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Same-sex couple win birth certificate fight
By Janet McConnaughey
The Associated Press
December 28, 2008
NEW ORLEANS
A same-sex couple
in California has won a federal court ruling that their adopted son's
Louisiana birth certificate must bear the names of both adoptive
fathers.
The facts are so clear that no trial is needed, U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey wrote.
Louisiana's Office of Vital Records must give full faith and credit to
the New York state court in which Oren Adar and Mickey Ray Smith, of
San Diego, adopted the boy, he ruled Monday. The office had refused to
issue a birth certificate listing both as the boy's legal parents. The
state could appeal the decision.
Adar and Smith say they have
practical and emotional reasons for wanting both of their names on the
birth certificate of the boy, identified only as "J.C. A.-S."
Because Smith's name wasn't on the document, his employer initially
refused to enroll the child on his insurance, Smith wrote in a sworn
statement. Smith, an accountant, is the family's breadwinner.
The administrator eventually agreed to cover the boy, but "I am forced
to go through this process each and every year" to keep him insured,
Smith wrote.
J. was born about eight weeks prematurely in
Shreveport, in late 2005. He spent his first month in the hospital, and
weighed 5 pounds when his mother gave him to Adar and Smith that
December, according to Adar's statement.
Their adoption was made final on April 27, 2006, their lawsuit states.
Refusing to name both fathers on the birth certificate "singles out
unmarried same-sex couples and their adoptive children for unequal
treatment for the improper purpose of making them unequal to everyone
else," said the lawsuit filed by Regina O. Matthews, of New Orleans,
and Kenneth D. Upton Jr., of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund
Inc. of Dallas.
Louisiana law does not let two unmarried people
adopt a child together, regardless of sex, wrote Carol L. Haynes,
representing the state Health Department and Registrar Darlene W. Smith.
Earlier this month, New York state officials decided to let married
same-sex couples list both their names on their children's birth
certificates.
Zainey wrote that Louisiana law requires a new
certificate when it gets an adoption decree, and the law does not
include any limits or restrictions.
The Louisiana vital
records office is part of the state Department of Health and Hospitals.
Neither Haynes nor a DHH spokeswoman immediately answered a query
e-mailed Saturday about whether Louisiana will appeal.
Many of these folks from the religious right who have issues with people living "alternative" lifestyles are the first to say things like, "We are all equal in God's eyes." I don't understand their reasoning, their arrogance or the intolerance!