and a dearth of references from a community that often shuns them.” Which has all the earmaks of any cult: Isolate the victim, destroy her independence, and hold the threat of ostracization over her head.
(Which always makes me think of Mormonism. I’m not just getting in a jab at the Mormons here, honest, but: Consider the vast “support” network the Mormons have set up solely for the care and feeding of one another — right down to silos full of food to be distributed in case of Armageddon — and then consider the fate of Mormons who are excommunicated or leave the church voluntarily; they are often completely cut off, and may as well be dead, even to their own families. And Mormons wonder why so many, especially Christians, consider their church a cult? Such Mafia-like intimidation tactics — once you’re in the family, you can never leave — under the mask of Us Against the World, is but onewarning sign of a cult.)
While Garrison’s blog, which she writes in tandem with her friend Laura, who is undergoing a similar — and in some ways, much more difficult — journey (Laura’s ex-husband wrenched custody of all eleven of their children from her), is only a little more than a month old, there is much material to absorb, and there is a natural chronology to it. So I would suggest reading the introductory links under “What It’s All About” (in the righthand menu), and then navigating your way back to the women’s first posts (Laura: “Part 1 ~ In The Beginning”; Vyckie: “Part 1 ~ Married At 16″), and proceeding from there.
Even if you have no interest in “biblical patriarchy” to begin with, I assure you that you will after you’ve read a few posts (and the many comments). You may never come to truly understand this mindset (I doubt I ever will), much less relate to it (I know I never will), but you will come away with a few more pieces to the puzzle that stymies those of us who cannot imagine life without having, and fighting to maintain, our freedom, our dignity, and our very personhood.
And, while this may sound flip (as I’ve really been ragging on her this week) you will actually come to understand Maggie Gallagher… and Phyllis Schlafly, and all the others like them. There’s really no difference among them at all.
Helen Davis, who died March 27 at age 78, once said it is a “waste of time and worry to hate and fear those who are different from us.”
That was her guiding principle in fighting for acceptance of everyone, regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation.
Davis had been diagnosed with a brain tumor not long before her birthday on March 5.
She crusaded against racial discrimination in an all-white suburb of Milwaukee in the 1960s and continued her work when her daughter Gayle Davis told her in the early 1980s that she was gay.
Gayle Davis told her mother she wanted to talk to her about something serious, and “my mother was so relieved when she heard that she was gay,” recalled Davis’ other daughter, Be Hussander Engler. “She was afraid Gayle was going to say she was dying,” Engler recalled.
From then on, Helen Davis became active in Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), then a fledgling organization. …
“She became a surrogate mom to many, many gays and lesbians who were rejected by their families,” said Tim Wilson of Denver, who is gay and a longtime member of PFLAG.
When Helen Davis talked to parents who had difficulty accepting their gay children, “she basically told them, ‘You need to love your kid, no matter what, and we will help you get to that place,’” Wilson said. …
The American Civil Liberties Union has halted its efforts — at least for the time being — to delay implementation of a law that bans unmarried cohabiting couples from fostering or adopting children after state’s attorneys pointed out that the new law hasn’t been applied to anyone.
Proposed Initiative Act 1 went into effect Jan. 1, and the ACLU, which is spearheading a lawsuit to have the law declared unconstitutional, had sought a temporary restraining order to block its implementation until the case can be heard in Pulaski County Circuit Court.
The restraining order was necessary to protect the interests of one of the 29 plaintiffs, Sheila Cole of Oklahoma, the ACLU said. Cole, a registered nurse who lives with her domestic partner, wants to adopt her 7-month-old granddaughter, identified in court filings as W.H. The baby was placed in foster care with a Bentonville family because of injuries authorities say her parents inflicted. …
The attorney general’s office opposed the restraining order, saying that proceedings involving Cole’s granddaughter have not reached the point where Act 1 would apply. The new law wouldn’t apply unless the state attempts to terminate parental rights to the child, which hasn’t happened and might not happen, according to court filings.
Act 1 won’t prevent a circuit judge from appointing Cole as the child’s guardian or custodian, and the new law explicitly states that it won’t affect the guardianship of minors, deputy attorney general Colin Jorgensen wrote in his four-page response. …
In the agreement, approved Monday by Circuit Judge Chris Piazza, ACLU lawyers agreed to withdraw their request for a restraining order on the condition that the attorney general’s office notify them if Act 1 is going to be applied against Cole or anyone in a similar situation to permanently affect their eligibility to become foster or adoptive parents. The order requires the attorney general’s office to notify the ACLU two weeks before it takes any action under the new law. …
He’s the little boy whose name was the center of an international firestorm last December after a Greenwich, N.J., supermarket refused to write his name on a birthday cake. The store said it was inappropriate and refused to give an apology after the parents demanded one.
Adolf and his two sisters — one-year-old JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and 8-month-old Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell — were removed from their parents’ home Tuesday night by the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services, Holland Township police chief David Van Gilson told LehighValleyLive.com.
It is unclear why the children were removed from their parent’s home. Gilson said his department did not receive any reports of abuse or negligence.
Heath and Deborah Campbell, the children’s parents, were scheduled to appear for an undisclosed hearing Tuesday, but it was postponed, according to the website.
Due to confidentiality laws, Kate Bernyk with the N.J. Division of Youth and Family Services would not comment or even acknowledge any involvement with the Campbells when NBC10’s Doug Shimell contacted them.
DYFS isn’t talking much about the Campbell’s situation, but the kids being taken away has nothing to do with the names and birthday cake issue in December, according to Sgt. John Harris, Holland Twp. Police in Milford, N.J.
Calls to the children’s parents were met with a message that the line had been temporarily disconnected. …
It sickens me to imagine what might have prompted the removal, but I’m glad the kids are out from under the influence of those whackjobs, at least for now.
Just days before it’s scheduled to take effect, the ACLU files a lawsuit to strike down initiated act 1.
That act would ban unmarried couples who live together from adopting or fostering children.
The ACLU says it doesn’t matter if you’re single, married, gay, straight or co-habiting, every prospective foster or adoptive parent should be screened on a case by case basis. …
In the wake of California’s passage of Proposition 8, a group of gay and lesbian families are taking to the airwaves, producing five 30-second commercials to air on daytime and prime time television throughout the state. These commercials will run in urban and rural markets on broadcast and cable channels during the Inauguration week in January 2009. Their purpose is to capture the hearts and minds of people who do not understand why marriage is so important to us.
Intelligent people can talk until the cows come home about whether gays and lesbians should be able to marry, should it be called “marriage,” and what are the implications. Intelligent people can disagree.
It’s all abstract until they meet us and put a face on the issue. …
The focus appears to be solely on couples with children, which leaves most of us out in the cold (we childless couples are real families, too, you know), but hey, if seeing couples with kids will soften any stubbornly hardened hearts, I’m all for it.
They might even get some money out of me if this thing really gets underway. I’m encouraged by the presence of Robin Tyler and Diane Olson on this page, too.
A Holocaust denier who has three children named after Nazis, and raises a stink about a bakery refusing to put “Adolf Hitler” — the name of his three-year-old — on a birthday cake…
Somebody explain something to me — and never even mind about the “sanctity” of his legal marriage: How come nobody so much as questions the practice of naming children after Nazis and raising them in a home “decorated with war books, German combat knives and swastikas” (including “a skull with a swastika on its forehead”), but when two normal, committed, loving gay people try to give a child a normal life…?
Yeah, it’s a rhetorical question.
Click here to read about the family whose status ranks above ours.
Oh, and by the way, as if you needed another reason not to patronize Big Boxed Crap On the Backs of Slave Labor, Inc., you might be interested to know that Wal-Mart agreed to make the cake for Adolf Hitler Campbell’s first two birthdays, name and all. Why are we not surprised?
Tell you what will surprise us: If all three of these kids don’t grow up completely psychotic.
Ah, it seems like only yesterday that Larry Craig lost his appeal to withdraw his guilty plea for cruising a Minneapolis airport toilet — maybe because it was only the day before yesterday.
Now, we learn, the day before that, Bob Allen, former Florida state rep (and Republican, of course), lost his second appeal on his conviction of solicitation of offering an undercover cop twenty bucks (to blow the cop) — in a public toilet. (What is it about Republicans and toilet sex?)
We’ve got the latest at ConBab, or, if you’d like to get up to speed on the whole sordid story, complete with my snarky, below-the-belt (hee!) commentary, here’s the main page on this racist closet case who, among other stunningly typical acts of Repug hypocrisy:
• supported amending the Florida constitution to ban same-sex marriage;
• supported Florida’s ban on gay people adopting children;
• opposed a bill to curb bullying of gay students;
• sponsored a bill to further tighten Florida’s prohibition on public sex;
• cosponsored a bill that would have enhanced penalties for “offenses involving unnatural and lascivious acts”; e.g., indecent exposure;
• had a 92% approval rating from the Florida Christian Coalition;
• was voted the Tampa Police Union’s 2007 Lawmaker of the Year.
You keep appealing your conviction, Bob, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if you have to — we lurrrrrrrrrrrrve every excuse you give us to rehash your sordid little tale as a reminder of what big, fat, deviant hypocrites you self-appointed arbiters of “moral” standards really are.
Or, at the very least, He’s warning the state of more severe punishment to come, in retaliation for its most recent display of homophobic bigotry, persecution, and hatred heaped upon His cherished gay and lesbian children.
What else could explain earthquakes in Arkansas? After all, Radical Righties (like Roland Meyer of Nevada City) were blaming June fires in California on God’s wrath over our Supreme Court clearing the way for marriage equality; it’s a tradition that long precedes Jerry Falwell blaming “the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way” (and others immune to incurable religious insanity) for causing 9/11 by making “God mad.”
(Funny how the blame-the-gays nuts didn’t come crawling out of the woodwork when fires raged through Los Angeles Countyafter L.A. voted to enshrine anti-gay hate in the California Constitution. Gee, come to think of it, the blame-the-gays set gets awfully quiet every time hurricanes and tornadoes flatten the virulently anti-gay Bible Belt of the South and the Plains states… every year, like clockwork. Funny, that.)
So, what else could explain the series of earthquakes in central Arkansas over the past few weeks — that is, immediately following November 4th, when Arkansas descended completely into the 13th century by outlawing adoption by gay people (and other unmarried folks — but really, we all know unwed heteros were just collateral damage to the fundy-mentals in their crazed war on gays)?
If you follow fundy thinking, there’s only one answer: Arkansas is making God mad.
Florida Trial Court Opens Way for Lesbians and Gay Men to Adopt
Court Strikes Down Ban, Ruling Two Foster Children Can Be Adopted by Gay Foster Parent
MIAMI — November 25, 2008 — A Florida circuit court today struck down a Florida law that bars lesbians and gay men from adopting. The court granted adoptions to a gay man, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, who has been raising two foster children since 2004.
“Our family just got a lot more to be thankful for this Thanksgiving,” said Martin Gill, a North Miami resident who is raising two brothers, four and eight, with his partner. “We are extremely relieved that the court has recognized that it is wrong to deny our boys the legal protections and security that only come with adoption.”
The court ruled that the ban violated the equal protection guarantees of the state constitution because it singles out for different treatment gay people and the children they raise for no rational reason. The court also found that the ban denies children the right to permanency provided by federal and state law under the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997.
“While the decision will be welcome news to many lesbian and gay Floridians, the children in Florida foster care are the real winners today,” said Leslie Cooper, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project and a member of the legal team that tried the case. “The court put the interest of the children first, recognizing that the gay ban served no legitimate purpose and only made it more difficult for the state to find homes for the many children in foster care.”
The court’s decision comes after a four-day trial in October where the court heard from experts on children’s health and development and listened to the justifications offered by the state for the ban. In reaching its decision, the court rejected the false assumptions and stereotypes about gay people presented by the state, holding that many “reports and studies find that there are no differences in the parenting of homosexuals or the adjustment of their children. These conclusions have been accepted, adopted and ratified by the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatry Association, the American Pediatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Child Welfare League of America and the National Association of Social Workers. As a result, based on the robust nature of the evidence available in the field, this Court is satisfied that the issue is so far beyond dispute that it would be irrational to hold otherwise; the best interests of children are not preserved by prohibiting homosexual adoption.”
The court also rejected claims by the state that children do better when raised in homes with a mother and a father and that children raised by gay parents face social stigma. The court found “… the professionals and the major associations now agree there is well established and accepted consensus in the field that there is no optimal gender combination of parents.”
“Judge Lederman made clear today that it violates every rule of decency and fairness to threaten to tear a four-year-old boy from the only home he has ever known, and to send him to strangers who don’t even know him simply because his beloved Papi is gay,” said Robert Rosenwald, Director of the LGBT Project of the ACLU of Florida and one of the attorneys who tried the case.
Martin Gill and his partner of more than eight years became foster parents to the two boys on December 11, 2004. The couple, who had been parents to seven other foster children over the years, was initially told that the placement would be temporary, but a plan to place the children with their grandmother fell through. Both boys had significant health problems when they arrived in the home. The older boy, who was four at the time, was withdrawn and didn’t speak. Today both boys are healthy, have lots of friends and are doing well in school. The older boy started out behind educationally and had to repeat the first grade, but with the couple’s help, he has progressed significantly.
The Florida law barring lesbians and gay men from adopting is the most expansive anti-gay parenting law in the country. It was passed in 1977 in response to an anti-gay crusade led by former Miss America and Florida orange juice spokesperson Anita Bryant.
In addition to Cooper and Rosenwald, Gill is represented by James Esseks, Litigation Director of the ACLU’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project and Shelbi Day, a Staff Attorney with the ACLU of Florida. The children are represented by Hilarie Bass and Ricardo Gonzalez of Greenberg Traurig, and Charles Auslander, an attorney and former District Administrator for Florida’s Department of Children and Families (DCF).
For additional information about the case, including a video and podcast of Martin Gill talking about his experiences as a foster parent as well as a copy of today’s decision and a copy of the trial transcript, visit www.aclu.org/gill.
MIAMI — November 24, 2008 — A Florida juvenile court judge will issue a decision in the case of Martin Gill, a gay man from Miami who has asked the court to declare unconstitutional a Florida law barring gay people from adopting and allow him to adopt two foster children he has been raising for the past four years with his partner.
Gill, a gay man from North Miami who has asked to be able to adopt two foster children he has been raising for the past four years; his lawyers, Leslie Cooper, a Senior Staff Attorney with the ACLU’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project, and Robert Rosenwald, Director of the LGBT Project of the ACLU of Florida; and lawyers representing the foster children, Hillary Bass, of Greenberg Traurig, and Charles Auslander, an attorney and former District Administrator for Florida’s Department of Children and Families (DCF); will issue a statement immediately following the court’s decision, scheduled for 9:00 a.m., Tuesday, November 25th, on the front steps of Miami’s Juvenile Justice Center, 3300 NW 27th Ave.
Florida has the broadest anti-gay parenting law in the nation, banning all lesbians and gay men from adopting. This law flies in the face of the recommendations of all the children’s health and welfare organizations, who recognize that gay people make equally good parents, and reduces the limited pool of potential parents willing to provide permanent homes to children in need. All potential adoptive families are already thoroughly screened before being allowed to adopt.
During discovery for the trial, DCF admitted that the shortage of adoptive parents is a serious problem. At any given time there are approximately 900 to 1,000 children who need adoptive parents. Every year, many children age out of the system without ever being adopted.
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