Czech Minister without Portfolio Dzamila Stehlikova (Green Party) said today she is convinced that it is right time to start an all-society debate on child adoptions by homosexual couples in the Czech Republic.

She said in an on-line interview with Novinky.cz server that the debate should be started also because many children in the country grow up in institutions. "Every child has the right to parental love and care," Stehlikova said.

Same-sex couples have been able to legally enter into registered partnership since last July. A total of 235 couples have used the opportunity by end-2006. The law defines property relations, for instance, but not child adoptions.

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The Czech Republic has one of the highest numbers of children in institutional care. About 7,500 children live in child homes and another more than 1,500 live in institutions for children under three years of age.

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According to a British study, 60 children per 10,000 live in institutional care in the Czech Republic, compared with none in Slovenia and Iceland, one in Britain and two in Norway.

... Wheeler, 36, and her partner, Missy, decided to start a family together and share the Wheeler last name. In 2000, Sara Wheeler gave birth to a son, Gavin, through artificial insemination. Two years later, they decided Missy Wheeler should adopt the child and legally become his second parent.

Georgia law doesn't specifically say whether gay parents can adopt a child, so the decision was up to a judge in the Atlanta area's DeKalb County. After an adoption investigator determined that both partners wanted it, the judge cleared the request.

The couple's relationship later soured. Missy Wheeler wouldn't comment for this story, but her attorney, Nora Bushfield, said Sara became involved with someone else and wouldn't let Missy and Gavin see each other.

Sara Wheeler acknowledged the other relationship, saying "regardless of my action, it doesn't make me a bad mother."

Sara and Missy Wheeler had split by July 2004, and Missy was fighting for joint custody of the boy.

[...]

Sara Wheeler made the legal argument that, since nothing in Georgia law specifically allowed gay adoption, the adoption should be tossed out. Her first lawyers warned her the case could set gay rights back a century.

She hired a new attorney and asked the DeKalb County court to toss the adoption that she had previously pushed for, claiming it should never have been approved because it runs afoul of state law.

Sara said she felt like she had no choice. "I'm not doing anything else a mother wouldn't do to fight for her son," she said. "Some people may think it's the unthinkable, but if they were put in my shoes, they'd do the same thing."

It didn't go so well. Her lawsuit seeking to throw out the adoption was rejected by the DeKalb County judge and then the state Court of Appeals. Then the Georgia Supreme Court, in a 4-3 vote in February, declined to hear the case. Only months earlier the court had upheld the state's constitutional ban on gay marriage, which Georgia voters overwhelmingly approved in 2004.

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Sara Wheeler is asking the state Supreme Court to reconsider her case. Such a request rarely succeeds, but the narrow vote gives her hope that one justice might be swayed. "There's nothing that states this is an acceptable adoption," she said. "If Georgia wants to allow it, it needs to make proper laws."

As the legal motions flew back and forth, the two women established a workable routine. The 7-year-old boy goes to Missy Wheeler's place every other weekend and on Tuesday nights. The rest of the time Sara Wheeler ferries him to karate practice, plays tag with him outside her apartment and takes him out for pizza every Friday.

The case has taken a toll on Sara. Aside from a few gay friends, she has turned away from the gay community. She no longer dates, and doesn't go to gay clubs or events any more. She said she is rethinking whether she is still a lesbian or whether she should abandon dating for good. "I just don't feel comfortable in that scene," she says. "I'm just trying to figure it all out."

"Before I'm anything - gay or lesbian - I'm a mother," she says. "And the most important thing is to make sure my son has a relationship with his biological mother."

One hundred and thirty million dollars: That’s what banning adoptions by gay and lesbian couples will cost the the US foster care system. Per year. The Williams Institute at the UCLA Law School released the results of a study today on gay and lesbian adoptive parents. Using census data, the Williams Institute found that not only can gays and lesbians be good parents, not only are same-sex couples already adopting and parenting children, but same-sex couples often possess the very traits that state agencies look for when they’re recruiting foster parents:



Another interesting finding: While half of gay men say they want to be parents, only 41% of lesbians do.

Why will it costs the states money if they ban adoptions by same-sex couples? Because there are already half a million children in foster care right now, and 100,000 children waiting to be adopted. Gays and lesbians are often willing to adopt children that same-sex couples are not: older children, infants with HIV, children with drug and alcohol exposure. Remove same-sex couples from the pool of potential adoptive parents and more children will remain in foster care longer. Some will remain in foster care forever.

We estimate the possible financial cost to states if they were to limit or deny GLB people the ability to foster, which could displace 9,000 to 14,000 children if pursued nationally.

Today SB959, a bill that would have banned lesbians, gays and cohabitating couples in a sexual relationship from adopting or being foster parents was stopped in the Arkansas House Judiciary Committee. Senator Womack was forced to present the bill without a House sponsor. At the end of the testimony and Senator Womack's closing remarks the bill failed to move forward due to a failure to obtain a do-pass motion.

The efforts of Representative Kathy Webb could be seen throughout the session and were a cornerstone of the defeat. We also had assistance from others on the Committee, again directly attributable to Representative Webb. Also supporting Representative Webb was an amazing coalition of Arkansas groups and individuals who opposed this bill. The hard work of all of the collaborating groups was clearly evident as we presented our opposition to this heinous legislation.

The groups included CAR, the ACLU, Stonewall Democrats, Arkansas Citizens First Congress, and the Arkansas Equality Yahoo group out of NW Arkansas. Sarah Scanlon a Regional Field Director for the Human Rights Campaign was also on hand for the past two weeks providing the support of HRC.

One of the largest adoption websites in the world is being sued for refusing to accept a listing from a gay couple.

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The website, which offers a service for birth parents to find couples who want to adopt their child, claimed it had a right under the First Amendment of the US Constitution to refuse the gay couple's listing.

U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton rejected that free speech argument.

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Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Centre for Lesbian Rights, said that state laws which outlaw discrimination should apply to adoption.com

"They are the biggest internet company based on that service. They have a near monopoly.

"They do more business with people in California than any other state," he told AP.

Mary Cheney gave birth today to perhaps the most anticipated baby in contemporary U.S. politics -- her first child, Samuel David Cheney, whom she will raise with her longtime partner Heather Poe.

The 8-pound, 6-ounce boy is the sixth grandchild for Dick Cheney. The vice president and his wife Lynne, both beaming, posed for a photo with the baby just hours after his 9:46 a.m. birth at Washington's Sibley Hospital.

(Denver, Colorado) The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting in Denver, has 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.

''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.

''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.

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."

''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''

Treacherous, traitorous, vindictive scumbag.