Arizona same-sex married couples are seeking adoptions

Bravo to them.

Barred from adopting as in Arizona only married couples can adopt, the state is seeing a flurry of folks seeking to legally adopt the children that they raised, that, for all intents and purposes, are the parents of.

And why not? Does a marriage certificate make one a better parent than no marriage certificate? It appears there are plenty of cases where children have been co-parented, though the child may not be viewed as legally the child of one of the parents. Certainly I am of the mind that a legalized process, where the child is adopted and hence preventing claims or accusations of not being the actual parent is a good thing.

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news...x-married-couples-seeking-adoptions/18629071/

About an hour after same-sex couples were granted the right to receive marriage licenses in Arizona last month, Marianne Bayardi said the first thing she was going to do was adopt her daughter.

Well, not her daughter, exactly, but the girl her wife gave birth to in 2005, the girl she has been co-parenting since.

In Arizona, there's no prohibition against gay people adopting; it's always up to the placement agency to determine who would be the best parent to a child. But several laws have made it hard, and often legally risky, for same-sex couples to create families.

Unmarried couples cannot adopt a child together in Arizona. Before the ban on same-sex marriage was struck down, only the biological parent in a same-sex relationship could be the legal parent. And only one member of a same-sex couple seeking to adopt could be the legal adoptive parent.

But since a U.S. District Court judge struck down Arizona's gay-marriage ban Oct. 17, the handful of Valley lawyers who specialize in creating families for same-sex couples have been inundated with calls.

"My phone is ringing off the hook with partners who have been married in other states or are now getting married in Arizona who want to legalize their relationship with the children," lawyer Rita Meiser said.

Bayardi married her wife, Jenni, in California in 2008, a ceremony Arizona now recognizes as legal. After the October ruling, the women, who have been together since 1992, met with a lawyer to start the process of adopting each other's children.

Until the paperwork is completed, though, Bayardi will remain the sole legal parent of her two sons, both of whom she gave birth to using sperm from the same anonymous donor. And Jenni will remain the sole legal parent of the daughter she gave birth to using the same anonymous donor.

It turns out the paperwork of counties and states is a poor proxy for the intentions of the heart.

"It is a legal fiction that all of our children were born to single mothers," said Bayardi, a Phoenix municipal judge. "The lawyer in me tried to be as smart about that as possible. We wanted to reduce the chances that anyone could separate the kids if something happened."

Lawyer Claudia Work specializes in adoption and said the ability for same-sex couples to seek stepparent and second-parent adoptions is "a huge deal."

"We have thousands of couples in the state of Arizona whose children have lived in a state of uncertainty," said Work, who is with the Campbell Law Group in Phoenix. "If they had the money to, or knew to, they would draw up estate-planning documents, wills and so forth, but none of those were foolproof. It really put children at risk.

"Additionally, the non-legal parent could not pass on state or federal benefits. This is huge for peace of mind for the children of Arizona."

In 2010, more than 16,000 same-sex couples were raising an estimated 22,000 adopted children in the U.S., according to that year's census.

But there are data showing that same-sex couples are many times more likely to be raising adopted children than different-sex couples. About 10 percent of all children being raised by same-sex couples are adopted, compared with just 2 percent of those in different-sex couples, according to a 2013 analysis of the 2010 census by the Williams Institute, a think tank at the UCLA School of Law.

On Oct. 17, Kevin Patterson and David Larance-Patterson were the first same-sex couple in Arizona to marry. But until the second-parent adoption paperwork they recently filed is completed in a few weeks, only Kevin, 31, is listed as their adopted daughters' parent.

This lack of parental rights has manifested in small ways since the men started raising the sisters two years ago. (*)Recently, David wasn't allowed to receive school progress reports. He also couldn't sign for the girls at the doctor's office. "Technically, he's my roommate ... and has no rights to them," Kevin said.

But the legal limbo was more than just inconvenient. It was frightening to think about the "what ifs." Like, what if both men died? The girls would go into state care.

Bayardi said her legal status as a parent never deterred her. At 49, she said, she never expected to have the legal protections of marriage.

"When we got married for the first time in 1996, we knew we wanted to have children together," she said. "And we just accepted the status quo, the legal uncertainties.

"We couldn't let the worry about 'what ifs' get in the way of us living our lives. With three kids, there's plenty of other what ifs."

 

Yeah good for them, bad for the children they're going to molest.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/gay-conn-couple-accused-rape-face-trial-article-1.1310010
http://rt.com/news/pedophile-syndicate-russian-boy-481/
http://www.rpvnetwork.org/profiles/blogs/gay-adoption-horror-duke
http://www.lukesarmy.com/content/gay-couple-allowed-sexually-abuse-adopted-son
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...jailed-for-abusing-their-foster-children.html

Yayyyyy everybody rejoice!!!

 

Interesting. These folks, some of whom have raised these children since birth, are going to molest them once they are legally adopted?

 

Who's to say they aren't already doing so?

I mean the rate of child molestation by men who have sex with men is around 27% of all total child molestations whereas gay men only represent ~2% of the population. We also know that most child molestation occurs in the home by a parent or someone they know intimately. We also know most child molestation occurs by men. And that likelihood is raised even higher because instead of having ONE male parent in the picture, they have 2 male parents.

 

I am not quite sure I understand your contention here.

SI ti simply that "gays (*)(*)(*)(*) kids"? Whilst I appreciate such things being reduced to such low intellectual levels, I am going to go out on a limb and say that pedophilia exists in all segments of society.

Why is it folks that don't like gays always seem to reject such a simplistic notion in favor of yours? Pedophilia has existed as long as their have been humans. Pedophilia and incest is lauded by the bible. Technically, if god had knocked up Mary today, he or she would be tossed in jail on statutory rape or forcible rape charges.

Yet that is always ignored in favor of the "gays (*)(*)(*)(*) kids" mantra you are putting forth.

 

Do you have some source that says specifically gay men account for 27% of all molestation's? This would be an interesting study to read. Furthermore do you classify a male who has strictly had sex with adult women their whole sexually active life, but molests a young boy as a homosexual?

 

Uh, you DO understand that these people are simply trying to change the LEGAL status of children they have already been raising since birth, right?

You may not realize it, but most people do not molest children. Mod edit flounder,,2

 

http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-wirth-verdict-0930-20140929-story.html#page=1
http://www.courant.com/breaking-news/hc-harasz-charges-dropped-1029-20141028-story.html
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/faculty_sites/rainbow/html/facts_molestation.html

My suggestion: Do a little more research before you start running your mouth.

 

I am embarrassed for my State.

I think I will go outside and (*)(*)(*)(*) on a cactus in protest!

 

I know. It is awful that these kids would have folks that love them enough, that care about them enough, that they would want to legally adopt them.

 

It all just gets me so teary-eyed....blech

 

So you want to punish all homosexuals because some of them are criminals? Isn't that sort of the same as liberals who want to ban all guns because some gun owners are criminals?

People complain about illogical solutions until such illogical solutions suddenly work in their favor. We have a word for that sort of thinking.

 

Lack of an actual argument against same-sex marriage or adoption duly noted. Thanks for your fecal contribution to the thread.

 

Lock them all up and throw away the key.

 

I think gay sex is kind of gross, too, but that's not a sound argument against same-sex marriage or adoption.

 

We do exactly that all the time. We punish all drug users because of the actions of some. We punish all incestuous participants because they have a higher chance of child molestation even though not ALL of them do it. We punish ALL children under the age of consent because of the potential and ability of others. We punish ALL drunk drivers because of the actions of others and the potential they hold to hurt others...

Why exactly should homosexuals be immune to that same line of thinking?

 

I can remember when there was a time that there were strict rules about adopting kids. The couple not only had to be married, but not too old--not past a certain age...... and able to take care of the child financially. The concern was for the kids; not about the couple adopting them. Too bad that is changing. I feel sorry for the kids who are the victims of all this experimentation.

 

We don't punish all heterosexuals because one in four girls are the victim of sexual assault before they leave their teenage years.


Keep trying to spread the hate. We will keep winning in court.

 

What kind of punishment are you referring to?

In case you didn't get the memo, you just lost in federal appeals court and it's going to the Conservative Supreme Court where you're going to lose there too.

 

Right, because only homosexual couples molest children, right?

Statistically speaking, children would be safest with a lesbian couple, since men constitute the overwhelming majority of sexual predators.

 

What are you basing this on?

Even if your stats are correct, that still leaves a significant amount of homosexual men who are not molesting children. That is why each case must be judged on an individual basis as opposed to relying on generalizations.

 

Of course not but your average homosexual male is FAR more likely to molest a child than your average heterosexual male.

Fair enough but is the risk to the children who will be permanently damaged because they were placed in a home with 2 homosexuals that, inherently, have a far higher chance of molesting them and they have ample, unlimited opportunity etc who sexually abused them... is that worth it so that a couple of homosexual women can have access to a child that wasn't even theirs in the first place?

I'd argue no.

 

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/saycrle.pdf

We apply that kind of logic to many other instances in law... including one that is almost identical. We restrict incestuous couples from marrying and/or adopting children based largely upon the higher statistical probability that they MIGHT abuse the child. Not all of them do it of course but the statistical likelihood is much higher... just like it is with homosexuals.

So why should homosexuals be immune to that same line of logic?

 

Based on...?

And why should we make these decisions based solely or primarily on averages? Shouldn't each parent be judged individually and comprehensively?

So what is an acceptable level of risk that a child may subjected to?

 

Gave you that source already.

Because sometimes the risk is too high and people don't just come out and tell you they like to have sex with little children.

I would say if the risk is comparable to what we would expect given the normal population rate then there's not too much more that can be done about it. In other words, we expect that given homosexual males represent ~2% of the population that they would also represent ~2% of the total child molestation or somewhere close to there. If that were the case there wouldn't be much of an argument for restricting their ability. But given that male on male child molestation represents MUCH more than just 2% of the total child molestations then there's certainly an argument to be made.