Views
Emergency Prompts Marriage Lawsuit
Emergency Prompts Marriage Lawsuit
by
Deb Price
Terrified,
Dawn BarbouRoske followed her partner's wishes in the delivery room and
rushed with their premature baby to the neonatal intensive care ward.
At just 4 pounds, McKinley needed
a ventilator to help her tiny lungs work. But her birth mom, Jen Barbou
Roske, was also dealing with a serious health threat, a clotting disorder
that could cause a stroke.
Over the next few days, Dawn
darted back and forth from her partner to their child, trying to keep
the level head that her family desperately needed.
But at the very time Dawn needed to
be focused solely on caring for her family, she was distracted by worries
that she might be stopped because she had no legal connection to Jen or
McKinley.
"You feel very vulnerable,"
says Dawn, who feared that if Jen died, McKinley would be parentless in
the eyes of the law. "You are at the mercy and the kindness of strangers."
Fortunately, the family survived intact,
though without the legal safety net of marriage designed for just such
crises. The three moved to Iowa, where Jen went on to become a neonatal
nurse. And McKinley, now 7, has an adopted sister, Breeanna, age 3.
While Dawn and Jen were able to go
to court to become both kids' legal parents, the women still have no legal
link to one another. Determined to change that, they’re among 12
couples suing to marry in Iowa.
Their lawsuit is part of a cultural
upheaval dividing of states by their degree of gay family friendliness.
"The choices for couples are going
to broaden," predicts attorney David Buckel of Lambda Legal Defense.
"And we're going to see huge shifts begin, as gay couples choose
where they live according to how secure they can be, particularly those
with children or planning to have them."
Right now, only Massachusetts marries
its gay couples — 7,341 couples have already wed there.
The next-most gay family-friendly
states are Vermont, Connecticut and California, with state-level protections
similar to marriage.
Six more states — Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, New York
and Pennsylvania — also offer gay residents dual parenting rights
statewide.
The Iowa lawsuit joins six promising others
— in Washington state, New Jersey and New York, where final marriage
decisions are likely in 2006; and in California, Maryland and Connecticut,
where final rulings are expected within two years.
Also expected in 2006 is a ruling
in Massachusetts on whether a racist 1913 law can continue to be used
to bar out-of-state gay couples from marrying.
And courts will decide whether amendments
passed in Michigan and Utah to limit marriage to mixed-gender couples
also ban public entities from offering partner benefits.
The heartland couples hoping to add Iowa
to the list of gay family-friendly states include senior citizens, current
and prospective parents, and churchgoers.
Their inability to marry places them
in precarious — and sometimes humiliating — situations.
For example, when his partner's mom
died in the middle of the night, Jason Morgan left a message on his new
employer's answering machine explaining why he'd miss work the next day.
"I had to go to the funeral not
knowing if when I came back I would have a job," recalls Jason. He
kept his job, but, unlike married workers who get leave for an in-law's
death, his absence was recorded as unexcused.
As the marriage wars continue, gay family-friendly
protections are on the rise: They’re a good gauge of how seriously
a state takes its responsibility to safeguard all its people.
Deb Price of The Detroit News writes the first nationally syndicated
column on gay issues. To find out more about Deb Price and read features
by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators
Syndicate web page at www.creators.com