In a sad story that's been back-and-forth in the Maryland courts for three years, a lesbian mom has been denied visitation with her child after the girl's other mother changed her mind about their post-break up arrangements. A brief summary of the story here misleadingly describes the second mom as someone who "helped raise" the child.
And here's where I go into my standard lecture about marriage really being all about divorce. Because when things go well in a same-sex headed family, folks may miss tax breaks, opportunities to insure each other and experience many other headaches, but it's when things fall apart through death or break up that tragedies happen. And most often, these tragedies happen to children.
"Helped raise" is a real misnomer in this case, because the child was adopted from India. As with pretty much all countries that "send" adoptive children to the United States, India forbids same-sex parents to adopt. Therefore when a same-sex couple adopts internationally, one partner must do the adopting as a single parent while the other sits in the closet, appearing on the homestudy paperwork--if at all--as a roommate; going to visit or collect the child as a "sister" or "friend."
If the child is not--or more often cannot be--second-parent adopted by the silent partner back in the States, the child is stuck forever with one legal parent and one "de facto" parent, whom a court may or may not choose to recognize in an emergency.
Thus it is that same-sex parents lose their children to the legal parent's parents after a death; to the legal parent after a break up.
The fact is that most same-sex parents in the United States do not have access to means to both become legal parents. The law is inconsistent, most often depending on the kindness of any given judge on any given day in court, and same-sex parenting is, at times, outright forbidden by law.
Currently Maryland, in which this sad case has been unfolding offers second-parent adoption to a same-sex partner somewhat commonly in some jurisdictions, but not so commonly in others. (It is a case of each judge's discretion.) I am unclear on whether these women had access to second-parent adoption when they got their daughter ten years ago. But regardless, 10 years of parenting makes a parent, not the luck of the draw regarding who had the best profile to try a single-parent adoption when the couple decided to become moms.
And the one who really loses here, is, of course, their daughter. Somewhere there's a ten-year old girl who's just been told by a judge that her mom is not her mom, and that her relationship to her mom will not be protected by responsible, unbiased adults.
Put yourself in that child's shoes and tell me same-sex marriage is a bad idea.
See also:
Disabled Foster Children Removed from the Care of "Compulsive" Mom
In Praise of the "Manny"
image: pueblounitedway.org
