Louisiana forced to recognize same-sex adoption

Charlie Butts and Marty Cooper - OneNewsNow - 1/5/2009

Two California homosexuals have won a federal lawsuit, allowing both their names to be on their adopted son's Louisiana birth certificate. According to Chron.com, the state of Louisiana initially refused the request because homosexual adoption and same-sex "marriage" are illegal in that state. Oren Adar and Mickey Ray Smith then filed a lawsuit, which stated that leaving their names off the birth certificate "singles out unmarried same-sex couples and their adoptive children for the improper use of making them unequal to every one else."

Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University's law school, comments.

"What, essentially, you see happening are these other states, through the back door so to speak, bringing in same-sex unions through these other kinds of methods. It's not generally a direct, head-on, frontal assault with regards to same-sex marriage," he notes. "But the fact is, if a sister state is required to recognize same-sex adoption, even though it doesn't recognize it within the state, that is essentially a component that is a significant, central aspect of marriage."

According to Staver, that lays the legal ground for future lawsuits to mandate recognition of homosexual marriage on other states.

However, difficulties continue to arise in cases of unmarried same-sex couples who wish to adopt. Some registrars do not believe a man's name should be on the birth certificate space labeled "Mother" or a woman's name listed as "Father." The lawyer for Adar and Smith contends some states have "resolve[d] the problem" by changing the form to read "Parent 1" and "Parent 2" instead.

Staver says the federal Defense of Marriage Act needs to be amended to so that no state is forced to accept homosexual adoption that is legal in a sister state.

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Legal/Default.aspx?id=371746
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Legal/Default.aspx?id=371746

Pro-lifers push to 'stop subsidizing' abortion industry

Charlie Butts - OneNewsNow - 1/4/2009

A Kansas state senator wants to defund Planned Parenthood. Republican Senator Tim Huelskamp explains why he believes it is time to drop funding of the abortion provider. "Planned Parenthood has been under criminal investigation for nearly a year now, and they've found probable cause to have committed 107 misdemeanor and felony counts in our state," he contends.

On a national level, Planned Parenthood gets many millions of federal tax dollars and makes a sizeable profit, even though it is a nonprofit organization. "It makes no sense that hundreds of thousands of pro-life Kansans have to fork over more than $550,000 to this organization," he adds. "That's the amount we've discovered."

Huelskamp is submitting a bill to the Kansas legislature to defund the abortion provider. "I think it's time to stop subsidizing the actions of an organization that operates under a cloud of suspicion and scandal," he concludes.

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Politics/Default.aspx?id=370710

'Never Again' - combatting a culture of death

Charlie Butts - OneNewsNow - 1/4/2009

The Second International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide will be held in May in Landsdowne, Virginia.

In the aftermath of the passage of an assisted suicide constitutional amendment in Washington State, Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, says the meeting and discussion are especially important "to build a culture that rejects 'mercy killing.'"

"And the purpose of the symposium itself will be to bring together our leadership and other people who are interested in the issues of euthanasia and assisted suicide and to forge a stronger and forceful direction as to why euthanasia and assisted suicide should remain illegal and why it is a direct threat to our most vulnerable in society," he notes.

According to Schadenberg, that includes the handicapped and the elderly. While top experts will be there, he says it is important for the everyday citizen to join with them as well.

"We should all be concerned about it, but those people who are particularly wanting to do something to stop the onward thrust of this death lobby, they need to understand the directions we need to all go," he points out.

Aside from Washington, only Oregon permits doctor-assisted suicide. The theme for the symposium is "Never Again." Schadenberg says almost every leader in combating assisted suicide and euthanasia in the United Kingdom and North America will be attending or lecturing at the symposium.

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=371712

An indulgence of adult desires

By Brigitte Pellerin

Surrogate motherhood isn't about forming families; it is about satisfying adult desires.

Nothing like the Christmas season to remind us how selfish and adult-centred we should be.
No, you’re right. That doesn’t sound very good.

I have been struggling for a while now to come up with a good logical reason why I dislike stories about surrogate motherhood like this one (requires free registration to the New York Times website). In “Her Body, My Baby,” New York City writer/socialite Alex Kuczynski tells the often heart-wrenching story of how she went from wanting a baby to having a baby. It’s a journey most people go through reasonably straightforwardly but in her case it involved no end of medical complications, ultimately resolved by cutting-edge science, tens of thousands of dollars, and a spare womb inside a 43-year-old Pennsylvania substitute schoolteacher.

You should read the article for yourself, when you’re in the mood and have a good cup of coffee handy. It is very long but also very detailed, and remarkably honest for a woman famous for having written a book about plastic surgery.

I should state at the outset that I sympathize with Ms. Kuczynski’s desire to be a mother and with the pain her own inability to carry a child to term therefore caused her. I also wish to keep an open mind about the surrogate mother, Cathy, and her expressed desire to be “needed in a profound, unique way.” I admit I don’t get it (pregnancy and childbirth for the pure altruistic fun of it?), but I accept it as presented. And most importantly, I do not want to imply that Max, Ms. Kuczynski’s son, did not deserve to live. His conduct is blameless. And he’s here now, so let’s leave him out of the story. But it is possible to approve of an end and still disapprove of the means.

The question here is, why does surrogate motherhood make many of us recoil? Even so-called “gestational surrogacy,” where the surrogate mother did not contribute her egg to the equation, which is the sort Ms. Kuczynski had. In this kind of assisted pregnancy the child that emerges from the surrogate mother is the biological offspring of the parents who will raise him. He has no genetic connection to his “host mother”. The woman who carries him and nurtures him in utero and goes through the pain of childbirth for him must give him up – for, after all, he is not hers. There’s something very wrong about that. The question is, what?

Yes, the objective is to produce a child, which is good. Yes, all people involved participate voluntarily, which is good. Yes, the surrogate mother, who agreed to the arrangement, is well looked after medically and is compensated financially for her services. It does not sound like exploitation. But it is.

When the prospective parents look for a suitable candidate, they look at her reproductive history, her health, her family situation, and all manner of personal details. Even if you agree to put yourself on the rent-a-womb block, the fact remains that selecting a candidate based on her breeding record is, at the very least, crass objectifying. I’m re-reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin these days, and I can’t help seeing images of potential buyers examining the “merchandise” by looking into its mouth. Yes, its.

“Whoa, honey! Check out the size of that uterus!”

Not very dignified.

Sometimes I envy religious folks. They seem to have such a clearer view of what’s right and what’s not. For instance, the Vatican just released Dignitas Personae, a set of guidelines for the modern bio-ethics age. It reasserts that “any form of surrogate motherhood” is “illicit”.

The reasons are outlined in an earlier document, Donum Vitae:

“Surrogate motherhood represents an objective failure to meet the obligations of maternal love, of conjugal fidelity and of responsible motherhood; it offends the dignity and the right of the child to be conceived, carried in the womb, brought into the world and brought up by his own parents; it sets up, to the detriment of families, a division between the physical, psychological and moral elements which constitute those families.”

Basically, the Church appears to think that the only morally licit way to produce children is via the conjugal act between man and wife. Who knew the crusty old moralists were so keen on the fun part?

It’s all fine and good to be against offending the dignity of a child. And certainly one can object, with current techniques, to how assisted reproduction treats the other children: the discarded “superfluous” embryos, those left behind in the Petri dishes, the ones frozen and never thawed, and the ones conceived with donor gametes who will never know their genetic history. It’s also quite fine to promote conjugal fidelity and happy, fruitful marriages. But surrogacy doesn’t have to involve unfaithfulness or unhappiness. And it’s not quite enough to explain my reaction against surrogate motherhood.

No. What bothers me most about it is that it is part of a wider culture that promotes and aggressively encourages anything that lets adults indulge their every whim and fancy. On any given day, countless women go for an abortion while countless others go through invasive assisted reproductive techniques while other women wait to have their uterus chosen to carry someone else’s precious embryo or their ovaries plucked so they can sell their eggs. The only moral standard here is that whatever I want is right, and must be mine. It is not possible to build a coherently decent society on such a basis.

Methinks it’s also not a very grown-up way to behave.

Brigitte Pellerin is a writer and broadcaster based in Ottawa.

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/an_indulgence_of_adult_desires/

Prop 8 Debate with Gloria Allred and Andy Pugno January 14, 2009

http://www.townhall-la.org/programs/register/1256

Register Now

Prop 8 Debate with Gloria Allred and Andy Pugno January 14, 2009

Come weigh-in about how California defines marriage - audience Q&A to follow debate. Join Gloria Allred, attorney representing Robin Tyler and Diane Olson vs. California when she debates Andy Pugno, General Counsel for ProtectMarriage.com/Yes on Prop 8.

The debate will be moderated by Judy Muller, Associate Professor, USC Annenberg School for Communication & Correspondent, ABC News.

Allred filed with the California Supreme Court on November 5th on behalf of Robin Tyler and Diane Olson, who were the first same-sex couple to marry this June in Los Angeles County. Allred said the lawsuit will contain a new and controversial legal argument as to why Prop. 8 is unconstitutional.

Ga. Supreme Court Sponsors ‘Get Married, Stay Married’ Billboards

Note: Leah Sears has been going to conferences sponsored by the Institute for American Values, a group that share many values with the Ruth Institute.

http://abajournal.com/news/ga._supreme_court_sponsors_get_married_stay_married_billboards

By Debra Cassens Weiss

A Georgia Supreme Court commission is so concerned about the impact of broken families that it is sponsoring a dozen billboards throughout the state with the message “Get Married, Stay Married.”

Georgia Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears told the Fulton County Daily Report that she hopes the billboards will help bring down divorce and crime rates, and push fathers to stay involved in their children’s lives.

"It's our job to say to the legislature, and to the executive, 'We see and notice this,' " she told the publication. “We do more than just read cases. We see a lot of human devastation. It's my job to speak out."

Sears is promoting intact families despite her own divorce after 20 years of marriage, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. “It’s politically incorrect to say marriage has benefits,” she said. “Let’s not be afraid to say marriage is a good thing.”

The Georgia Supreme Court’s Commission on Children, Marriage and Family Law sponsored the billboards and convened a pro-marriage conference last week. Participants talked about topics ranging from the role of spirituality in supporting marriage to whether gay marriage promotes family stability. Sears moderated the gay marriage debate, but didn’t take a position. She told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the issue needs to be addressed by legislation.

The Georgia Bar Foundation paid the $50,000 cost to produce the billboards, and the Outdoor Advertising Association of Georgia donated the space, Sears said. Private foundations also picked up much of the cost of the marriage summit.

The billboards picture a happy looking family or a contented baby and carry an additional message, according to the story in the Fulton County Daily Report. The blurb on some billboards reads, "Children do better with parents together." The other message simply says, "For Children's Sake."

The billboards also list a website, www.getmarriedstaymarried.org.

Lesbian couple wins suit against Methodist camp

The Methodist Church has lost a round over homosexual unions. In March 2007 the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association refused to permit two lesbians -- Harriet Bernstein, 67, and Luisa Paster, 61 -- to stage a civil union ceremony at the church-owned Boardwalk Pavilion, and returned their check for $250. Subsequently, says Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, the lesbians filed a legal complaint against group. However, Association officials countered that the decision was based on their religious beliefs.

"That didn't make any difference to the New Jersey Division of Civil Rights," says Staver of the group that issued its determination on Monday. "They said there's no First Amendment defense here and in fact the church violated the public accommodation law in New Jersey," the attorney notes. "After New Jersey adopted the same-sex civil union law, no longer could the church allow its facility to be used in ministry to the public because to do so would open them up to these same-sex civil unions."

Staver says that puts the church in a quandary. "The church has really been put in the situation where the clash between the same-sex civil unions and the religious liberty is forcing the church to either violate its own religious freedom or open up its facility to the community," he points out.

The church lost a federal court decision dealing with the same matter, and that case is on appeal. The Camp Meeting Association is represented in the case by the Alliance Defense Fund, which has argued that a Christian organization has a constitutional right to use its facilities in a manner consistent with its beliefs. Founded in 1869, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association is affiliated with the United Methodist Church.

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Legal/Default.aspx?id=369390