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Lesbian wants court to ban gay adoptions
Filed under: Adoption, Gay Parenting
How did Sara Wheeler go from starting a family with another woman to asking a judge to ban gay adoption? The gay community has called her "self-hating," but she says "It's about motherly rights."
In 2000, Sara and her partner, Missy started a family with the shared last name of Wheeler. Sara gave birth to a son via artificial insemination, and, because Georgia has a constitutional ban on gay marriage, but no laws governing gay adoption, Missy adopted the boy to legally become his second parent two years later.
Then it all went downhill. Sara started a relationship with someone else, and subsequently wouldn't let Missy see the baby. This led to a break-up in 2004, and Missy's fight for joint custody of their boy.
In order to continue to keep Missy and the child separated, Sara then asked the court to throw out Missy's adoption, saying it violated Georgia law, and therefore should never have been approved.
So when all was said and done, the case had little to do with anyone's beliefs on whether or not gays should be able to adopt, and was instead the last-ditch effort of a woman desperate to keep a baby boy from one of his parents.
And in the end, she lost. The state's Supreme Court refused to hear the case, and now the couple operates under more or less a standard visitation agreement, with Sara as the primary caregiver. The couple's now 7-year-old son spends every other weekend and Tuesday nights with Missy, his adoptive mother, and the rest of the time with Sara, his biological mother.
Gay parents everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief.
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
3-26-2007 @ 4:16PM
Dana said...Sara Wheeler is asking the Supreme Court to reconsider her case, a request they rarely grant, but with an issue this volatile, I'd say things aren't wrapped up quite yet. As a lesbian mom, I deplore her actions. Unfortunately, she's not the only lesbian bio mom to use anti-LGBT laws to try and deny custody to a former partner, as proven by one recent case in Ohio and another debated between Virginia and Vermont. I've written more about them in my own coverage of the Wheeler case, at Mombian:
http://mombian.com/2007/03/25/lesbian-mother-asks-for-ban-on-second-parent-adoption/
Of course, it's only the sensational cases like this that make the news. The amicable breakups rarely get noticed, nor do the millions of other same-sex couples happily staying together and raising kids. I suppose that's the nature of news, though it makes it depressing to read the paper sometimes.
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3-26-2007 @ 5:29PM
LS said...I would think that those in the Gay Community would be seriously denouncing this woman. She is throwing them under the bus to solve her own problems. Actually, everyone should be ticked off at her. She's using the courts to fight her personal battle.
I know this is strange, coming from me, who is generally leery of same-sex couples (yeah, I know, REALLY bad wording. I apologize for it), mostly because I think that a kid needs the influence of both sexes, but what she is doing is completely wrong. Either deny the other parent her rights based on a good reason - like abuse, neglect, substance abuse - or suck it up and accept that this is the person that you chose to be the co-parent of your child, and taking that parent away now that he's, what, Seven? is very, very wrong.
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3-26-2007 @ 7:22PM
Ann Adams said...LS,here we are again.
Your reasoning could apply to hetero couples as well.
Without getting into the merits of same sex parenting (you know I'm not at all opposed to it), I believe that it's wrong for embattled parents to engage in a tug of war over kids.
Your last paragraph says it all.
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