Federal Ruling Protects Kids of Gay Parents

Avatar http://alternet.org Posted by admin 383 days ago



Should the legal ties between parents and their adopted child unravel if the family leaves the state where the adoption decree was handed down?

Of course not. The very idea is outrageous.

But that's what Oklahoma lawmakers were striving for in 2004 with their chillingly titled "Adoption Invalidation Law," which targeted adopted children with gay parents.

That wrongheaded statute declared that Oklahoma would refuse to recognize "an adoption by more than one individual of the same sex from any other state or foreign jurisdiction." In other words, if a gay couple and the child they adopted in, say, California or Maryland moved to Oklahoma or simply drove through Oklahoma on vacation, they would not be treated as a legally recognized family by any Oklahoma official -- whether a police officer, public school teacher or judge.

Sounds un-American, doesn't it? It's also unconstitutional. That's what a federal court of appeals told Oklahoma on Aug. 3 in striking down the law. A panel of three judges -- all of them Republican appointees -- of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court ruling that Oklahoma's anti-family law violated the U.S. Constitution's Full Faith and Credit Clause, which requires states to honor one another's judicial judgments, including adoptions.

The appeals court also ordered Oklahoma to issue a revised birth certificate for an Oklahoma-born girl so that she is listed as the daughter of the women who legally adopted her in California.

Late last week, the Oklahoma Department of Health decided not to fight the ruling, so families headed by gay couples no longer need to fear traveling through or moving to Oklahoma with their adopted children.

"We are winning on the front of, 'Hey don't mess with our kids,'" notes Legal Director Jon Davidson of Lambda Legal, which represented the gay parents who sued.

"People are less sympathetic to those attacks that clearly harm children," Davidson continued. "How can it be good for children to be told the parents who adopted them are no longer their parents?"

The 10th Circuit's sensible ruling comes as states -- where nearly all family law originates -- are getting more used to gay families. About 250,000 U.S. children are being raised by gay parents. Those families' rights vary greatly from state to state.

Courts in most states allow gay couples to jointly adopt or allow a gay adult to become the legal second parent of a partner's child. And the Oklahoma ruling puts lawmakers nationwide on notice not to try to tamper with the legal rights of adopted children, regardless of the parents' sexual orientation.

The ruling was the result of a lawsuit filed by three sets of parents. Greg Hampel and Ed Swaya of Seattle had feared taking their daughter back to Oklahoma to visit her birth mother. Heather Finstuen and Anne Magro feared that non-biological mom Finstuen couldn't sign medical releases and other forms. Lucy and Jennifer Doel, who live in Oklahoma, had felt the impact of the misguided law: When their little girl had to be rushed to a hospital, the ambulance crew said only "the mother" could go along.

Adopted kids deserve to feel every bit as secure as their playmates. Now, their parents can breathe easier, knowing the Constitution is on their side.


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