Saturday, August 18, 2007

State Will Not Appeal Gay Adoption Ruling




Oklahoma Won't Appeal Gay Adoption Ruling
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff

Posted: August 17, 2007 - 3:00 pm ET


(Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) Oklahoma will not take its fight against same-sex couples who jointly adopt children out of state to the US Supreme Court a spokesperson for the state Health Department said Friday.

"This is a monumental decision, not just for the couples involved in the case, but for lesbian and gay parents and their children nationwide," said Jon Davidson, Legal Director of Lambda Legal.

"It means that when same-sex couples have an adoption decree recognizing both of them as parents, the adoption, and their status as their child's parents, must be honored no matter where they go."

Earlier this month the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that struck down an Oklahoma law described as being so extreme it had the potential to make children adopted by same-sex couples in other states legal orphans when the families are in Oklahoma. (story)

''We hold that final adoption orders by a state court of competent jurisdiction are judgments that must be given full faith and credit under the Constitution by every other state in the nation,'' the 10th Circuit said in its ruling.

Although single gays may become the parent of adoptive children same-sex couples in Oklahoma were barred from adopting and the law allowed the state to invalidate adoptions where couples have been awarded joint parenting rights in states where co-adoption is legal.

The Adoption Invalidation Law, hastily passed at the end of the 2004 Oklahoma legislative session, had said that Oklahoma "shall not recognize an adoption by more than one individual of the same sex from any other state or foreign jurisdiction."

Lambda Legal, representing same-sex couples took the state to court. Lambda represented two same-sex couples and their families who adopted children while living in other states and later moved to Oklahoma or want to visit the state with their family

Lambda Legal argued that the law was unconstitutional based on the United States Constitution's guarantees of equal protection, due process and right to travel, as well as the mandates of the Full Faith and Credit Clause.

A year ago U. S. District Judge Robin Cauthron declared the Oklahoma law unconstitutional and the state appealed to the 10th Circuit.

Health Department attorney Tom Cross said Friday that the department will not consider appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court because it does not believe that theU.S. Supreme Court would take up the case.

"We will be issuing birth certificates for all adoptions, whether same-sex or not, for children born in Oklahoma," Cross said.

©365Gay.com 2007


http://www.365gay.com/Newscon07/08/081707ok.htm

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Same Sex Couples Targeting Faith Based Organizations

From the Family Research Council August 14, 2007:


Faith in the Crosshairs

As same-sex couples chip away at the moral resistance to their lifestyle, it's obvious that their sights are now set on the religious community. Just this week, High Point Church in Texas--where I've preached twice--has come under fire for refusing to host a homosexual man's memorial service. The church had initially agreed to the service because the deceased was the brother of a church employee. However after the church discovered the man was a homosexual and that the memorial service would celebrate the homosexual lifestyle with suggestive photos and music from an openly gay men's chorus, the church's pastor, Gary Simons, withdrew the offer to host the event in the sanctuary. The church secured another location, and catered lunch, at the church's expense, that would meet the needs of the family and not subject their sanctuary to being used to celebrate homosexuality. As Pastor Simons told his congregation this past Sunday, "This decision was not based on hate or discrimination but upon principle and policy. We cannot glorify homosexuality as a lifestyle." Unfortunately, reporters who are sympathetic to the homosexual agenda refuse to see the incident for what it is--an exercise in religious freedom. Churches and clergy have every right to refuse their services or property for activities that violate their religious beliefs. However, as Pastor Simons would say, that doesn't mean he or his congregation have any less compassion for the man's family. It simply means they refuse to honor a lifestyle that is sinful in God's eyes. Some New Jersey Methodists can certainly empathize with the negative press that High Church has received. After rejecting a lesbian couple's request to hold a civil union ceremony on their property, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association now finds itself in the middle of a government investigation. The Ocean Grove leadership announced yesterday that they are filing suit against the state for religious intimidation. For more on how your church can protect itself against similar attacks, order our new DVD, "Censoring the Church and Silencing Christians."

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Gay Adoption Now Recognized in Oklahoma

From NewsOK: http://newsok.com/article/3098600/

Sat August 4, 2007

Victory for gay adoptive parents

By Robert E. Boczkiewicz
Special Correspondent

DENVER — The federal appeals court in Denver on Friday struck down Oklahoma's law that bans state recognition of out-of-state adoptions by same-sex parents.

The ruling is a victory for gay and lesbian couples who adopt children. It is a defeat for Oklahoma legislators who passed the law in 2004 and for the Oklahoma Department of Health, which sought to uphold the law.

"We hold that final adoption orders by a state court of competent jurisdiction are judgments that must be given full faith and credit under the Constitution by every other state in the nation,” the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded in a 35-page decision.

"Because the Oklahoma statute at issue categorically rejects a class of out-of-state adoption decrees, it violates the Full Faith and Credit Clause” of the U.S. Constitution, the judges wrote.

The Constitution states that "Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.”

Accordingly, they affirmed a ruling last year by U.S. District Judge Robin Cauthron in Oklahoma City that declared the law unconstitutional.

The Health Department, which issues birth certificates, had appealed Cauthron's ruling.

Three sets of same-sex parents had sued to strike down the law, arguing that it unconstitutionally singled out a specific group for discrimination.

A top lawyer for the department, Thomas Cross, said department officials have not seen Friday's decision and therefore could not yet comment on it.

Cross, speaking from Oklahoma City, said officials may be able to comment Tuesday after department attorneys on Monday review the decision and brief top managers of the department.

An attorney for the same-sex parents, Kenneth Upton, speaking from his office in Dallas, said, "We're just real happy for these parents and their kids.”

Upton, of the gay-rights group, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, said no other state has a similar law. "This was the most extreme example of punishing children because you don't approve of their parents.”

He said the law punished children because it legally orphaned them. "What the state was saying (to the children) is that they are not your parents. That is just wrong.”

"I think it (the law) jeopardized the safety and well-being of children” by not recognizing the adoptive parents as legal parents, Upton said.

Friday's decision directed the Health Department to issue a new birth certificate for "E.D.,” a child who was born in Oklahoma but adopted in California by a lesbian couple.

Attorney General Drew Edmondson, in a legal opinion to the department, said the Full Faith and Credit Clause required Oklahoma to recognize any validly issued out-of-state adoption decree. A month later, legislators passed the 2004 law.

All three judges of the court panel that considered the case agreed the department must issue the birth certificate.

Two of the three judges formed the majority declaring the law unconstitutional. They are David Ebel of Denver and Terrence O'Brien of Cheyenne, Wyo. The third judge, Harris Hartz of Albuquerque, N.M., said it was not necessary to decide whether the law is constitutional.

He reached that conclusion because he said that the department conceded, once the case reached the appeals court, that the law being challenged "does not preclude issuance” of the certificate for "E.D.”

Hartz said the department, when the case got to the higher court, argued that laws other than the one the parents challenged prohibit issuance of the certificate.

Because the department never made that argument to Cauthron, the appeals court should not consider it, Hartz said.

Friday, August 03, 2007

Child Custody in Out of State Same Sex Marriages

The following is a column printed in Town Hall Daily August 3, 2007. In light of the Oklahoma lesbian divorce case currently before the Oklahoma Supreme Court it is very pertinent here:

--------------------------------------

You’re Not My Mommy

By Matt Barber
Thursday, August 2, 2007

Jesus said, “But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh.” (Mark 10: 6-8, NKJV)

Virginia resident Lisa Miller – now a born-again Christian – and her beautiful five-year-old daughter Isabella find themselves immersed in a nightmarish custody battle. But this battle is unlike most others. The person trying to take Isabella away from her mother is entirely unrelated to the little girl and is essentially a total stranger. She’s lesbian Janet Jenkins, a woman with whom Lisa had at one time been homosexually involved.

By her own account, emotional problems brought on by a series of events — including abandonment by her father, abuse by her mentally ill mother and a decade long struggle with alcoholism now overcome — eventually led Lisa Miller into the lesbian lifestyle. In 1999, Lisa began a homosexual relationship with Jenkins after coming out of a legitimate marriage that ended in divorce.

Jesus said, “But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh.” (Mark 10: 6-8, NKJV)

Virginia resident Lisa Miller – now a born-again Christian – and her beautiful five-year-old daughter Isabella find themselves immersed in a nightmarish custody battle. But this battle is unlike most others. The person trying to take Isabella away from her mother is entirely unrelated to the little girl and is essentially a total stranger. She’s lesbian Janet Jenkins, a woman with whom Lisa had at one time been homosexually involved.

By her own account, emotional problems brought on by a series of events — including abandonment by her father, abuse by her mentally ill mother and a decade long struggle with alcoholism now overcome — eventually led Lisa Miller into the lesbian lifestyle. In 1999, Lisa began a homosexual relationship with Jenkins after coming out of a legitimate marriage that ended in divorce.

In 2000, soon after Vermont became the first state to legalize homosexual “civil unions,” Miller and Jenkins made a weekend trek from Virginia to Vermont to enter into such a “union.” They then headed back to Virginia where they lived together.

In 2001, Lisa was artificially inseminated after the two decided to raise a child in an unnatural, deliberately fatherless home environment as self-deluded “wife” and “wife” — mother and “mother.”

In August of 2002, Miller and little Isabella, now just a few months old, moved to Vermont with Jenkins. However, things were unstable, and according to Lisa Miller, Jenkins was physically and emotionally abusive. “It was a troubled relationship from the beginning,” Lisa told World Magazine in a recent interview. “The relationship did not improve, as Jenkins — working as a nightshift security guard — grew increasingly bitter and controlling,” reported World.

About a year later, when Isabella was less than a year and a half old, Lisa ended her lesbian relationship, took her daughter back home to Virginia and filed for dissolution of her homosexual “civil union” back in Vermont.

And that’s when the nightmare really began.

Although Jenkins had no parental connection to Isabella (she was neither an adoptive parent, nor biologically related) she filed papers in Vermont in 2003 to try to take Isabella from her mother. Even though the child was conceived, born and living in Virginia, the Vermont court nonetheless held that it had jurisdiction. The legal battle has continued since that time, and incredibly, the court recently ruled that Jenkins possessed parental rights over Lisa’s daughter. It granted Jenkins regular and very liberal visitation. Isabella is now required to make the several hundred mile roundtrip journey from Virginia to Vermont every other week to visit a total stranger (Jenkins) who, according to reports, outrageously forces the confused and traumatized little girl to call her “momma.”

Rena M. Lindevaldsen, who is an attorney with Liberty Counsel and is representing Lisa and Isabella Miller, explains, “After Lisa ended her relationship with Janet, when Isabella was only 17 months old, Lisa became a born-again Christian. For the past three years, she has attempted to raise her child according to Biblical principles. According to recent filings by Janet, however, Janet believes that Lisa’s religious beliefs render Lisa incapable of properly parenting Isabella. As the fit, biological parent of Isabella, it is Lisa, not Janet, who has the fundamental right to decide how to raise her child and with whom she visits. Shockingly, when the Vermont courts declared Janet, a woman who is still actively involved in the homosexual lifestyle, to be Isabella’s parent and set a liberal schedule for visitation between Janet and five-year-old Isabella, the court did not even address Lisa’s fundamental parental rights.”

So Jenkins, a woman entirely unrelated to Isabella, and her attorneys are alleging that because Lisa is now a devout Christian, she is unfit to maintain custody of her own daughter. They filed a motion requesting a hearing to determine whether Isabella should be taken from her mother and given to Jenkins. Unbelievably, the judge granted that motion. The hearing is scheduled to take place on Friday, August 3.

But that’s only one in a series of inexplicable rulings by this Vermont court. The court has additionally ruled, essentially, that its own judicial authority is superior to that of both Virginia — which defines marriage as existing only between one man and one woman — and the federal government.

Lindevaldsen further explains, “The Vermont order declaring Janet to be Isabella’s parent is inextricably tied to the underlying civil union. Virginia statutes and a recent constitutional amendment prohibit recognition of any rights arising from same-sex relationships. Those laws, coupled with the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), should have led the Virginia Court of Appeals to refuse to give full faith and credit to the Vermont parentage and custody orders. Instead, the Virginia court declared that Virginia must recognize the Vermont orders. In other words, the Virginia court rendered meaningless the DOMA and the recently passed Virginia constitutional amendment. Based on this recent decision, policy decisions in Virginia on family and marriage now will be set by states like Vermont and Massachusetts.” The Virginia Supreme Court has yet to decide whether it will take the case on appeal.

Lisa and Isabella’s story tragically demonstrates that it’s all too often children who are ultimately victimized by state recognized immorality. It’s the children who suffer when adults selfishly depart from God’s intended design for human sexuality and marriage — as reaffirmed by Christ’s teachings in the New Testament — and enter into counterfeit homosexual “civil-unions” or “same-sex marriages.”

Although Lisa and Isabella’s situation is both heartbreaking and unjust, it shouldn’t be at all surprising. In the name of so-called “gay rights,” the militant homosexual lobby has made its position crystal clear. The selfish individual interests of those who define themselves based upon a choice to engage in deviant homosexual behaviors supersede the best interests of everyone else. … even children.

And certainly, where newfangled “gay rights” come into conflict with time-honored and constitutionally guaranteed First Amendment religious liberties, the demands of homosexual activists trump the First Amendment every time.

Lisa and little Isabella are just two of the latest victims of this radical and aggressive homosexual code of conduct.

Regrettably, there will be more.

In 2001, Lisa was artificially inseminated after the two decided to raise a child in an unnatural, deliberately fatherless home environment as self-deluded “wife” and “wife” — mother and “mother.”

In August of 2002, Miller and little Isabella, now just a few months old, moved to Vermont with Jenkins. However, things were unstable, and according to Lisa Miller, Jenkins was physically and emotionally abusive. “It was a troubled relationship from the beginning,” Lisa told World Magazine in a recent interview. “The relationship did not improve, as Jenkins — working as a nightshift security guard — grew increasingly bitter and controlling,” reported World.

About a year later, when Isabella was less than a year and a half old, Lisa ended her lesbian relationship, took her daughter back home to Virginia and filed for dissolution of her homosexual “civil union” back in Vermont.

And that’s when the nightmare really began.

Although Jenkins had no parental connection to Isabella (she was neither an adoptive parent, nor biologically related) she filed papers in Vermont in 2003 to try to take Isabella from her mother. Even though the child was conceived, born and living in Virginia, the Vermont court nonetheless held that it had jurisdiction. The legal battle has continued since that time, and incredibly, the court recently ruled that Jenkins possessed parental rights over Lisa’s daughter. It granted Jenkins regular and very liberal visitation. Isabella is now required to make the several hundred mile roundtrip journey from Virginia to Vermont every other week to visit a total stranger (Jenkins) who, according to reports, outrageously forces the confused and traumatized little girl to call her “momma.”

Rena M. Lindevaldsen, who is an attorney with Liberty Counsel and is representing Lisa and Isabella Miller, explains, “After Lisa ended her relationship with Janet, when Isabella was only 17 months old, Lisa became a born-again Christian. For the past three years, she has attempted to raise her child according to Biblical principles. According to recent filings by Janet, however, Janet believes that Lisa’s religious beliefs render Lisa incapable of properly parenting Isabella. As the fit, biological parent of Isabella, it is Lisa, not Janet, who has the fundamental right to decide how to raise her child and with whom she visits. Shockingly, when the Vermont courts declared Janet, a woman who is still actively involved in the homosexual lifestyle, to be Isabella’s parent and set a liberal schedule for visitation between Janet and five-year-old Isabella, the court did not even address Lisa’s fundamental parental rights.”

So Jenkins, a woman entirely unrelated to Isabella, and her attorneys are alleging that because Lisa is now a devout Christian, she is unfit to maintain custody of her own daughter. They filed a motion requesting a hearing to determine whether Isabella should be taken from her mother and given to Jenkins. Unbelievably, the judge granted that motion. The hearing is scheduled to take place on Friday, August 3.

But that’s only one in a series of inexplicable rulings by this Vermont court. The court has additionally ruled, essentially, that its own judicial authority is superior to that of both Virginia — which defines marriage as existing only between one man and one woman — and the federal government.

Lindevaldsen further explains, “The Vermont order declaring Janet to be Isabella’s parent is inextricably tied to the underlying civil union. Virginia statutes and a recent constitutional amendment prohibit recognition of any rights arising from same-sex relationships. Those laws, coupled with the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), should have led the Virginia Court of Appeals to refuse to give full faith and credit to the Vermont parentage and custody orders. Instead, the Virginia court declared that Virginia must recognize the Vermont orders. In other words, the Virginia court rendered meaningless the DOMA and the recently passed Virginia constitutional amendment. Based on this recent decision, policy decisions in Virginia on family and marriage now will be set by states like Vermont and Massachusetts.” The Virginia Supreme Court has yet to decide whether it will take the case on appeal.

Lisa and Isabella’s story tragically demonstrates that it’s all too often children who are ultimately victimized by state recognized immorality. It’s the children who suffer when adults selfishly depart from God’s intended design for human sexuality and marriage — as reaffirmed by Christ’s teachings in the New Testament — and enter into counterfeit homosexual “civil-unions” or “same-sex marriages.”

Although Lisa and Isabella’s situation is both heartbreaking and unjust, it shouldn’t be at all surprising. In the name of so-called “gay rights,” the militant homosexual lobby has made its position crystal clear. The selfish individual interests of those who define themselves based upon a choice to engage in deviant homosexual behaviors supersede the best interests of everyone else. … even children.

And certainly, where newfangled “gay rights” come into conflict with time-honored and constitutionally guaranteed First Amendment religious liberties, the demands of homosexual activists trump the First Amendment every time.

Lisa and little Isabella are just two of the latest victims of this radical and aggressive homosexual code of conduct.

Regrettably, there will be more.

Matt Barber is one of the "like-minded men" with Concerned Women for America and serves as CWA's policy director for cultural issues.

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