Most notably, in a special concurrence, Justice James Nelson argued against discrimination:

“Naming it for the evil it is, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is an expression of bigotry.

“Lesbian and gay Montanans must not be forced to fight to marry, to raise their children and to live with the same dignity that is accorded heterosexuals…

“I remain absolutely convinced that homosexuals are entitled to enjoy precisely the same civil and natural rights as heterosexuals, as a matter of constitutional law.”

Montana state law, however, still does not allow both members of a same-sex partnership to adopt.

Barbara Maniaci, Kulstad’s partner of 10 years, adopted the children while the two were in a relationship. After they broke up in 2006, Kulstad filed for parenting rights.

In April, Kulstad received joint custody of the kids but Maniaci, now married to a man, appealed the judge’s decision to the higher court.

Justice Brian Morris said:

“Maniaci cannot rewrite the history of the fact that she and Kulstad lived together for more than 10 years and jointly raised the minor children in the same household.”

The Supreme Court decision, 6-1, affirms Kulstad’s rights as a parent.

Kulstad spoke at a News conference outside of the Supreme Court last week stating:

“I want what every parent wants. I want to love my children and care for them. I am looking forward to being in their lives for the rest of my life, to see them graduate from high school, get married and have children of their own.”

According the Billing Gazette, the boy, 9, and the girl, 6, live with Maniaci and her husband.

With the law awaiting President Tabare Vazquez’s signature, gay rights groups have been celebrating the prospect that Uruguay could become the first country in Latin America to give gay and lesbian couples the opportunity to adopt.

But nowhere in the law does it specifically say that homosexual couples have a right to adopt. And in some places, it suggests otherwise — for example by specifying how the child should take a mother and father’s surnames.

Lawyers, judges and even the law’s own authors now have doubts about how the law will be applied.

Under Vazquez, Uruguay already legalized gay civil unions and ended a ban on homosexuals in the military, despite strong disapproval from the Roman Catholic Church.

The church also campaigned against the adoptions law, which shifts much of the decision-making to the national Institute of Children and Adolescents, and away from a system in which individual lawyers, notaries and religious groups had a central role.

The new law would drop a requirement that children can only be adopted by legally married couples or single parents.

Deputy Margarita Percovich, who wrote the law, acknowledged that it doesn’t directly mention same-sex adoptions, but said it would enable them because gays and lesbians already can legally form civil unions, and “the law enables couples in civil unions to adopt children without impediment.”

But Attorney Juan A. Ramirez, an expert in civil rights law, told the leading newspaper El Pais that judges still won’t be able to approve same-sex adoptions, because this intent isn’t explicitly described in the law.

“Any objective interpretation of the law would conclude that either they forgot to mention that gay couples can adopt, or they didn’t want to mention it. They didn’t want to take the bull by the horns and resolve it clearly — they left it undefined,” he said.

Family judge Estrella Perez said the judges association now plans to meet “to see how to resolve these doubts.”

“We all have them.”

And a lawyer for the institute, Edgard Marzarini, told reporters that he doesn’t know how to resolve a same-sex adoption given the law’s requirement that a child take a mother and father’s surnames: “These are the holes that later give us problems.”

The state is appealing a Miami-Dade County judge’s November 2008 ruling that the law is unconstitutional. The ruling came in the case of Martin Gill, who along with his partner has adopted two young boys. The appeals court is hearing arguments Wednesday in Miami.

State attorneys say the judge essentially legislated from the bench and that state lawmakers should decide the matter. Attorneys for Gill and the two boys say the judge was expected to review the facts in detail before making her decision.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Gill, calls Florida’s gay adoption ban the broadest such law in the nation.

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Thursday overturned a 2008 lower court decision that annulled the adoption.

At issue was whether it was legal for a judge to allow Olive Watson to adopt Patricia Spado in 1991 in Knox County, where the longtime partners spent several weeks each summer on North Haven. Watson was the daughter of the late Thomas Watson Jr., who built IBM into a computer giant.

The relationship ended a year after the adoption. Thomas Watson’s heirs challenged the adoption in court in 2005.

Lawyers say the case now moves to a Connecticut probate court to determine if Spado is entitled to any of the family trust.

The court based its decision on the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the federal constitution and a Florida statute requiring Florida to honor adoption decrees from other states.

Noting that “there are no public policy exceptions to the full faith and credit which is due to judgments entered in another state,” the court concluded that “regardless of whether the trial court believed that the Washington adoption violated a clearly established public policy in Florida, it was improper for the trial court to refuse to give the Washington judgment full faith and credit.” 

A concurring opinion further noted that Embry’s “same-sex relationship with [the other parent] is irrelevant for the purpose of enforcing her rights and obligations as an adoptive parent.”  

Lara Embry had filed a petition seeking shared custody of a child she had raised with her former partner, Kimberly Ryan. The couple had two children together. Each gave birth to one child, and each adopted her non-biological child through a second-parent adoption in the state of Washington, where the family lived. The couple moved to Florida, and their relationship ended several years later. They agreed to share custody of both children and did so successfully until Ryan unilaterally decided to separate the children, who are deeply bonded as siblings, and cut off all contact between Embry and one of the children.    

The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and Leslie Talbot represented Lara in her initial suit for shared custody. In February 2008, a Florida trial court held that Florida would not recognize the couple’s second-parent adoption. NCLR, Karen Doering, and the law firm of Carlton Fields represented Lara in the appeal. Former Judge John R. Blue and Cristina Alonso, attorneys with Carlton Fields briefed and argued the case before the Second District Court of Appeal on March 18, 2009.

“We are pleased this decision resolved an important constitutional issue and protected the legal bond between adoptive parents and their children,” said Blue. “The court affirmed the longstanding rule that Florida must honor valid adoptions from other states, which ensures the permanence and stability of parent-child relationships across state lines.”

KnowThyNeighbor.org has posted the names of 83,000 Arkansas citizens who signed the anti-gay adoption and foster care petition in 2008.

“This is about responsibility and dialogue,” said Tom Lang, the director of the Massachusetts-based KnowThyNeighbor. 

“These petition signers need to stand behind their signatures and be responsible for this dehumanizing attack on the gay community. It’s disgraceful that they have chosen to exercise their prejudice at the expense of children who are now being denied access to loving adoptive and foster parents. Such activity must be challenged and cannot be allowed to pass under the cover of darkness.”

The group previously has posted online the names of over a half million anti-gay petition signers in Massachusetts and Florida.

The group behind the amendment said Wednesday that it will ask the Arkansas Legislature to pass a law prohibiting the release of petition signers’ “personal information.”

“If Arkansas doesn’t have a law prohibiting the release of petitionsigners’ personal information, we will ask the Arkansas Legislature to pass such a law next session,” said Jerry Cox, president of the Family Council Action Committee in a press release.

“This would provide equal protection to any voters who sign a ballot petition, regardless of the cause.”

But Lang defends the publication of the names saying it will lead to a dialogue between gays and opponents of gay rights.

“These conversations can be uncomfortable for both parties,” said Lang, “but they are desperately needed. 

“The more that gays and lesbians talk about the importance of their relationships and their love for their children, the faster stereotypes break down and both sides begin to realize how much they have in common.”

Although the law bans both unmarried opposite-sex couples and same-sex couples from adopting or fostering LGBT rights advocates argue the law is particularly harsh for same-sex couples who are banned from marrying in Arkansas.

Oren Adar and Mickey Smith adopted their Louisiana-born son in 2006 in a New York court, where a judge issued an adoption decree. When Smith attempted to get a new birth certificate for their child, in part so he could add his son to his health insurance, the office of Louisiana State Registrar Darlene Smith told him that Louisiana does not recognize adoption by unmarried parents and so could not issue it.

Lambda Legal filed suit on behalf of Adar and Smith in October 2007, saying that the registrar was violating the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution by refusing to recognize the New York adoption. The Constitution holds that judgments and orders issued by a court in one state are legally binding in other states as well. 

In December, U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey in New Orleans ordered the state Office of Vital Records to put the names of both fathers on the amended birth certificate.

In his ruling Zainey said failing to amend the birth certificate violated the U.S. Constitution. Zainey issued the ruling without holding a trial.

This week, Louisiana attorney general’s office asked Zainey to reconsider the ruling or order a full trial.

On Thursday, Zainey rejected the motion by Attorney General Buddy Caldwell and ordered the state to comply with his original order within 15 days.

Caldwell said he will appeal the ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He wants the court to issue an immediate stay on Zainey’s order until the appeal is heard.

Meanwhile, a bill has been hastily filed in the state legislature that would make it illegal to revise birth certificates for people who would not qualify as adoptive parents in Louisiana. That would include gay couples.

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 Attorney General’s announcement follows a complaint filed last year by Lambda Legal on behalf of a New York gay couple who were barred from posting their on-line adoptive-parent profile solely because they are a same-sex couple. The complaint said that the companies were violating New York laws prohibiting such discrimination.

In a statement, Cuomo’s office said the companies “have ceased doing business in New York effective immediately as a result of the Attorney General’s investigation into the companies’ discriminatory policies, procedures and practices.”

“New York Attorney General Cuomo has sent a clear message to all businesses that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation will not be tolerated,” said Flor Bermudez, Staff Attorney at Lambda Legal. 

“Companies can’t come into New York and hang a sign on their door saying ‘Same-sex couples need not apply.’”

Rosario Gennaro and Alexander Gardner knew for a long time that they wanted to have children and that adoption was the way to make it possible.

The couple had a home study by a licensed social worker and obtained Certification as Qualified Adoptive Parents from the New York City Surrogate Court.

The couple wanted to use the services of these companies to post their profile on ParentProfiles.com and seek a match with a birth parent.

However, the website’s eligibility requirements only allow a “Qualifying Husband and Wife Couple” to use the service. This results in discrimination against same-sex couples on the basis of sexual orientation, sex and marital status, said Lambda Legal which represents Gennaro and Gardner.

“We are thrilled that the New York Attorney General’s office made the right decision and that no couple will have to experience what we did in our effort to become parents,” said Gennaro in a statement.

The agency charges a fee for permitting prospective adoptive parents to post internet profiles, which are then viewed by birth mothers seeking to place their children for adoption.

In addition to its profiling service for parents seeking to adopt, Adoption.com lists profiles of foster children who need adoptive homes.

In 2007, the companies settled out of court a lawsuit brought by a San Jose, California same-sex couple.

Michael and Rich Butler alleged the company violated California non-discrimination law.

The company argued that because it is based in Arizona and the business was on the internet the company did have to comply with California anti-discrimination laws.

A federal court judge in San Francisco rejected the company argument and ruled that the lawsuit could proceed.

The bill would reject any unmarried couple from adopting, but opponents say it is aimed squarely at gays.

On Wednesday, close to 200 people demonstrated against the measure at the Capitol, calling the legislation “a hate bill.”

The LGBT civil rights group The Fairness Campaign organized the rally.

Among those who took part were Anthony Harland-Bennett, his partner and their 7-year old daughter. Harland-Bennett told The Associated Press that they adopted their little girl when they lived in Wisconsin, but now that they have moved to Goshen, Kentucky they may have to leave the state out of fear their daughter could be taken from them.

“Here in Kentucky, it is that hate that ought to be banned and not our family,” he told the AP. “You cannot legislate compassion. However, we can and must leave hatred and bigotry out of our laws.”

Children’s advocates also denounced the bill, saying it would deny hundreds of children in state care from living in loving homes. About 1,878 Kentucky children are eligible for adoption.

Protestors buttonholed lawmakers lobbying them to oppose the bill.  But its sponsor, state Sen. Gary Tapp (R) defended the measure denying it is aimed at gays and saying it is meant to provide children with homes that have a mother and a father.

“The bill is necessary for the welfare of our children,” he told the Courrier-Journal. “It’s a proven fact that children are better off raised in a safe, loving environment.”

The conservative Family Foundation supports the bill.

“Gay rights activists have decided this is a political issue when it is really an issue about the welfare of children,” David Edmunds, a policy analyst for The Family Foundation told the AP. “I believe that most Kentuckians understand just through common sense that children who are wards of the state deserve the most stable environment that we can find.”

Tapp’s bill is modeled after similar ban that was approved by voters in Arkansas last November.