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Loading ...Lesbian couple appeals order removing their foster child
03.11.2009 4:39pm EDT
(Charleston, West Virginia) The West Virginia Supreme Court was asked Wednesday to overturn a lower court ruling that removed a child they had reared from birth because the judge wanted the child placed with a married, opposite-sex couple.
Fayette Circuit Judge Paul Blake originally agreed to allow Kathyrn Kutil and Cheryl Hess be foster parents for the infant girl, following a positive assessment by the Department of Health and Human Resources.Court records show that the little girl was born to a drug addicted mother and the baby had cocaine, opiates and benzodiazepines in her system. Shortly after birth, the baby went through drug withdrawal. The father was unknown.
The Department placed the child with Kutil and Hess, who had been approved as foster parents, when it could not find any blood relatives of the mother.
But nearly a year later, when the couple applied to adopt the little girl, both the Department and Judge Blake balked. Last year in his ruling, Blake ordered the child, removed saying the baby should be permanently placed in a home where the parents would be a married opposite-sex couple.
The ruling said that he had agreed to allow the women to foster the child because it was the best option at the time. But he never intended it to be permanent.
“I think I’ve indicated time and time again, this court’s opinion is that the best interest of a child is to be raised by a traditional family, mother and father,” Blake’s ruling said.
In their appeal to the sate Supreme Court, the women argue that Blake exceeded his authority and violated their constitutional rights. The appeal argues that Blake is “setting a dangerous precedent” for discriminatory treatment of non-traditional families.
A different judge recently approved Kutil’s adoption of a 12-year-old girl whom she’d been fostering for over two years, the appeal notes.
West Virginia law allows either single individuals or married couples to adopt. It says nothing about same-sex couples.
The Supreme Court, when the notice of appeal was filed, issued a stay on implementing Blake’s removal order and the child remains with the couple pending a final ruling by the high court.
The justices gave no indication when that might be.
The most egregious actor in this case is the guardian ad litem who was clearly acting on religious beliefs rather than in the best interest of the child.
Menstruator! are you calling straight Brad Pitt who donated $100,000 dollars to the fight against Prop H8 “The Devil”? Are you calling my straight parents brought me a future gay man into the world “The Devil”?
Are you calling the straight “breeders” who help keep bringing GLBTs in the world and love their GLBT children “the devil”?
Are you calling Ellen Degeneres’ straight mom who loves and supports Ellen and who supports gay people and their rights the devil?
Are you calling Dennis and Judy Shepherd who loved their son Matthew and march out to defend his memory and speak out again and again and again in many places to “stop the hate” you call them the devil?
Are you calling the many fair-minded straights who step up to fight for gay rights even though sometimes we gays aren’t around to fight for our own rights, you call those people the devil?
Until we gays (who aren’t getting any younger) work to “breed” our own future GLBT generations, then we are sadly hypocrites to call straights “the devil”
for the straights are the ones who guarantee that there will always be future ungrateful GLBTs to slam them when we GLBTs haven’t the guts and the fortitude to do our own work of guaranteeing future generations of GLBTs.
It takes ONLY ONE GENERATION OF NEVER REPRODUCING to guarantee that are no future GLBT Finns, South Africans, Canadians, New Zealanders, Armenians, Greeks or Americans for that matter.
REPRODUCE OR PERISH OR DISAPPEAR AS A SPECIES, RACE, GROUP, NATIONALITY, AS A PEOPLE MADE UP OF ENDLESS DIVERSITY whatever the case may be.
Those are the hard facts of life, of biology.
To call straights AS AN ENTIRE GROUP the devil is repulsive and senseless, the only ones who earn that kind of title are those like this judge who both gives and then late takes away. He would have caused far less heartbreak if he NEVER GRANTED THIS FOSTER CARE IN THE FIRST PLACE causing this couple to successfully raise the girl for a while, become attatched to her and then rip her out of their arms and give her to this straight couple who did not guarantee her survivor in her infancy which is one of most vulnerable periods of a child’s life.
That is truly evil. That judge is evil.
Brad Pitt and Betty Degeneres are very good people who just want gay people to be happy. My straight parents and my straight stepmother loved me.
All this above is why I stand up for straight people AS A GENERAL GROUP and defend them from sad, misguided and mean-spirited attacks from embittered and caustic members of my own community.
Clearly the breeders do better jobs than us! Look at Tim Kretschmer! And Michael McLendon. They were raised by pathetic hetties and they turned out to be fine mass murderers.
Octomom? Would the world rather have a woman alone raising 14 kids than have my gay hands on them?
It’s also a way to force women into preggers submission. Take away or make adoption difficult so us desperate baby needing dykes will need some swimmies… and breed…
Either way, straight people are the devil.
How sad as other Americans stand by and allow this to happen.
If by very bad luck this little baby actually gets taken away from this loving same sex couple and gets placed with an opposite sex couple. And a few years down the line, we find out that one of the opposite sex parental units goes wacko and shoots everybody in the household. This judge can say that the child was still better off in that household. The experiment was a success.
I REALLY THINK NOT. AND I WOULD NEVER WANT THIS TO HAPPEN TO ANYBOIES FAMILY. For the most part the belief in all of the scriptures should be kept out of the courts. Lets see how well this judge keeps all 400 plus commandments. Does he have a slave – I think not. And so on and so on. This Loving couple are very much wanting to open up theur family and raise the little girl in their home. She has already bonded to these two and that should be that. Next time the judge should force any opposite sex couple to take a little baby (with the same or different problems) into their home when they only ones available are same sex couples. And lets see what happens then.
Love makes a family. Nothing more nothing less. It would be a crime to remove this baby from the loving foster parents that have bonded with it. Most child experts and not bigoted judges would say removing the baby will do this child harm and cause her to have abandonment issues. As a gay parent that adopted with my partner 9 years ago my heart goes out to this family.
Tom in Long Beach
The judge has already demonstrated he’s unfit to be on the bench. These women have made the effort to care for a child whose needs can’t be known. “I never intended permanent placement?” Yeah, since there are so many options in West Virginia, that burgeoning center of capitalism. It’s pointless, and all it does is hurt the kids who need a loving home and the adults willing to provide one. Actions like this make all of us poorer. Who’s to say what this child can accomplish in a home with loving parents? At the least, it’s better than Mama showing them how to get high.
these women were good enough to give a crack baby when no one else would take on the burden, they forget the child will bond with the parents and don’t take the child’s well being into account when they call for the removal of the child. How sad, for the child. wish these people were removed from their homes when they were young, they might thing differently
Why? Because they can. Like they need another reason.
Oh! this is quite sad. Now they are taking our kids away?!! hmm…. I’m still wondering why people go to extremes to hurt others.