Grief, or The Triumph of Nature over Nurture

I'm still trying to parse it. The grief over more than a decade long labor of love, hard work and very literal sacrifice. The risks that were taken, marital and emotional. The huge emotional investment. The financial investment, which, to be frank, consumed no small amount of a personal trust fund. I still wake in the middle of the night and think, no, no, it's a dream: Your adopted child isn't a drug addict who is so far gone that he is selling his personal possessions to fuel his habit, and that of his friend whose bong he broke. He didn't just tell you on FaceTime that he feels wonderful and stress free and that this is the best he's ever felt. And he didn't liquidate most of his checking account's available balance on the 1st of April by the 2nd of April on drug paraphernalia and drugs. He didn't text me on Friday with the facile request for a cash deposit bail out I wouldn't give him, after successive and rapid overdrafts on his checking account, thinking somehow that I hadn't noticed the $385 drug paraphernalia purchase, the cash withdrawals and deposits of cash from that TV or bike he mentioned he was going to sell. He didn't stop going to class, stop eating gluten-free in spite of the celiac disease, start gaining 70 lbs, stop cutting his hair for three months, stop shaving his beard off for two months or stop living in his dorm room that we paid for, with his friends who were not drugging, in order to go live in the apartment of his friend whose parents evidently haven't noticed they are supporting more than just college for their son.

But he did.

Grief. people. 

Twelve years of knowing a child you realize that you no longer know. That you kicked out of the house in late December 2015 for his explosive and seemingly irrational anger and demands for money that raised that visceral red flag that you didn't quite understand on a cerebral level at the time but that you felt with every fiber of your being was a sign something was very, very wrong. All of which you now see, thanks to the paradigm of years and years in the child welfare system dealing with substance abuse cases, through the filter of substance abuse behavior. The paraphernalia charge on his bankcard and stark admission of enjoyment of his drugging, bailed-out-of-life life, both by FaceTime and SnapChat, only confirm the very saddest of realities.

So much loss. So much grief. Really, there are no words to define it.

The genes... They won. They won big. They crushed the nurturers. They crushed their very souls.

© Bright Nepenthe, 2016

Picking Up the Pieces

Since the beginning of the year, I've been having a hard time with the idea of blogging. I kept posting about other things I care about, doing a delicate dance around things and people near and dear to my heart. But things kept piling up, and up, and up. Finally, I just quit, because really, I didn't know what to say, or how to say it, or whether I could even legally say it. This morning, I just don't give a damn.


What have I been doing for the last decade or so? What was I thinking? Sure I had that idea that I could make things better for one child, one youth, at a time. Yeah, right. Instead, I'll just be there holding their hand while the train derails. Or maybe sometimes I was one of the engineers?


Since this post is a nice, big cathartic feast after a five week famine, I really suggest you turn back. Here, have an otter, or baby zoo animals. You'll walk away happy.


The child welfare system is, as anybody who reads this blog, who has worked in it, lived in it, aged out of it, so very, very broken. And it is self-perpetuating. Abuse begets abuse, neglect begets neglect, loss begets still more loss. I'm really at a point where I wonder, wearily, if it is even possible to fix the system, to stop the cycle, and whether anything I do makes any difference to anyone, including the kids I serve. I am skeptical, if not downright cynical, about whether a lot of people working from within the system are more interested in just having their job than they are in what their job was supposed to be doing. Or whether they even care that they are part of the problem and whether they ever wonder if they cause more problems, more damage. Because I sure do.


And then, there are the kids themselves... The ones who bear the weight of all the mistakes, the inability of the child welfare system to forge a positive change in their lives. Where to begin?


The day before Valentine's Day, I got a call from Snow White, who long time readers of the blog know is something of a success story. A young mother, Snow White won, against astounding odds, an RTI reinstatement case before the Third District Court of Appeals. She was and is, on the face of it, a good mother who chose caring for her daughter, even though it derailed her schooling and almost cost her her Road to Independence funding, the program that helps aged out foster youth when they turn 18. She has now graduated with her high school degree, has a beautician's license, and is ready to start work and college and life. Which is why it almost killed me to have to report her family for child abuse because her significant other battered her, stole from her, used substance, all in front of their child. While trying to limn that fine line between someone being a bad father while genuinely loving their child, being a bad partner while evidently loving you, Snow White lived and lives in the desperate world of many a former foster youth: the I Want A Family world, in which broken family is better than no family, and in which one can only hope that the system would agree with her and try to fix the broken parts. (It doesn't really, by the way. The system decides some things, and some people, are too broken to merit treatment.) 


To say that the rabbit hole that Snow White and I fell into on February 13 was a long and winding and unbearable fall (for the both of us) would be an understatement. She is now 21 and we have known each other for seven years. I was the constant in her life she could count on. I was also the one who almost cost her her daughter. But I did my duty and, in doing so, lanced the festering wound in her family and hoped the system would treat them, heal them. Good thing I am not holding my breath. We have since reached a sort of truce. She now sadly knows she can't tell me anything really bad because I'm a mandated reporter, a point that was never crystallized in her mind before. (So much comfort there, for the both of us...) but she knows that if she has a problem that does involve the need for help, for connections within the system, that I'm there for her. I am just hoping that the system, which isn't really great at breaking the cycle of abuse and neglect, will somehow vanquish some of the problems facing her and her daughter. But the means of dealing with  domestic violence (DV) in this county and in this state are egregiously outdated. (Maybe that's everywhere, though.) Even just domestic violence, treated wrongly as a concept isolated from substance abuse and rooted in gender, is outdated, when you look at decade old work by Corvo and Dutton, and others. DV is often not rehabilitated in terms of the success of programs- they aren't successful, by and large. The links between family violence, intimate partner violence, substance abuse and psychosocial dynamics are not often successfully addressed in our little corner of the world. Holistic isn't the first word that comes to mind when I think of dependency. (Nor are the terms 'evidence-based' and 'happy outcomes!'.)


Anyway, after the searing February, there was March.


In March, I found out via Facebook that the maternal grandmother of the talented young man who is now my oldest GAL case (first hugged him in January 2005) was terminally ill. He posted a status comment about it, in typical fashion, minimizing it. I was aghast to hear him say it was "no biggie", as was his adult sister, who came down to see Grandma and him. When his mom was on the streets, his grandmother loved and cared for him. His mother died of HIV in 2008. His father was deported to Suriname in 2004. His sister, also my GAL youth, ran away from Miami, in 2007. And this entire school year he was getting terrible grades and living in a dreamworld in which, when he turns 18 in September, he runs away to LA, with no contacts, no portfolio, no high school degree, and not even a contact email account that bears his proper name, and is discovered, becoming a famous actor and director. Talking with him in recent times, without crushing him, both because he is very bright, and because he is so adept at ignoring whatever is too painful to deal with straight on, has been probably the toughest run of my GAL 'career'. He is amazingly articulate and insightful, quick to call some of those who have worked on his case in court, 'condescending' among other things. To say this kid has lived with loss and has fought hard to bury everything painful he has endured would be the understatement of the century. And, after the continual revolving door of case managers (I count at least ten over the past 7 years and he told me a few weeks ago that "they change my case manager more frequently than I change my underwear...") he no longer really talked to his then case manager. I called her and told her what was going on about Grandma and that he'd even been to her house (a very bad scene according to the sister) and seen her. The case manager failed to document my concerns. (Including concerns about the 8% this kid had back then in Geometry, which, by the way, is rather surprising for a kid who was in the gifted program in math, from 3rd through 8th grade, before he got to his swanky and elite performing arts school and can you say CRY FOR HELP any louder, no you can't.) But she was in the weeds, evidently. Didn't document any of it. Didn't try to talk to him. Left the agency. The whole thing took a turn for the worse when his placement of 5 years began to disrupt. (A scenario described to Comtesse [redacted] as 'watching the slow motion derailment of a train'.) And then our wonderful child welfare system became all about covering asses and blame-shifting. To the point that after a discreet trip to the bathroom with a jurist, the agency 'had done so very much' to save that placement but they 'just couldn't save it'. And yeah, the youth, who has struggled mightily to express his feelings, in spite of being incredibly articulate and well-spoken for so many other things, was firmly stifled from the bench. So now he's in a good interim home and we get to look for where he can live on $892 a month, if he stays in school. (Age 18 and in the 11th grade, what a picnic it will be!) Since his school doesn't offer the school lunch program, I'm now going to be picking up 100% of the cost of lunch to try to eliminate that reason for dropping out because frankly, I do not see how he can manage otherwise. (For the past two years I was doing 50%, with the other 50% provided by the case management agency for their little star who should shut up and be quiet.) But hey, the happy story here is that the case management agency is good! And in another three months, they won't have to think about any of this anymore! Another successful outcome!!!! The world is filled with puppies!


So up to this point, I was still feeling okay about things. I mean, not happy, but as if there was still a purpose in being involved in the child welfare world. Then I got this FB message from a longtime friend and former GAL, who had been the beloved foster parent of the children in what is my second oldest case as a GAL. And therein, of course, lies still more sorrow. 


I'll just call her Lillie. She and her brother were placed for adoption in 2008. I had been their GAL since January of 2004. An unusual case, one that makes you really believe in Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome. (And I've had two such cases, what are the odds?) A hard case to work, with demands for knowledge of IDEA, Section 504, and disability educational expertise like none I have ever had. Lillie and her brother both suffered from severe auditory processing disorders and what appeared to be dyslexia. I struggled finding them proper evaluations and services, and got them into a superlative private remediative school, The Cushman School, on full scholarships, to rehabilitate their reading and math struggles. They were doing so well by 2007. They were, for the most part, happy kids, although Lillie has always had a tendency to feel somewhat sad and lonely. In 2008 they were adopted by a seemingly successful couple who had overcome, or so it seemed, their own learning problems. They had moved from Michigan to Florida and wanted a child desperately. They wanted a boy but were willing to take a sibling set. Voilà! A disaster is borne! And one I helped make, that I signed off on as their GAL. Long ago Lillie had promised her mother that she would take care of her little brother. So she agreed to the adoption, even though she didn't feel entirely comfortable with this family, well, specifically with the adoptive mother. The father appeared to be nice enough and that was enough for her. The parents didn't seem ideal from the standpoint of really learning about their prospective off-springs' specific deficits and needs. But they did get those evaluations entered into the school systems that they moved to successively. Good thing, because after that adoption was final, they moved, and moved, and moved. Because they kept losing their jobs and being evicted. Because they drank and were verbally abusive and angry people who got fired a lot. Because even though they passed a Children's Home Society homestudy, which cleared their background in the state of Florida, I later paid for a  full background check (too late, a mistake I will never, ever make again) myself and found out that they had a string of foreclosures and civil financial problems back home in Michigan. And I have to say that the idea of taking two instead of one when you're getting paid to take them makes great sense when you can't hold a job, right? Of course, right!


Lillie was miserable. Lillie tried to run away. Lillie reported abuse to me, which I reported to the state and which the state couldn't prove and didn't really look into all that much because it's just not the kinda thing they're into nowadays. Hey, no big bruises or marks, how bad can it be? I last saw her in early January, when she told me that she was just hoping she could stick it out until she turned 18, how miserable she was, how hard it has been. Lillie would come back to Miami and stay with her former foster mother every chance she got. In fact, Lillie is there now, in what is about to be, hopefully, her real 'forever home', except there are all these little details that are nagging at me. A forever home? Wasn't that the one you're adopted into? They kicked her out. She turns 18 in January. She will never get RTI now because she was adopted. She will get the free Florida Bright Futures Scholarship, if they deign to give her the documentation showing she's entitled to it. Speaking of which... There is no documentation so far as I know that make the arrangement legal and viable for the next 6 months. I have no idea if she has Medicaid, should she get sick or injured and with no documentation, the former foster mother cannot obtain Medicaid for her. I'm also not clear on whether they are giving the $500+ stipend the state pays them for Lillie to the I cannot tell you how incredible foster mother that has loved and nurtured her and made her a part of her family for all these years and is now taking her in for good. Guess why Lillie wasn't adopted into her foster mother's family? Her foster mother was too old to qualify. Guess what Lillie has endured? Psychological and physical abuse, separation from her mentally ill mother, now from her brother, and complete destruction of her childhood and adolescence. Yes indeedy, job done! I'm feeling like one helpful person these days. And part of a very helpful system.


Yes, yes, I have had cases that ended in successful adoption, including my first case, where the child ended up with her young aunt, about whom I can say only wonderful things. Or the multivisceral organ transplant toddler, adopted by the nurse with her private nursing company, who had lost a daughter to the same condition but found room in her heart for more love, more loss. Or the young man with the severe skeletal defects, adopted by a longtime friend, after her supporting him through grueling back surgery for terrible scoliosis and kyphosis and helping him deal with his other skeletal defects and his social isolation. None of those people kicked the children out.


But yeah, lately, everywhere I look, I see broken children, broken youths, broken system. 


The word discouraged is wholly inadequate.


And not to be mean or dismissive, but y'all can just skip the usual palliative, oh "poor Marzie was good" comments. That is so totally missing the point here. Feel angry at the system and sorry for these kids and what they endure in the child welfare demi-monde, not me. I live in a nice house, with my nice family and my lovely pets and my beautiful garden and the worst I have to deal with is waking up at night worrying about these youths, where they are, where they're headed and wonder about how it is that I can know three people for seven or eight years and have done so little to have helped them. That's the right question to be asking, to my mind. They are just three children, of the many cases, out there. And if this is how it goes, when a person is really trying to be in their corner, I don't want to imagine the rest.

---

Edited to add in the late afternoon:


When it rains, it pours. Keyoncé, 22 years old in late August, last mentioned on this blog because of his plight of being intellectually disabled, bipolar and working the oldest profession in the world under some very sketchy conditions on Biscayne Blvd., just called me. His APD is a mess and he needs an apartment because his electricity is off where he is right now. "I need you in my life, Marzie. I need you back as my GAL. I ain't got nobody, no family. Who's gonna help me? I can't live on $606 of SSI Disability. What am I gonna do? I'm tired. I want a Section VIII apartment but they don't take my application. Well, I don't know how to apply. You know I got problems reading."


Meeting: Wednesday, 11:30 am.


How do I tell him that I think Section VIII applications are closed but even if they weren't, he's not a woman with children? How do I tell him I don't know what to believe and not believe? How do I tell him that he needs to tell those fine folks at Our Kids and APD that yes, he really does turn tricks for added money?


Sigh. Camillus House, here we come.

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© Bright Nepenthe, 2012

Preventing Evil and Child Welfare: Where There's a Will, There's a Way.

“No government agency can prevent those very few who have lost the core values of humanity from performing inhumane acts.’’



Please Spare Me, Secretary Wilkins.

In my lovely little Ivory Tower, where I live with my beloved 'rescued' child, and where we have our premium healthcare, relative financial ease with no state income tax and no more FL intangible tax to pay, I read about the case of Nubia and Victor Barahona with a feeling of horror that is almost indescribable. I've been a GAL since 2004. I've been a GAL whose recommendations about an adoption were ignored. I've been a GAL who took a case of an adopted child, who was perhaps even more egregiously abused because those who adopted and subsequently abused her knew exactly what she had suffered before. I've been a GAL whose case's adopted child contacted me stating she was being abused and I was forced to call in abuse reports on her adopters. I've also been a GAL of three children whose therapist contacted me to tell me that the oldest child reported that he and his younger siblings were being starved, fed only Ramen noodles, by their foster parent in their lovely Richmond Heights foster home. In the child welfare arena I really don't know a more sickening feeling than thinking that a child that our State removed because they claimed they could keep the child safer, is subsequently re-abused, or killed, after being rendered dependent on our state's dependency regime.

The Department of Children and Families has published a redacted version of a huge number of documents in the case of Nubia and Victor Barahona (formerly Docter), substantiating the simply awful lives that these children have led from the moment they were born. What really amazes me about this whole thing, beyond the special viciousness of what was done to these children, is that we've seen it so many times before in my state. From a child I knew from my days as a Hands on Miami project coordinator at the Miami Bridge Shelter by the name of Cynteria Phillips (I will never, ever forget opening my Local section of the Miami Herald in August 2000 and seeing her photo and saying "I know that face!" as I read, gasping, that she'd been raped and murdered at age 13 and thrown like trash, onto a patch of glass near Miami Edison High School- her suspected murderer/rapist was just recently charged) to one of my present GAL kids who was removed for incest and then sexually abused by her adoptive father, to my former GAL youth whose adoptive parents I have now reported twice to the Abuse Hotline, I can say, unequivocally, having followed the dependency scenario in our state for the past decade, that I truly believe that child welfare in our state is so broken I don't know where to start pointing fingers. 

People who don't want to look at child welfare because it's too "depressing" probably also don't know that both the DCF/Privatized Foster Care System and the Guardian ad Litem Program in my state run on a veritable shoestring budget that is continually facing cutbacks. If people don't like seeing sexually abused or murdered or suicide-committing children, they need to think carefully about what it is that they are asking for when they say they want tax cuts. Because further budget cuts = cutting the margin of safety for children in this state. Is it possible to retain good, professional and caring people working in the child welfare system for no money? No, it really isn't... Anyone who's any good will train for a few years and leave. I vividly recall one social worker, a really good one, telling me he simply couldn't keep doing it. He couldn't sleep at night, thinking about what he saw and what he couldn't help or assuage, about concerns he had about the children in his caseload even as we pulled my autistic GAL youth from her APD home where she spent her weekends in darkness and from which she was sent to school while menstruating with no sanitary products, no change of clothes and no medication for her simply awful menstrual cramps. It's really hard to adequately care for damaged and developmentally delayed children on little money. These children and youth need resources, including high caliber therapy and decent homes, that continual cutbacks make difficult to come by. They need these things so that they don't continue the cycle of abuse themselves, so they don't become homeless, and so they don't get further abused or even killed.

After a full week of listening to all the piecemeal blame-slinging, I'm still as angry and sad and puzzled about how to change an entire system of care as I was at the beginning of last week and long before. What I know about the Barahona case (since so many people have been asking me questions about it) are these things:

·      •  A GAL just like me had his concerns ignored about the adoption of Nubia and Victor by the Barahonas.

·      • A Protective Investigator left off her investigation promptly at 9 pm, the Friday before one of the children died and told a Judge in open court that she didn’t work weekends.

·      • The adoptive mother of these children reportedly told that investigator she had no idea where the children were.

·      • The mother was not arrested and an Amber Alert for the missing children was never issued. 

·      • The child/children died/were grievously harmed.

·      • There is a strong pressure in our system to get all the children in foster care adopted. There is a little less pressure (as I know from my own youngest child) to make sure a placement is in that child’s interest- that it is safe, viable and that the child will thrive there.

·      •  That going back just to 2000 there are many instances of horrible, horrible situations facing children in foster care and that names engraved in my mind like Rilya Wilson, Cynteria Phillips, Gregory Love, Latiana Hamilton, Gabriel Myers and Nubia Barahona, along with despicable snatches of DNA like Jorge Barahona, Thomas Ferrara, Bonifacio Velazquez and Geralyn Graham, all paint a picture of a decade in which change from state to private care has marked too few a number of changes for the children that we, and our state, have deemed should be removed to safer circumstances. Changes that would make them safe, make them more resilient.

Jorge Barhona

I really don't know where one could start to fix the child welfare system but what I do know is that throwing blame around isn't a meaningful solution. It's likely part of the problem. One more panel isn't likely to solve the woes of child welfare in our state. Because the real blame isn't just DCF's or Our Kids' or horrible human beings like the Barahonas and their ilk who take in wounded children and wound them further or even kill them. I don't believe DCF Secretary David Wilkins' claim that no government agency could have protected Nubia and Victor Barahona. I don't believe that as a state, as a country, where we can build marvelous technology, spend billions on entertainment and athletes and the military, that we cannot manage to keep our most vulnerable citizens safe. I cannot believe that Protective Investigator Andrea Fleary couldn't call her supervisor, tell her she was worried about these two children, call the police, arrest Carmen Barahona for obstruction of justice, and get the state of Florida to issue an Amber Alert for two 10 year olds in the company of the very, very scary Jorge Barahona (see photo above, would you like to be a child looking up at that face when angry?), who had already been investigated a number of times, including for sexual abuse and malnourishment, in relation to these children. 

Clearly the focus on child welfare is lost in our state and in its child welfare agency.

Until we demand better for the children of our state in Florida, until we are willing to adequately fund investigations and foster care and therapeutic services and youth who age out so that they don't repeat the same sad cycle of mistakes made by their parents, we are almost as wrong as everything that happened between February 10th- February 14th in the lives of Nubia and Victor, and everything that went before. We might not be starving children, drowning them in pesticides, or walking away from their front doors at 9 pm sharp on a Friday night. But every time we turn a blind eye, every time we don't demand better for the children of this state, we are part of the problem.

We need a better child welfare system and I seriously wonder how many children will have to die sad and horrible deaths before the citizens of Florida think about how to build a better one. It might (gasp) take tax payer money. It might (gasp) take public will. It might take not accepting that it was just a bad case management agency decision that led to a finalized adoption, or simply bad-mouthing the callous PI who walked away from these children. It might take demanding a change to the entire system of care, from the very highest levels of our state. And telling your senators and representatives that they can cut their salaries before they cut child welfare and child healthcare in our state. That enough children have died or suffered.

And to Paul Neuman, the GAL who opposed the adoption of Nubia and Victor, I hope you didn't quit. I hope something in you didn't die when you saw the news last week that those children, about whose best interests you thought you had clearly advocated and been ignored or disparaged, and who had some of the very worst that can happen to any child happen to them. But having lived through the adoption nightmare lite version myself, I'm almost certain that something in you did. You have my sympathies. 

But I hope you turn around and fight like hell for better child welfare in our state.

© Bright Nepenthe, 2011

Today...

my youngest child legally changed his name to that of my husband's surname. It was the end of a six and a half year process. When he was adopted, he wanted to keep his biological mother's name. We let him. About two years later, he told us he wanted to legally hyphenate his name. We let him. About a year ago, he started telling us he wanted to just use my husband's surname and finally that he wanted to change it legally to just that name.

Those of you who read the blog must know how powerful this moment is in our family. When he arrived, he had lost so much, the very last thing we could do was also take his name away.

Welcome home, little one. Welcome home.

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

The Third District Court of Appeals' 3-0 Ruling In re: Gill

Portions of this post are cross-posted at It's About Politics It's About Children.

Judges Cope, Shepherd and Salter's landmark ruling finding the ban on gay adoption in FL to be unconstitutional can be found here.

Notes from the Ruling:

"We reject the Department’s remaining arguments for the same reason: they do 

not provide a reasonable basis for allowing homosexual foster parenting or 

guardianships while imposing a prohibition on adoption."

 ......

"Under Florida law, homosexual persons are allowed to serve as foster

parents or guardians but are barred from being considered for adoptive parents.

All other persons are eligible to be considered case-by-case to be adoptive parents,

but not homosexual persons—even where, as here, the adoptive parent is a fit

parent and the adoption is in the best interest of the children.

The Department has argued that evidence produced by its experts and F.G.’s

experts supports a distinction wherein homosexual persons may serve as foster

parents or guardians, but not adoptive parents. Respectfully, the portions of the

record cited by the Department do not support the Department’s position. We

conclude that there is no rational basis for the statute."

The 3rdDCA didn't mess around when it came to Dr. George Rekers, he of Rentboy fame. From their ruling:

"Unlike Dr. Schumm, Dr. Rekers sees no role for individual evaluation of the

proposed adoptive parent, if that parent is a homosexual. He maintained that

performing an individualized study of the proposed adoptive parent, like F.G., is

not viable because even if F.G. is found to be entirely appropriate as an adoptive

parent at the present time, it is possible that he may develop some sort of a 

disorder later in life."

¹¹ Dr. Rekers opined at one point that he would favor removing 

children from foster parents who are homosexual persons even where the children 

had lived with the foster parents for ten years. R. 1736. He also said, however, 

that if he evaluated the F.G. household (which he had not done for this case), he 

might recommend continued foster placement. R. 1758.

and,

"Dr. Rekers was questioned about his recent authorship of a law review

article entitled An Empirically Supported Rational Basis for Prohibiting Adoption,

Foster Parenting, and Contested Child Custody by Any Person in a Household that

Includes a Homosexually-Behaving Member, 18 St. Thomas L. Rev. 325 (2005).

According to the judgment, “the doctor heavily cited to the conclusions of a

colleague who is sharply criticized as distorting data and was censured and ousted

[or withdrew in lieu of ousting] by the American Psychological Association for

misreporting evidence regarding homosexual households.” Final Judgment at 20

(footnote omitted). The court concluded that “Dr. Rekers’ testimony was far from

a neutral and unbiased recitation of the relevant scientific evidence.” Final

Judgment at 23."

But best of all is Judge Salter's concurring independent opinion, which follows the ruling he joined. From that opinion:

"SALTER, J. (concurring).

I concur in affirming the judgment of adoption in this case. I write only to

emphasize certain parts of the record beyond those detailed by the trial court and

my respected colleagues. Those differences pertain to (1) the record regarding 

the other persons in the adoptive parent’s household and (2) the substantial  

changes in law and Department of Children and Families’ policy after the

Legislature enacted subsection 63.042(3) in 1977.

......

The categorical ban was enacted in haste and reaction in 1977.16 Those who

voted for it in the legislature did not prohibit the placement of children with

homosexual foster parents or permanent guardians—only the permanent step of

adoption was addressed. Because the Department has approved homosexuals to

serve as foster parents and permanent guardians,17 the Department now has

years of experience and observation to inform its position and its testimony in the  

trial court. 

Moreover, the placement of children in those households has allowed

bonds and relationships to form that are in the best interests of children—steps

toward permanency and stability in young lives that have already known too 

much pain and separation. In short, the categorical ban and the statutory 

polestar of “best interests of the children” after an extended and very successful 

foster placement (as here) are inimical.

......

Conclusion

In striking the categorical ban of section 63.042(3) on equal protection

grounds, we need not address the larger controversy regarding same-sex

marriage.²¹ The Department’s policies and stipulations (Appendix, paragraphs 6

and 8) have made it clear that placement with a married couple, or even an

applicant who might later marry, is not the rational basis proffered in support of 

the ban. The unconstitutionality of this particular categorical ban regarding 

adoption simply leaves the Department in the position described by its chief of 

child welfare services in her testimony below:

Q. Okay. So if the state law didn’t exist and the folks in the

department were implementing the child welfare policy,

would there be a reason to exclude gay people from adopting?

A. If the law didn’t exist, we would use the same criteria to

assess those families as any other, and the best interest of the

child would be the, would be the norm.

With these few differences in analysis, I concur in affirming the final

judgment of adoption."

_______________________________________________________________

²¹ In the recently-decided federal case in California, Perry v. Schwarzenegger,

2010 WL 3025614 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 4, 2010), many of the same equal protection

arguments, and two of the expert witnesses who testified in the adoption case here,

were cited in the court’s order.

Salter's ruling is both wonderful and accessible.

Things not addressed in the 3rdDCA's ruling? Permanency and Equal Protection for Children. Judge Cindy Lederman's original ruling on the Gill adoption addressed the issue of permanency, which is the primary best interests of these children. The Court refused to take up that argument.

The trial court made an alternative finding that “the statute infringes on the

Children’s right to permanency pursuant to the Adoption and Safe Families Act of

1997, [42 U.S.C. § 671,] adopted in Chapter 39 of the Florida Statutes.” Final

Judgment at 38. The Department contends that this ruling was erroneous. 

Because we affirm the declaration of unconstitutionality on the ground that there 

is an equal protection violation under the Florida Constitution, we need not reach 

the trial court’s alternative holding.

What rights do our children have in this state? Surely, they have the right to permanency? Yet, though the Third District Court ignores the issue, in the Gill case, our own statutes appear to conflict with one another! If we terminate a child's parents' rights, we must pursue all options for permanency. Mr. Gill's children were owed more than a long term foster placement or a legal guardianship by our state. They were owed parents. And they believed that they had found parents.

Thankfully, so did the Third District Court of Appeals.

Let's hope DCF Secretary Sheldon gets his wish and the case is further appealed to the Supreme Court by the State. Let's get this shameful law off the books!

---

 
Edited to note:

This afternoon Governor Charlie Crist announced that Florida will no longer enforce the ban on gays adopting in the State of Florida. That does NOT, however, prevent the DCF from seeking an appeal to the FL Supreme Court, does not invalidate the statute and is not a guarantee that future administrations in this state will honor that decision. This is particularly important since Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott has been extremely vocal about his support of the ban. 

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Martin Gill and his son

(Carl Juste for the Miami Herald)

VICTORY!

The Florida Third District

Court of Appeals Rules the

Florida Law Banning Gay 


Adoption is.... 

UNCONSTITUTIONAL!

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Why Flip-Flop Charlie is Bad for Gay Rights

Flip-Flip Charlie and the Slo-Mo Gay is Okay Stance

(based on the Bilerico Project's image)

When Charlie Crist wanted to be the Republican Governor of our wonderful state of Florida, he was against gay adoption. Why? Because that was the law of our State and hey, a lot of Republicans who liked that law helped him get elected. But when Charlie Crist decided he wanted out of the Governor's Mansion and into the United States Senate, he suddenly became of a mind that maybe just maybe enforcing the ban on gay adoption in Florida was not such a swell legacy to have attached to your name. Because it was under Crist's tenure in the Governor's Office that significant trials of the ban, namely Wayne LaRue Smith's case, Martin Gil's case, Robert Lamarche's case and Vanessa Alenier's case were all largely pressed, especially at the appellate level, under his administration. And his DCF fought tooth and nail, wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on some of these cases.

So now, Flip-Flop Charlie says that it's okay, that gays can and should be allowed to adopt. He says his office is reviewing whether or not to drop appeals once the Third District Court of Appeals makes the likely ruling that the ban is unconstitutional. (Hey, Smith's case went all the way to the federal appellate level before the State gave up. But they gave up because they knew the ban was unconstitutional...)

Anyway, what's wrong with that? Well, as a very pointed opinion piece in the Palm Beach Post pointed out two days ago, the problem is that that dropping Martin Gill's case would mean no change in the horrible law. That's right. Nothing would change. Someone else would have to come along and fight, just as Vanessa Alenier is fighting. And as, unless the 30 days for appeals are expired, Robert Lamarche may have to fight. What it means, in a nutshell, is that nothing would change. Quoting Alenier's attorney, Alan Mishael:

"We'd still be left with the statute" that bans gay adoptions, said Miami Beach lawyer Alan Mishael, who has represented two homosexuals who successfully adopted. "We'd still be where we started - judging on a case-by-case basis."

~ Palm Beach Post

But what else would be the outcome? Naïve liberals will think that Crist is a liberal Republican. Conservatives can look at it as a masterful way to preserve the law. My state would continue to legislatively support bigotry against gay people. And indirectly slam children who have found their forever home and family with someone Anita Bryant and her ilk just don't like.

Let's hope that Crist has the guts to let the system of checks and balances work. If the legislature in my state doesn't have the balls or the decency to change this law, let's let the courts change it.

Meanwhile I'm left looking at a Senate race that is about as unappealing as any I've ever seen in my State. Can I, in good conscience, actually vote for Charlie Crist to keep Boy Wonder Rubio (a Tea Party Hardy Boy) out of the US Senate thereby blindsiding Kendrick Meek? The bile is rising at the thought...

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Buh Bye Bill

Florida Attorney General and former Gubernatorial Candidate Bill McCollum

(Sun Sentinel)

Tuesday the 24th was my birthday and it was date of the Primary Elections in Florida. Bill McCollum, who currently serves as Florida's Attorney General, was running in the Republican Primary for the gubernatorial candidacy. Readers of the blog will remember that Bill McCollum's office has squandered hundreds of thousands of Florida taxpayer dollars on hiring one George Rekers to give "expert" (boy was that a stretch) witness testimony against the case of Martin Gil, who had adopted his two sons as a result of a landmark ruling by Judge Cindy Lederman. The Florida Department of Children and Families has sought to overturn Lederman's ruling ordering the adoption finalization because of the despicable and discriminatory law that bans gays from adopting in Florida.

Well, I got a great birthday present.

Bill McCollum lost. And he lost, astonishingly, to one Rick Scott, former CEO of Columbia/HCA, a company that paid a $1.7B USD fine (largest in US history) for Medicare fraud to the federal government in 2000. That was some two and a half years after Scott was ousted by Columbia's board of directors after a federal investigation showed Columbia/HCA had committed extensive billing and tax fraud while Scott was at the helm of the organization. 

While I can be glad that it will be easy for a liberal candidate to defeat Scott when more Floridians learn of his history, the main reason I'm glad to see McCollum gone is because of his mindset and rhetoric. Witness comments from his interview earlier this month with Florida Baptist Witness:

Do you support civil rights protections on the basis of sexual preference?

There’s a law in Florida that says that we have, and [as attorney general] I have a Civil Rights Division, that we have a hate crimes issue. And that’s really where that comes in for me. Whether or not somebody is discriminated against on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation or whatever that they should not be. And if somebody commits a crime on that basis, solely on that basis, then they’ve committed a crime. Now we’ve had no reason to enforce a law on the basis of sexual orientation.

I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman. I believe that a family should consist of one man and one woman. I don’t believe in gay adoption. I don’t believe in involving the government in enforcing or encouraging the lifestyle of gays and homosexuals. I just don’t believe that.

You’ve already mentioned that you support the ban on homosexuals to adopt, you’ve defended it in court as attorney general.

I have.

There’s been a scandal in that defense in that one of the expert witnesses has come to have some question about his own personal life – George Rekkers (sic). Do you think the urging by your office to include him in that case has ultimately undermined the ability to defend the law?

No, actually not. I believe that the law is very clear and I think we have a good chance to prevail on it in court. The courts of Florida previously upheld this law. But we’re going through that appellate process right now.

I would never have chosen Rekkers (sic) had I know what we now know today, but the reality is my appellate lawyers – where this is ultimately going, to the state Supreme Court, because that’s what the Department of Children and Families wants, they want to seek a determination of the constitutionality of that law and we’re defending its constitutionality – my appellate lawyers tell me we needed a witness then, and I believed them to be correct, who could introduce materials, studies. Rekkers (sic) was not an authority on this issue. He was an authority in the sense that he was a scholar. He did research into papers that other people wrote. So he was able to be used to get into evidence these matters that we needed. And it’s unfortunate that all this publicity has come up over it, but the lawsuit, I think, is on sound ground and we’re carrying it forward.

Florida permits homosexuals to serve as foster parents. That has been used as an argument to undermine the ban on adoptions. Should homosexuals be permitted to serve as foster parents in Florida?

Well, I personally don’t think so, but that is the law.

Should the law be changed?

I think that it would be advisable. I really do not think that we should have homosexuals guiding our children. I think that it’s a lifestyle that I don’t agree with. I realize a lot of people do. It’s my personal faith, religious faith, that I don’t believe that the people who do this should be raising our children. It’s not a natural thing. You need a mother and a father. You need a man and a woman. That’s what God intended.

Anyone who reads this blog knows how I feel about gay adoption. But leaving aside that issue, does it seem to anyone else that McCollum is slamming single parents as well there? Because it sure looks and reads that way to me. 

But let's take time analyzing the rest of that portion of the interview, shall we?

● Apparent lack of understanding that Civil Rights legislation enforcement deals with more than just Hate Crimes?- check

● Blame-shifting for the waste of hundreds of thousands of Florida taxpayer dollars? - check

● Conflicting statements on Mr. Rekers (Authority, Not an Authority?) - check

● Assumptions that he knows what his God's intentions are? - check

● Bias publicly declared against gays when you're still the acting Attorney General of our state? - checkity, checkity, check.

Mr. McCollum I really can't say buh bye fast enough....

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

The Triumph of Life Over Reason... Oh, wait a minute...

Why it's enough to jar me from my reverie over the horrors faced by youth aged out of foster care. Thank you, JC!

A federal appellate court has just temporarily (one hopes) blocked Obama's much touted government funding for stem cell research. In the battle of the National Institutes of Health vs. Nightlight Christian Adoptions, the first round goes to... Nightlight! NCA is an organization that wants to make sure that every embryo has a loving permanent family. (No word on whether gays adopting embryos is cool with these people, but I'm-a kinda suspecting it's a no...) 

According to the NY Times the problem is the ever so charmingly named Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which prohibits the spending of federal money on the destruction of embryos. Because, why embryos are life and that would be like abortion or something. By the by, the NIH specifically requires that a couple donate embryos for this type of research voluntarily and were offered the options of donating their embryos to infertile couples. Some people wanted to donate their embryos for research. Because they wanted to HELP PEOPLE. (The already here ones) But that is not good enough. They may be your embryos, but they're really not YOURS.

Scientific Research That Could Save Many Lives

Pure, Unadulterated Evil

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

"Pluripotent, embryonic stem cells originate as inner mass cells within a blastocyst. The stem cells can become any tissue in the body, excluding a placenta. Only the morula's cells are totipotent, able to become all tissues and a placenta. Pluripotent, The stem cells can become any tissue in the body, excluding a placenta. Only the morula's cells are totipotent, able to become all tissues and a placenta. Stem cell diagram illustrates a human fetus stem cell and possible uses on the circulatory, nervous, and immune systems." From here.

What is an embryonic stem cell, you ask? It is a collection of 50-150 cells in a blastocyst, which is an egg, four to five days past fertilization. The immortal stem cells we already have should, you'd think, be just a-plenty. But that would be your thought if you don't read that charming little journal Nature Medicine and didn't know about the fact that the present stock of human stem cells that are available for use were discovered, back in 2005, to have been contaminated with non-human DNA that expresses a sialic acid Neu5Gc, likely murine (from a mouse) in origin and to which many humans have antibodies. Thus making it a massively not-swell idea to use these presently available stem cells for human cell therapy. I don't know many people that would want some other species DNA to get into their brain during their Parkinson treatment. Or into their pancreas during their diabetes treatment, for instance. I am totally with them on that. Having been scarred for life by Richard Preston's The Cobra Event and Mira Grant's Feed, I'm really thinking that mixing species' DNA when seeking novel treatments is just not a plan.

Forgive my snide and irritated tone when I say that I am thoroughly disgusted at people seeking to bar research that would potentially cure many diseases in the young and old and in-between population of people already here, all while failing to think about promoting adoption of children who are already here.

LOOKING FOR A GOOD HOME

Image credit: Molecular Station

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010