By all means carry on with the Imus-Duke-Gangsta Rap discussion if you have something to say, but I just got a link to this article and I want to point out that most same-sex parents live in places (including us) where this could happen. Without explicit law protecting our rights to adopt regardless of our sexual orientation any judge at any time can make this kind of personal call.
It's the main reason we have gone out of our way to adopt in Chicago. Judges there are more likely to allow our adoptions. But they are not legally compelled to in any way. Where we live, they are neither legally compelled nor necessarily likely to allow it. Most queer families live in this kind of no-man's-land of luck and precedent. If our state passed a law tomorrow banning adoption by same-sex couples, it would put our family in serious jeopardy. A judge could argue that in the absence of a law at the time of our adoption, our adoption is retroactively invalid.
I don't think this is likely, both because our state is farily divided between "conservative" and "liberal" law makers and because the political and economic feasiblity of snatching children out of established families seems just about nil to me.
Nevertheless, this is a shadow we, and the vast majority of families like ours live under. Few states have laws explicitly protecting us, and the anti-gay marriage laws in many states (such as Georgia, in this case) give judges all kinds of rhetorical wiggle-room to come up with decisions like this.
I now return you to the previous discussion.
