Kentucky Appeals Court Says Gay/Lesbian Couples Cannot Adopt Children As "Step Parents".

Read more from the C-J, until I can post the opinion here and analyze it.

But if you insist on an excerpt from the C-J, here it is:

In a harshly worded opinion, the Kentucky Court of Appeals has barred judges from allowing lesbians to adopt as though they are a stepparent.
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Ruling 3-0 in a Jefferson County case, the court said that stepparent adoptions are allowed only when the stepmother or father is married to the biological parent, and marriages between gays are forbidden by both statute and Kentucky's constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

In a 62-page ruling issued Friday about the case, the court said that with a "wink-wink" and a "nod-nod," Family Court Judge Eleanore Garber and lawyers for a lesbian couple ignored those laws.

And as many as three or four family court judges in Jefferson County may have allowed such adoptions, the opinion said.

"It is not this or any court's role to judge whether the legislature's prohibition of same-sex marriage ... is morally defensible or socially enlightened," Judge Glenn Acree of Lexington wrote for the court in the decision that criticized Garber and the lawyers involved.

"Nor is it this or any court's role ... to craft any means by which the legal consequences of such a prohibition may be negated or avoided."

The case involved two women identified only as S.J.L.S. and T.L.S. and their son, identified as Z, who is now 8.

The court allowed T's adoption of Z, but only because S waited more than a year to challenge it, and Kentucky law says adoptions can't be attacked for any reason after more than one year.

Regardless of that case's outcome, however, the court said "stepparent-like adoption" does not exist under the laws of Kentucky. "We wish to make this point perfectly clear."

The ruling was condemned by the American Civil Liberties Union, which says that children of same-sex couples deserve the protection of two parents just like any other child.

"This is worrisome because any public policy that denies the child of a same-sex couple of the right to have two parents does one thing and one thing only: It harms that child," said Christine Sun, senior staff attorney for ACLU's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Task Force.
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The case took on added intrigue because a letter from the Cabinet for Families and Children to the court objecting to the adoption disappeared from the court file.
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The events leading to the case arose in 1997, when S and T met and agreed to be life partners, according to the court's opinion.

S took T's last name, legally changing her own, and later agreed to be artificially inseminated by a man picked by T. In 2001, when Z was just six weeks old, S and T moved for joint custody, which was granted.

Two years later, their relationship ended, but T had "an unquestioned and deep affection for Z," the court said, and with S's permission, she initiated adoption proceedings.

Zeller claimed the petition was "akin to a step-parent adoption" -- which doesn't require the cabinet's approval -- and wrote in a court filing that Z was T's "step-son."

A Cabinet worker wrote to Garber that T couldn't adopt Z as a stepparent because she and S weren't married, but the letter went missing. A second letter, from one of the agency's lawyers, did get to Garber, and the lawyer warned in it that if the adoption went through, S would have to terminate her rights to the child, as is routine when a mother gives up a child for adoption to a stranger.

According to the Court of Appeals, Garber knew the cabinet's position but approved the adoption in 2005 anyway, citing other states that allow stepparent-like adoptions. Garber also ruled that S wouldn't have to waive her parental rights to the child.

"Let's face it, this is a legal fiction because gay couples cannot marry in the state of Kentucky," Zeller said in Family Court, according to the Court of Appeals. "So it's a legal fiction . . . to give equal protection, equal rights, to gay couples."

Zeller also said that adoption by gays was an area in which the General Assembly "hasn't caught up with many, many people who are in the shadows of what our Christian nation views as family."

Later, after a dispute on visitation, S hired a new lawyer and challenged the adoption, and Garber agreed she had erred in granting it but decided that S waited too long to challenge it.

The Court of Appeals affirmed that decision, but denounced Zeller and S's original counsel, Bryan Gatewood, for pursuing a "stratagem so clearly contrary to statute and public policy" and trying to achieve their ends through the courts rather than the legislature.

"Unfortunately, the parties' sexuality preference or some other sympathy for their plight impaired the way legal professionals viewed the law," Acree wrote in an opinion in which Judge James Lambert joined.

Judge Michelle Keller concurred in the result only. "We cannot ignore -- and the family court should not have ignored -- the fact that the parties' relationship simply does not exist as a 'marriage' of any kind."
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Editor's comment: From the C-J story, it appears that the judges chastised by the Court of Appeals opinion were trying to make law rather than interpret, and apply, it to the facts of the case, as judges swear an oath to do.