Miami Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman ruled Tuesday there was "no rational basis" for prohibiting gays from adopting children. Openly gay father Martin Gill will be able to keep custody of the two foster children he has cared for since 2004. The state will appeal the decision.

Gill took two half-brothers into his North Miami home after a child abuse investigator asked for his help. While the arrangement was supposed to be temporary, the state was unable to place the children elsewhere and Gil became their de facto guardian.

When Gill petitioned to adopt the children, the state, which has one of the strictest anti-gay adoption laws of the country, hauled Mr. Gill to court.

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President-Elect Barack Obama has posted his plan for LGBT Rights on the Change.gov website and it's pretty comprehensive. It is by far, the most far-ranging civil rights agenda for the gay community ever offered by a President. Because the page is swathed in a combination of hopey vagueness and legislation you may have never heard of, here's a translation of the plan from Obamican to English:

Expand Hate Crimes Legislation
Obama supports the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act

In a separate section of the site, Obama offers support for the Matthew Shepard Act, which would significantly expand the 1969 Hate Crime law, give $10 million to law enforcement to investigate hate crimes and direct the FBI to track crimes made against LGBT people. The bill passed the House and the Senate in 2007 and was attatched to a defense spending bill as an ammendment. When Bush threatened a veto, the bill was dropped. The bill has widespread support in Congress and at the state-level, so with Obama's support, this bill will most likely pass.

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Ohio's Congressional elections are turning downright despicable.

The Buckeye State's Republican party recently sent out this flier declaring that Democratic candidate Ray Pryor, a Democratic candidate for the Ohio House, supports gay adoption. Such a stance, of course, is baaaad.

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For the first time since this election started, John McCain granted gay press a bit of access into his campaign. And we do mean "a bit."

Rather than sitting down with the Washington Blade, McCain responded in writing to questions penned by publisher William Kapfer, which explains how McCain could so readily recall his words at the funeral of Mark Bingham, a gay man who helped thwart the Flight 95 attack on September 11th.

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Gay rights made some headway in Montana yesterday when Judge Ed McLean ruled that a lesbian can have parental rights over two children adopted by her former lover.

Though it was technically Barbara Maniaci who had adopted the tots - a boy and a girl - McLean says that Maniaci's ex-girlfriend Michelle Kulstad deserves a say in their rearing:

"To discriminate further against Ms. Kulstad because of her sexual preference in this day and age is no different than telling a person to go to the back of the bus because of her skin color," McLean wrote.

Attorneys for both sides have said the same-sex parental rights trial was a first for the state, whose voters in 2004 rejected same-sex marriage by about a 2-to-1 margin.
…
The judge said Kulstad must receive joint decision-making authority in the children's lives, including their health care and spiritual upbringing.

Maniaci, who is now married, was represented by Austin R. Nimocks, a legal counsel for the anti-gay Alliance Defense Fund. How far they fall!

Right-wing activists love to rail against gay adoption, largely because they think the gays are incapable of providing a stable, traditional household.

A non-partisan study says otherwise and reached a "universal professional consensus" that same-sex couples should universally be included in the adoption pool.

And the decision is motivated as much by children's needs as by economic reasoning:

"The pool of potential adoptive parents must be expanded to keep pace with the growing number of kids in foster care who are legally free for adoption," stated the report by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, which is based in New York.

Currently, about 129,000 U.S. children are in foster care, many of whom are older, have special needs and face grim prospects for finding a loving, permanent home.

Besides the emotional hardships, a national ban on gay adoptions could add $87 million to $130 million to foster care system expenditures each year, the report said, citing previous research. Not only would children who are removed from gay and lesbian homes be placed in group or institutional care, which is more costly, the state would incur the costs of recruiting and training new foster parents, researchers found.

And this nation cannot afford any extra costs.

Portuguese politicians will soon sit down to discuss the ins-and-outs of gay marriage. And though more progressive parties are actively supporting rewriting the nation's laws to allow same-sex nuptials, they have divergent views on just how many rights gays should be granted.

Both the Left Party and the Green Party agree that the current hetero-centric marriage law's wording violates the constitution, hoping to change the definition to "a solemnly formalized meeting of wills between two people who intend to build a family in full communion of life."

The Green Party's willing to allow gay people to "build a family," but, for some reason, draws the line at adoption…

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Right wing activists in Arkansas are no doubt pleased with themselves!

After receiving an extension on their bid to ban gay adoption, the Family Council Action Committee announced this week that they've gathered 24,000 new signatures, putting them well over the 61,794 quota, which they missed by 4,000 last month.

While that's good news for them, there's some trouble brewing in their bank account: the Committee raised $9,000 last month, bringing their total to almost $55,000. Too bad they've spent over $57,000.

And these are the people who think they know about responsible parenting…

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain caused a stir this weekend after telling the New York Times he doesn't support gay marriage because "both parents are important in the success of a family." Well, his communications director Jill Hazelbaker today sent out a message clarifying her candidate's message:

McCain could have been clearer in the interview in stating that his position on gay adoption is that it is a state issue, just as he made it clear in the interview that marriage is a state issue. He was not endorsing any federal legislation.

McCain's expressed his personal preference for children to be raised by a mother and a father wherever possible. However, as an adoptive father himself, McCain believes children deserve loving and caring home environments, and he recognizes that there are many abandoned children who have yet to find homes. McCain believes that in those situations that caring parental figures are better for the child than the alternative.

Well, that's good to know.

India's Manvendra Singh Gohil will reportedly adopt a child. He won't have any common child, though - he'll adopt from within his extended family.

Poland
ain't alone! Latvia came out today to protest the European Court of Human Rights' ruling this week that single gays should be able to adopt babies. Two Latvian politicos describes the law as "completely unjustified and unacceptable". The dominant political parties say it refuses to compare gay people with "families". How quaint…

The Polish government continues its anti-gay ways. Officials announced that they will disregard yesterday's historic European Court of Human Rights ruling and will continue denying gay people the right to adopt.

Via UK Gay News:

If a similar judgment dealt with Poland we would still not agree to adoption by homosexuals”, said deputy speaker of the Polish Parliament, Stefan Niesiolowski, a member of the ruling Citizen’s Platform (PO).

“The Court can go on and make a ruling,” he continued. “[But] it still won’t be enforced in Poland. We will defend ourselves because it’s unthinkable that homosexuals would adopt children.”

It's unthinkable that Poland considers it's above EU mandates! Aren't there laws against that? If not, there should be!

The Republicans' actions and words at this weekend's Values Voter Summit prove one thing: the party simply refuses to evolve. Editor Andrew Belonsky explains why the Grand Old Party needs to embrace change, look beyond the walls of social conservatism and expand its definition of family values.

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