Behave!

I blogged about this at Strollerderby and I mentioned it on Facebook, but I have more to say about it.

These lesbians and lesbian exes and ex-lesbians and what-have-you are getting me down today.  The story is: Once upon a time two women fell in love and got together in Seattle.  There they settled down, feathered a nest and each gave birth to a baby, each of whom was adopted, in turn by the nonbiological second mom.  Happy-happy, joy-joy.

Then the family moved to Florida and all hell broke loose.  Moms split up, agreeing to coparent amicably, until Mom A falls in love with a fundamentalist Christian man, gets engaged, repudiates her lesbo history and refuses to let Mom B have any more visitation with Mom A's bio child.

Mom B sues for custody (of her nonbio, but fully legally adopted child) and the court overturns the adoption (made in another state, mind you) on the grounds that Florida doesn't grant adoption to gay people.  Mom B appeals and the appeals court rules in her favor, saying Florida, whether it grants gay adoptions or not, must recognize adoptions made in other states under the full faith and credit clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Now, Mom A has appealed to the Florida Supreme Court (no word on whether they are taking the case yet).

Here are some points:

1.  If Florida upholds its right to willy-nilly reverse adoptions made in other states, um, whoa, Bessie!  What does that mean for any adoptive family, not just queer ones?  You may think that you are safe because Florida doesn't ban you from adopting at the moment, but this kind of precedent sure opens a can of worms to allow Florida to decide it doesn't like you either and will dissolve your relationship to your child while on vacation at Disney.  Florida, by all accounts is Crazy State.  You never know what it's going to do next.

2.  Mom A is a jerk, obviously.  But not just because she is keeping her bio kid from its (don't know the genders here) second mom.  She is, one must assume, also repudiating her own parenthood of Mom B's bio kid, in spite of having adopted the kid legally in Washington.  Now that's major jerkness, right there.

3.  We need federal laws governing this stuff, not state ones.  I know that's a long shot, but if states are going to go ignoring the full faith and credit clause, and if the U.S. Congress is going to support them in that with laws like the DOMA, which allows marriages to be dissolved when crossing state lines (also in glaring contradiction to full faith and credit, among other things), then states need to simmer down and let the feds take over family law in these broad areas of marriage and adoption.  You can't just dissolve legal familial bonds when a family arrives in your state.  That is dangerous on a zillion levels.  Certainly, most clearly in the case of a child whose parent can just renounce her responsibility to provide for and nurture that child as a parent who took on these responsibilities legally--and for life--in another state.

4.  I have been reading all this adoption stuff (new books from conference) about the various ways that a loss as devastating as an entire family will mess with the developmental tasks at every stage of a child's life.  Whether adopted at birth or after five years of foster care, kids still sustain a loss at the outset of adoption that adds challenges to growing up healthy, happy and whole.  It can be done of course, I'm not suggesting otherwise.  I'm simply saying that it adds challenges and makes life more difficult.  Why any parent in her right mind would create this situation for a child by taking that child from a (perfectly healthy, non-abusive) second parent is beyond me.  Why orchestrate a loss for your child when you could have prevented it?

I know, people are nutso when they break up.  Ex-gay fundie converts even more so, I am sure.  Much as I wish it were not true, lesbians are just normal human beings like everyone else and no better behaved in a breakup than straight, legally married people who might just as readily swipe the kids if it were so easily done, given no legal protection for the ex's relationship with them.

And because lesbians (and gay men and you know, everyone) are human, we need laws to protect our children when breakups happen.  I know some people pull off voluntary coparenting with integrity.  But some don't.  And some really, really don't.  So we need a blanket of second-parent adoption that covers all children and protects their connections to their parents.

In fact, I think de facto parents should have legal standing, whether adoptive or not.  They should have automatic rights to visitation unless a court decides it is not in the child's best interest.  Overall, I am tired of this stuff being put under the heading of "gay rights" because it is really about children's rights.  Kids don't get to choose who their parents are.  Like it or not, queers have been having children from time immemorial and will continue to do so.  Protect those kids not by prohibiting them from having legal ties to their parents, but by mandating their parents support them and give them access to all other parents, whether they are born again or not.

Really, what kid would Jesus abandon?

Same-sex marriage would help--if the moms had married in this particular case--by providing same-sex divorce and thus putting the visitation and custody stuff in the hands of a court.  But plenty of straight people don't bother/have their reasons not to marry the second parent of their child (biological and otherwise--look at Brangelina), so marriage really isn't the issue here.  The issue is kids' rights to their parents--as defined by the kids.  Children will develop connections to people whether the adults in their lives necessarily want them to or not.  Step-parents, boyfriends, grandmothers who babysit every day--kids will define their primary caregivers in ways we might not.  Those relationships deserve at least a glance by a court before being severed at the whim of one legal parent.

Meanwhile, this case is simple enough--the adoption was actually legal.  Mom A needs to present her bio kid for visitation with Mom B and cut a check for her share of Mom B's bio kid's support.  Case closed.

In the court of Shannon...

Comments

[mijk]

this makes me sick...

mijk

[Stephanie in PR]

It just kills me how any one, but particularly someone who calls themselves a Christian, could be in favor of traumatizing a child by severing or damaging his or her parental bonds.

And, like you, I don't get how judges and so on can support this stuff. You don't have to like other states adoptions, marriages, etc, but you do have to honor them. That's the way the country works and that *should* be the end of the story.

[malinda]

Shannon,

Are you sure you're not a lawyer?! Great post!

malinda
an actual lawyer!

[marta]

this sort of behavior has always broken my heart too.

i'm eager to see what, if anything, the florida supreme court does.

[Dana]

Ugh. The sad thing is, this isn't an isolated instance of lesbian/"ex-lesbian" moms behaving badly in breakups. I did a compilation myself recently (though somehow missed this Florida case): http://www.mombian.com/2009/04/30/enough-already/

[Sara]

This story breaks my heart too. Poor kids. I agree every point of your analysis. The whole situation just sucks, and all of the adults involved (including the judge) should have known better.

[Brittany]

This is a very sad story and very frustrating given the presence of legal adoption.

I have to say the thought of "grandparent rights" (in terms of getting court orders) rubs me wrong, but then again I had a very controlling mother and an early pregnancy where I was threatened with it if I didn't do what she wanted me to do, which was leave my child with them and move away to college. (And a lawyer told it was baseless, but still.)

[Lori]

Any other adoptive families crossing Florida off the "potential places to move" list?

I remember an older movie (80s? early 90s? ) called "What Makes a Family" It was set in Florida. Hard to believe Florida has made 0 progress since the movie was made.

[Lori]

Ok the movie was 2001. I must be in a time warp because it seems like a really, really long time ago that I first saw it ( yes, I am a sucker for Lifetime movies)

[Johannah]

One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet, is the impact this has on the children as one another's siblings. I don't know how old they are, but they know one another as siblings. It's a terrible thing to lose a brother or sister- especially one going through the same trauma your are experiencing- at the same time as you lose a parent.

[Jody]

Ugh. But this is also one of those reasons why "something like marriage" is NOT a replacement for marriage. Because LOTS of people would make bad choices about their kids if the state didn't step up and require them to do the right thing. Being "not-quite" or "only-sort-of" gets internalized, in ways you don't even realize until the day you go "all the way" (which is why even straight people who get married after decades of togetherness admit, in some surprise, that it just feels different).

Not everyone is going to turn around and hurt their family, just because they can. Marriage isn't necessary for a loving lifelong union. But damnit, it matters, having the state put its power behind your family system, and the only good thing I can say about a heartbreaking case like this is, one by one, these cases are going to crack DOMA all to pieces, and one day that damn evil law will be gone.

[lorrie]

Y'don't say? I have a friend who considers herself straight who is married (not legally) to a legal woman who has lived as a man for many years. She was a little too open on an adoptive listserve when they live in Florida and someone called SOCIAL SERVICES and they had the JACK BOOTED STORM TROOPERS from social service investigating whether or not two LESBOS were living in SIN. They had to show the SW that they had separate bedrooms and they had to swear that KINKY THINGS WERE NOT HAPPENING IN THIS PLACE WITH INNOCENT MINOR CHILDREN.

The mind, it does boggle. The same agency managed to lose several children, you may remember.