Judge: 2 Adoptive Dads Belong on Birth Certificate

[Hissyspit]

Source: Associated Press

Dec 27, 7:22 PM EST

Judge: 2 adoptive dads belong on birth certificate

By JANET McCONNAUGHEY
Associated Press Writer
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- A same-sex couple in California has won a federal court ruling that their adopted son's Louisiana birth certificate must bear the names of both adoptive fathers. The facts are so clear that no trial is needed, U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey wrote.

- snip -

In his ruling Monday, Zainey said Louisiana's Office of Vital Records must give full faith and credit to the New York State court in which Adar and Smith adopted the boy, he ruled Monday. The office had refused to issue a birth certificate listing both as the boy's legal parents. Upton, reached at home Saturday evening, said he hopes to get a birth certificate in the coming week but doesn't know whether the Louisiana Attorney General's Office - which is in charge, although a state health department attorney argued the case - will decide to appeal.

- snip -

Because Smith's name wasn't on the document, his employer initially refused to enroll the child on his insurance, Smith wrote in a sworn statement. Smith, an accountant, is the family's breadwinner. The administrator eventually agreed to cover the boy, but "I am forced to go through this process each and every year" to keep him insured, Smith wrote. "As an adopted child myself, I understand the need a child has to feel like he or she belongs," Smith wrote. "I remember as a child wanting to see my own birth certificate and to see my parents listed because it gave me a sense of belonging, a sense of identity and a sense of dignity."

- snip -

Refusing to name both fathers on the birth certificate "singles out unmarried same-sex couples and their adoptive children for unequal treatment for the improper purpose of making them unequal to everyone else," said the lawsuit filed by Upton and Regina O. Matthews of New Orleans.

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TWO_DADS?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US

[aquart]

1. Judge is a grownup.

[yardwork]

2. We will win this, one victory at a time.

[msanthrope]

6. It will happen--millions will not be silenced. n/t

[GinaMaria]

3. This is great news

in light of all the ballot propositions on election day. The legal battles small and large will help make equal rights a reality. I love this quote:

"As an adopted child myself, I understand the need a child has to feel like he or she belongs," Smith wrote. "I remember as a child wanting to see my own birth certificate and to see my parents listed because it gave me a sense of belonging, a sense of identity and a sense of dignity."

[Karenina]

4. Excellent !!! More recs, please!!!

[No Elephants]

12. OK, done!

[tandot]

5. 5th rec. This is great!

thanks for posting.

[RetiredTrotskyite]

7. Wonderful News!!

One of the very interesting things about this ruling is that it comes out of a fairly socially conservative area. It is unfair for an adoptive parent to have to go through a major fewfaraw every time he needs to reregister his child for insurance or anything else. It is quite clear: if a child is adopted, he or she belongs on his doptive parent's insurance.

[HopeHoops]

8. This hits the key point of gay marriage rights - STUFF LIKE INSURANCE!

And visitation rights, assumed heirs, school access and child pickup, and everything else that male/female marriages take for granted (and should). Gay couples should have exactly the same rights. I'm sick of the "they want special treatment" BS from FOX Noise and such. All gay couples want is EQUAL treatment!

[pitohui]

14. agreed and very nice ruling by the judge

this protects families, protects the child, and makes sure the child has access to health care, it makes you wonder who is really behind a lot of the anti-equal rights hoo ha, after all, it is the insurance companies who look to profit when they don't have to provide coverage for a spouse or a child

[Peace Patriot]

9. I love it when common sense and common decency-not to mention Constituional principles-

prevail. They are in short supply these days, due mostly to the scurrilous behavior of Bushwhacks and other politicians in scapegoating gays (and other groups). It is heartening to see judges, and others with something to lose, resist this ugly and dangerous trend.

I can't fathom how anybody could be so bloody-minded as to omit a name on birth certificate out of bigotry. But then I was flabbergasted by "whites only" drinking fountains when I was young. I didn't grow up with them, so, when I first saw one, I was :wow:. Same thing now. I'm just :wow:! How could anybody be so mean?

I think it's very important to realize that people CAN be so mean--not to be blind to it--and that some among us have to live with this cruelty and danger every day of their lives. If you don't experience it yourself--or experience it only in lesser ways, so that you know what it is, but you don't really grasp the full impact--24/7, lifelong bigotry against you--you need to remind yourself, often, what others are enduring, and join the struggle for their rights and dignity. Because it's the right thing to do. And because, whatever the evildoers are doing to some minority today, they will be doing to you tomorrow, if they get away with it. We're all in this together. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is everyone's, or it is no one's.

[The Doctor.]

10. I remember back in college....

One friend of mine had a new girlfriend. She was raised to be absolutely terrified of drugs. She believed that marijuana was everything "Reefer Madness" depicted it as, and that it made people insane.

He brought her by the house, and we were having a nice time just hanging out and chit-chatting. It was a while before she realized we'd been smoking. Then she sat there while we passed some around. For the next hour, she sat quietly... until she told us she was totally against all drugs. She said that she didn't know why there wasn't anything 'wrong' with us, how we could just be talking and functioning. She was horrified by the realization, because it put the lie to so much of what she'd been told by her fundie family.

Here we have an entire sector of society with so many ridiculous preconceptions. They are terrified, not of what will 'happen' to children in gay households, but of finding out that there's nothing wrong, and everything right with children raised in a loving family regardless of the S/O of the parents. They are afraid of their world view changing when the truth becomes unavoidable.

That's exactly what they're actually afraid of.

They should probably smoke a joint and chill out.

[No Elephants]

11. Judge "Zainey" sounds totally sane and sound to me!

[Hissyspit]

13. kick nt

[Billy Burnett]

15. ACTIVIST JUDGES!! ACTIVIST JUDGES!! ACTIVIST JUDGES!! ACTIVIST JUDGES!! ACTIVIST JUDGES!!

I can hear it coming.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

16. Thank you, Judge Zainey!

Thank you for using common sense! :yourock:

[orleans]

17. too late to recommend. i'm glad the judge is a reasonable person. n/t