“Removing this child from a loving and permanent home based exclusively on the sexual orientation of its parents is not only discriminatory, but is also counter to the overwhelming evidence that children being raised by same-sex parents are just as healthy and well-adjusted as those with different-sex parents”, Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, wrote in a letter to the commission.
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A juvenile court judge has reversed his order to remove a baby girl from her lesbian foster parents in favor of a heterosexual couple. And that’s his right.
But his duty is to follow the law.
The issue in the foster child case, according to confirmed statements from the sealed family courtroom, was that the judge, in his decision Tuesday, cited “myriad” studies that suggest adopted children fare better in households with heterosexual parents.
“We’ve been told to care for this child like a mother, and I am her mother”, Hoagland says in the KUTV report.
The couple was legally married more than a year ago and approved as foster parents after passing home inspections, background checks and interviews with the division of family services.
Even Republican Governor Gary Herbert, who had fought same-sex marriage in his state until the U.S. Supreme Court decision in June legalizing gay matrimony nationwide, had said that he was “puzzled” by the judge’s order.
Peirce said she feels like the judge made his decision without knowing much about them beyond their sexual orientation, while DCFS supports them because they know and understand their family situation.
However, that process stopped Tuesday when the judge ordered that they give up the baby.
They already are raising Peirce’s two children.
“No, I think we’d be doing exactly what we’re doing right now”, said spokeswoman Ashley Sumner. The pair were moving toward adopting the child, with the blessing of her birth mother, agency officials said. Johansen is precluded by judicial rules from discussing pending cases, Utah courts spokeswoman Nancy Volmer has said. They will have to go back before him in less than a month for a review of the case, and nothing could have made his feelings more clear than his original order, an order that was rescinded due to public and political backlash rather than because Judge Johansen had a change of heart. The state pledged to petition to the Utah Court of Appeals unless Johansen vacated his decision.
News of Johansen’s initial ruling sparked an outcry from gay rights and civil liberties advocates.
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The initial order by Johansen, who has a history of unorthodox decisions and obtained his law degree from Brigham Young University in 1977, made national headlines.
