A lesbian Vermont couple claiming Mississippi health officials refused issuance of the amended birth certificate to their adopted 4-year-old son filed suit in Jackson Oct. 25. Holly Perdue and Cheri Goldstein of Worcester, Vt., were contacted by a Mississippi adoption agency in 1997 when a mother put her son up for adoption. They were approved by a Vermont probate court in April 2000, and told The Associated Press that officials are withholding the birth certificate because they noticed that both adoptive parents were female.
“This simply is an act of discrimination because the parents are lesbian mothers,” Hector Vargas, regional director in Atlanta for the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund representing Perdue and Goldstein, told The Associated Press.
Vargas said without the birth certificate, the boy cannot prove who he is, where he lives or who his parents are.
“That means he would have trouble registering for school, getting a passport and, when he is ready, learning how to drive,” Vargas said. “All the everyday matters that flow from having a valid birth certificate are being denied to this child.”
“If they recognized the gay couple as parents, they would condone gay marriage,” Peter B. Wood, associate professor and director of the criminal justice and corrections program at Mississippi State University, said of Mississippi officials.
“They’re not going to condone it,” Wood said.
Wood cited a Mississippi law banning same-sex marriages following national legislation.
The federal Defense Of Marriage Act, signed into law September 1996, defines marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman as husband and wife and also stipulates that no state can be required to recognize same-sex marriages.
DOMA only protects states that have passed laws taking the same stance, so 29 states, including Mississippi, have passed such laws.
Mississippi Code states: Any marriage between persons of the same gender is prohibited and null and void from the beginning. Any marriage between persons of the same gender that is valid in another jurisdiction does not constitute a legal or valid marriage in Mississippi.
Vermont has a different stance.
The Vermont Legislature deemed ‘civil union’ a new legal partnership in a bill signed April 26, 2000, following the Vermont Supreme Court’s ruling in Baker vs. Vermont that same-sex couples had been denied “the common benefit, protection and security of the people, nation or community” granted by the common benefits clause of the Vermont Constitution.
By adding the words “or partner in a civil union” wherever the word “spouse” appeared, same-sex couples could legally marry, just as heterosexual couples can, by obtaining licenses from the town clerks, as well as having their unions certified by a member of the clergy, judge or justice of the peace. Couples in legal civil unions also receive all of the benefits that the state of Vermont previously extended to heterosexual married couples.
“Mississippi is remaining overall consistent with its stance on religious and political views of homosexuality,” Wood said. “Religious and political conservatives have higher levels of homophobia and gay stereotyping and correspondingly low gay right support.” Wood also said that it would be placing Mississippi at the “far end of the conservative spectrum.”
“This couple stepped forward to love this child and give him a home,” Jody Renaldo, executive director of Equality Mississippi, a Jackson-based gay alliance organization, told The Associated Press. Renaldo said that Mississippi law requires the state to honor valid, out-of-state adoptions, even though it bans same-sex adoptions.
“It’s shameful that our state is singling out this child for different treatment simply because of his parents’ sexual orientation,” Renaldo added.
Perdue and Goldstein care for eight adopted children and said that they would not adopt a child from Mississippi or any other state banning same-sex adoptions again.