West Virginia Lesbian Parents May Lose Child to "Traditional" Family

by Michael Jones · 2008-12-11 14:17:00 UTC
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Gay AdoptionYou know that John Denver line, "Almost heaven, West Virginia"?  Well, don't count on it if you happen to be a gay or lesbian family.  A Fayette County Circuit Judge has ruled that two lesbian parents should not be allowed to adopt an 11-month-old girl because of the parents' sexual orientation.

The Judge, Paul Blake, ordered that the girl be taken out of the care of lesbian couple Kathyrn Kutil and Cheryl Hess, and be placed in the care of a "traditional" family.  Thankfully, Kutil and Hess are appealing the Judge's ruling, and the West Virginia Supreme Court voted 4-1 this week to hear the case.  So there's still room for some justice to be done here.

The details of this story are heart-breaking, and show why opponents of gay adoption simply do not have the best interests of children in mind.

The child at the center of this case was born in December 2007 in Charleston, West Virginia to a drug abusing mother (according to court records).  The child had cocaine, opiates and benzodiazepines in her system and underwent withdrawals from the drugs after birth.

Once the infant was healthy (Christmas Eve, 2007), she was placed by the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources into the foster care system, making her way to the home of Kutil and Hess.  Kutil and Hess wanted to formally adopt the baby once she became eligible, earlier this year.  The only problem was a court-appointed "child advocate" who didn't like Kutil's and Hess's sexual orientation.

The Judge unfortunately agreed with the court-appointed advocate, and now we're seeing the fruits of that - a child who needs adoptive parents is being removed from the only home she's known since birth, because both parents are women.

We'll see how the West Virginia Supreme Court deals with this.  They've scheduled hearings on the case for March 2009.  Hopefully they'll listen to this advice from Kutil's and Hess's lawyer, Anthony Ciliberti:  "What I can say about these two women is that they are far and above, based on my experience in dealing with them . . . they are far and above conceivably the best foster parents we have in this county."

Conceivably the best possible foster parents we have in this country, being told that they're not "traditional" enough to raise a child?  That doesn't sound like heaven to me, West Virginia.

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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