A Utah judge has ordered a baby to be removed from the foster home of her potential adoptive parents because the couple caring for her is gay, the New Civil Rights Movement reports.
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A report from The Salt Lake Tribune says Johansen declined to produce this supposed research when pressed on the matter by attorneys for the Utah Division of Child and Family Services and the Guardian Ad Litem Office.
Its attorneys plan to review the decision and determine what options they have to challenge the order. According to Judge Scott Johansen, April Hoagland and Beckie Peirce of Carbon County, UT must surrender their baby girl so a heterosexual couple may raise the child despite the biological mother’s wishes that the couple raise the baby. The couple told KUTV (http://bit.ly/1Sjph1o ) that Judge Johansen cited research that children do better when they are raised by heterosexual couples.
The Code of Judicial Conduct precludes judges and court staff from commenting on pending cases, according to a Utah State Courts spokeswoman who confirmed the nature of Johansen’s order. Hoagland believes the judge imposed his religious beliefs.
State officials estimate there are a dozen or more foster parents who are married same-sex couples.
“It just not fair, and it’s not right and it just hurts me really badly because I haven’t done anything wrong”, Hoagland said about the incident.
“Any loving couple if they are legally married, and meet the requirements, we want them to be involved”, he said.
“We’ve been told to care for this child like a mother would and I am her mother”, she told KUTV. Together, they are already raising Ms. Peirce’s two teenage children, and they claim that the baby had thrived during the three months she was placed in their home. If the girl would have become eligible for adoption and the couple had expressed interest in taking her, the division meant to support them, he noted. “And the law, as I understand it, reads that any legally married couple can foster and adopt”. All foster families are asked to love and care for foster children as their own, which this couple was prepared to do, Platt said.
Meanwhile, Platt said, DCFS is looking for an alternate home for the infant, so as not to run afoul of Johansen’s order.
‘It also flies in the face of overwhelming evidence that children being raised by same-sex parents are just as healthy and well-adjusted as those with different-sex parents.
“For us, it’s what’s best for the child”, he said. The child’s biological mother also wants the baby to stay with the couple and has appealed the judge’s ruling.
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“Removing a child from a loving home simply because the parents are LGBT is outrageous, shocking, and unjust”.
