Letters to the Editor
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terrible, but avoidable
i think the case of the kentucky woman is terrible, but i also think that gay couples have a responsibility to protect themselves. obviously the laws won't automatically protect them as they would heterosexuals. and until they do, gay couples really have to work harder than most.
they have a greater need to develop living wills, estate plans and to thoroughly understand the laws dealing with children. it is not fair, but these women really should have considered what would have happened if they split up, and possibly considered adopting and or moving to another state.
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I really hate stories like these...
First, as a lesbian, it saddens me deeply whenever I hear about LGBT people using the very laws that discriminate against us against one another, especially if it involves a custody battle. They should be deeply, deeply ashamed.
Second, to the previous poster, we have an extra responsibility to protect ourselves by moving to another state? Excuse me, but that's ridiculous on its face. Moving isn't always an option, both financially and emotionally. Would you leave your family, friends or job just to move because you couldn't adopt a child jointly? Just in case you break up some day?
A personal example: I'm married, my partner and I live in a pretty gay-friendly state right now that is set to be one of the next states to have marriage or civil unions. BUT we are planning on moving away to Pennsylvania to be closer to my family because we want to start a family soon, we want to raise our kids with a lot of family around. Pennsylvania at this moment in time has some of the most liberal adoption laws in the country, HOWEVER, the PA legislature is pushing a very broadly-worded anti-gay marriage amendment that *could* undermine all of that. What are we supposed to do? All of the laws are in flux right now, they're unpredictable. We really don't know what is going to happen, but we are willing to move anyways because it is worth the potential discriminiation.
Why is it on us to go somewhere else? If we follow that thinking to its logical conclusion then every single gay couple who lives in the US should either move to Massachusetts or Canada. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.
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How do you know this is a tragedy?
It is the other parent (not the court) who is responsible for withholding visitation rights from Flawbush. Maybe she has a good reason for doing so.
One of the lesbians is this case may consider it a tragedy, but I'm sure the other lesbian does not.
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Justice Corbin
Yeah for the mention of our newly re-elected judge. I had his daughter in my class last semester. I found that, in addition to rational thinking, he has also raised a fine, forward thinking young woman. If only we had more like him and his daughter people might come visit our state sometime :)
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Agreed!
I agree completely with heddache's response to the first poster. They should have "done more to protect themselves"? What kind of apologist crap is that? Should all the Southern blacks have moved north in order to fulfill their responsibility to "protect themselves" from lynchings? Protecting the individual rights of its citizens is, and can only be, the State's responsibility - and this is yet another example of why all the pious "for the children" bullshit from the anti-gay crowd is transparent hypocrisy.
J Hildenberg: Not a tragedy? Lacking any evidence of substantial accusations of poor parenting being submitted to the court, it seems pretty damned obvious that this split-up, like so many others, has turned into an acrimonious personal war between the adults with the children as just another salvo. What's not "tragic" about that?
Thank God for the judge in this case - it sounds like he's going to expose the government's position as the pandering, hatemongering, anti-social illogical idiocy that it is. Tear 'em up!
Side note - does this remind anyone else of that one "Law and Order: SVU" episode? Some of the best social commentary on TV. Thanks Dick Wolf!
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Re: Terrible but Avoidable
Anonymous seems to suggest that since GLBT couples should expect discrimination in custody cases, we should not complain if our families are torn apart unless we had attempted to secure protections afforded hetero parents before we had children. How do you justify such a statement? Perhaps you would like to come to my state and talk to my daughter, now 4 1/2, and tell her she shouldn't have expected to always have two parents, so stop the crying and deal with her life. Maybe at the same time you could chat with my biological children and pull them out of their misery at the loss of a sister, too. While you are at it, you can explain to all of us how I could have forced my ex-partner to live up to her agreement to permit the second-parent adoption she committed to when we decided to have a child together. It is silly of me, I see now, to fight like hell to get my daughter back in my life when I should have anticipated the betrayal of trust that would eventually occur in the relationship between her biological mother and myself. The bottom line here, I see, is that if I had been able to avail myself of the legal protections automatically conferred on hetero parents, I could have justified the profound grief and devestation the loss of a child entails. In their absence, I see now, thanks to you, that it is unreasonable for my daughter, her siblings, and me to have any expectation of our legal system to recognize the parent-child relationship that existed before my ex-partner and I separated or to fight against the ability of an angry and vindictive parent to visit such destruction on the life of her child.
I am having a little trouble understanding the point of your assertions, but I am confident that your words will sink in and deliver me, and eventually my daughter when she is older, from the self-centered agony we've endured for the last two years.