Putting the LGBTQ back in the closet. Oh you’re accepted, only when it’s needed or convenient for the political good – PB/TK
Religious Freedom Laws Are More About Suppressing Visibility Than Protecting the Pious – By John Culhane / July 3 2017
Discrimination threatens LGBTQ visibility by encouraging subterfuge. I know from experience.
When David and I were foster parenting our daughters, I was in court for a remarkable exchange. Even though the status hearing to discuss the birth mother’s progress wasn’t supposed to be about us—except to make sure the girls were in an appropriate place—the attorney for the birth mother went down an unexpected path. He asked the city worker for the names of the foster parents. Taken aback, she provided them, and the attorney then repeated them, loudly, for the benefit of the court: “John and David, Your Honor.”
This revelation put the judge on high alert. In his chambers before the next hearing, he expressed concern that the girls were with “two men.” (One of the attorneys ratted him out to me, a courageous act for which I will be forever grateful.) The judge’s concern had real consequences. He entertained a ridiculous suggestion that would have torn the girls away from us after a year, and prolonged the termination of parental rights process for about a year beyond what the law and the evidence called for. (Only after that step was completed were we able to adopt our children.)
It would have been worse had the law not been on our side. Philadelphia’s antidiscrimination law protects the LGBTQ community, so I was able to work behind the scenes to move the case to a just resolution. Without that law, there would have been no effective way to get the judge to do the right thing. Since we couldn’t marry at that time in Pennsylvania in any case, without the law’s protection we probably would have been advised to hide our relationship, and for one of us to have entered the foster/adopt rolls as a single parent.
Continue to slate.com article: http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2017/06/30/religious_freedom_laws_suppress_visibility_for_the_benefit_of_the_pious.html
