You'll Never Think of "Gay Adoption" the Same Way Again

Gay people aren't allowed to marry each other to ensure hospital visitation, life-or-death decision making or inheritance rights. And, in several states, gay people aren't allowed to adopt children, because that would be wrong. But, at least in Maine, gay people are allowed to adopt each other to ensure that their partner inherits from them.

Now the heir to an IBM fortune, Olive Watson, is trying to un-adopt her ex-partner Patricia Spado so the partner won't have access to a grandchild's share of her ex's parents' inheritance.

It just gets more fucked up. Watson is claiming that the adoption was never valid because the two were in a sexual relationship. Which is why they undertook the adoption. There is nothing as repulsive as a gay person using the homophobia of the law to their benefit when it suits them. (Sure, the money-grabbing ex is no saint either, but could you resist a stab at the IBM fortune if it came your way?)

Watson's lawyer is also claiming that allowing her ex-partner to inherit would set a dangerous precedent: Gays, prevented from marrying, would flock to Maine to adopt each other instead. Right, because we're all a bunch of sick fucks—except Watson, who adopted her lover and is just now getting around to crying "Ew!"

Last paragraph of the New England News story: "Advocates for same-sex marriage told the newspaper that gay and lesbian couples aren't likely to pursue adoption in any state because the arrangements do not always work as intended." You can say that again.

Just in case the story isn't freaky enough, the editors paired it with a picture of a woman holding a little Chinese girl. That is obviously the best way to mark someone as a lesbian without her, say, looking like a lesbian. Never mind that it's been illegal for queers to adopt Chinese babies for some time.

The Kids Are Alright

If I ever had to go to prison, you can bet I'd call myself a woman to escape the horrors men face when they do time. Especially trans men, or small or effeminate men. But detention for women and girls brings its own torments. Most notoriously, women are raped by guards. And, according to a story from 365Gay, the girls at the two female facilities in New York State are subjected to constant, if smaller, abuses such as strip searches, verbal abuse and overuse of handcuffs.

Just as an aside, I have a hard time thinking that prison time isn't cruel and unusual punishment when we know that people are abused in these ways and denied decent health care. Doesn’t imagining yourself in jail for a year seem so awful as to be basically unimaginable and worth avoiding at all costs—even, say, pleading guilty to something you didn’t do, or turning on a friend who doesn't deserve it (which can be a real issue when drugs are involved—read Eric Schlosser's Reefer Madness)?

The 365Gay story mentions a recently settled suit in Hawaii and reports by Human Rights Watch and the ACLU on the New York facilities, which suggest that things are especially bad for trannies and queers. In Hawaii, several youth sued after being repeatedly threatened and humiliated, and in one case smeared with semen. The kids won. In New York, Alyssa Rodriguez was put in a boys ward, refused the hormones she'd been taking for years and punished for her feminine behavior. Now, she has sued and won. The facilities will enter a five-year agreement with Lambda Legal in which they will be schooled in LGBT sensitivity.

In a sense, though, the Hawaii decision is more exciting because it shows that even in states other than the few, the proud, the tolerant (California and New York) some baseline of regard for LGBT people is now considered normal. And mandatory. Maybe it's because I just started getting Google Alerts on trans issues, but it seems like a quiet trend is forming. New Jersey passed anti-discrimination laws for trans folk with its sell-out civil unions bill. And Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico and Rhode Island also include gender identity as a protected category.