COLAGE News Blog

California Prop 8 Updates and Action Alerts Sep 17 08

California Action Alerts: A Prop 8 Campaign Update from COLAGE

COLAGE calls on youth and adults with LGBTQ parents, their families and our allies to take action to defeat Proposition 8 this weekend.

1. Display your No on 8 Signs in response to Conservative Churches Sign Making Campaign

We have learned that there is a plan in place to put up one million 'Yes on 8' yard signs at 7:00 am on September 22nd. The effort is not necessarily to persuade unsure voters but instead to identify the Yes vote throughout communities within California. While this effort is said to be headed by the Mormon Church who has also helped fund the Yes campaign by several million dollars many other faith based groups are taking part as well. The plan is to place them in unison and whether or not that happens it is said to be the largest faith based political efforts ever in the state of California. The main groups working on this campaign is the Mormon, Catholic, and Evangelical Christian church whom also allied together 8 years ago during Proposition 22. This goes to show that the message of "separation between church and state" needs to be emphasized more than ever in the next 48 days!

We won't let their sign campaign intimidate us as a community or our allies. Let's take a moment to regain strength and the courage to get out there and have our voices be heard of the importance of voting NO on 8. There are other things you can do as well, make your own yard signs to be put out the same day and/or window posters to hang.

Art and Action Parties: For Bay Area folks, COLAGE is hosting and Art and Action Party on September 27th in Oakland in response to this where we will be creating our own signs, postcards and advocacy materials. For more information visit the COLAGE Bay Area website. If you live in another area of California and are interested in hosting an Art and Action Party, please contact Paulie Milagros Schreck by email or 415-861-5437 to learn how!

2. Join a Weekend of Action event near you!

COLAGE encourages our members and allies to join this weekend’s actions. Over the weekend thousands of volunteers will be staffing phone banks, going door to door, emailing friends and waving lawn signs to bring attention to the growing coalition opposing Prop 8 on the November ballot.

From staffing phone banks, to going door to door, from faith leaders urging congregations to join the cause, to supporters waving signs, thousands of volunteers to the No on Prop 8 campaign will be reaching out in their local communities to urge their neighbors, friends and co-workers to Vote No in November. Youth are welcome to participate and everyone can make a difference!

Learn more about the many volunteer opportunities available near you online.

3. Now is a great time to donate to Equality for All

Have you heard that the right-wing has now raised $16 million to pass Prop 8? Just $5 million of this has been raised since September 1. They've used this money to buy massive amounts of air time to run ads for Prop 8 as early as late September. Soon endless ads will flood the airwaves with the goal of eliminating marriage rights for same-sex couples.

We need your help now more than ever – because we are behind. The Yes on 8 campaign is out fundraising our side at a pace of 3 to 2. We must match what is raised dollar for dollar with the right wing; if we do not, we are at serious risk of losing this November. We must raise $200,000 in the next 48 hours to meet our fundraising goal. Donate Now.

You've probably heard that the polls show our side ahead. Some are saying that victory for our side is a sure thing. Don't be fooled! This race is too close to call. The ugly truth we have learned from defeat after defeat in states across the country is that people lie on polls, especially about how they feel about LGBT people. In contest after contest, from Wisconsin to Colorado, we have gone into election day with polls showing our side with 7 to 10 points more support than we actually received at the ballot box.

And, these polls do not factor in the media battle that is about to unfold here in California. We know that between 15% - 20% of California voters remain undecided on Prop 8. We can persuade them to vote no, but only if we reach them first and often with our message. Reaching them via TV will be vital to win. Right now the opposition may out-campaign us over the airwaves. We must be competitive on TV or we risk losing undecided voters to the other side.

We must raise more money now to stay competitive. And we need your help to do so. If you've given before – thank you – we need you to dig even deeper for our fight. If you've not yet given, now is the time to act. Give today directly to the Equality For All Campaign to help us reach our ambitious $200,000 fundraising goal.

For more information about what you can do to participate in COLAGE’s effort for No on 8 contact Paulie Schreck at paulie@COLAGE.org or 415-861-5437

NEWS: Florida's gay adoption ban ruled unconstitutional Sep 11 08

Florida's gay adoption ban ruled unconstitutional

Originally Printed in the Miami Herald

BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER

A Monroe Circuit Court judge has ruled Florida's 31-year-old gay adoption ban ''unconstitutional'' in an order that allows an openly gay Key West foster parent to adopt a teenage boy he has raised since 2001.

Declaring the adoption to be in the boy's ''best interest,'' Circuit Judge David J. Audlin Jr. said the Florida law forbidding gay people from adopting children is contrary to the state Constitution because it singles out a group for punishment.

Florida is one of only two states -- the other is Mississippi -- that forbids gay people from adopting.

Circuit judges in Florida have found the statute unconstitutional twice before, both in 1991, but both challenges stalled. A Miami case expected to be heard next month may provide an additional challenge to the law.

At the heart of the Monroe case is a 13-year-old boy with learning disabilities and special needs who has lived in his Key West foster father's two-story home since the Department of Children & Families placed him there in 2001. The boy is identified as John Doe. The father, 52, is not identified.

Audlin appointed the foster father as guardian for the boy in 2006. At a recent hearing, the boy testified he wanted the man to be his ''forever father'' -- like all the other kids had -- ''because I love him,'' the order says.

A home study by a social worker ''highly'' recommended the guardian and his partner be allowed to adopt the boy, saying the two men provided a ''loving and nurturing home,'' provided ''fair and consistent'' discipline and are financially secure, the order says.

Miami attorney Alan Mishael, who represents John Doe's guardian, declined to discuss the ruling, since Audlin has not yet published it formally. He said the ruling is less about public policy than the welfare of a former foster child who wants a father of his own.

''This is a case about a young man who already had a permanent guardian but wanted to have a father,'' Mishael said. ``That's what the case is about. That's all it's about.''

In the ruling, the judge noted that the statute was passed by lawmakers in 1977 amid a politically charged campaign to, as one lawmaker at the time put it, send gay people ''back into the closet.'' Audin said the law violates the Constitution's separation of powers by preventing family court and child welfare judges from deciding case-by-case what is best for a child.

''Contrary to every child welfare principle,'' Audlin wrote, ''the gay adoption ban operates as a conclusive or irrebuttable presumption that . . . it is never in the best interest of any adoptee to be adopted by a homosexual,'' Audlin wrote.

In 1991, a Key West judge tossed out the anti-gay adoption statute as a violation of privacy and equal protection, but the ruling never was published or appealed.

That same year, a Sarasota Circuit judge declared the law unconstitutional, citing the earlier case. But two years later, an appeals court in Lakeland reversed the decision, involving a man named James W. Cox who had been told he could not adopt a foster child. The Florida Supreme Court agreed with the Lakeland court in 1995.

State law does not preclude gay men and lesbians from fostering abused and neglected children. John Doe's guardian has cared for 32 children who were in DCF custody, the order says.

DCF Secretary George Sheldon said his agency took no position on the Key West adoption because the boy already had been placed in a permanent guardianship with his foster father, essentially stripping DCF of authority over family decisions. ''We were not a party, and we are still not a party,'' he said.

Sandi Copes, press secretary for Attorney General Bill McCollum, declined to discuss the Key West ruling. McCollum's office chose not to become involved in the case because the teen was no longer in DCF's custody, Copes said.

The attorney general still can appeal the order, the ruling says.

Surveys done by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suggest gay couples already are raising children in large numbers.

A study published last year by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, which used data provided by HHS, said that one-third of lesbians and 16 percent of gay men have kids. Of those without children, 41 percent of gay women and 52 percent of gay men said they would like children.

Forty-six percent of lesbians said they had considered adoption -- as compared to 32 percent of straight women, according to the study, which did not include data for gay men. In all, the study said, two million gay people nationwide said they would like to adopt.

Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of the Orlando-based Liberty Counsel, a conservative advocacy group, called Audlin's ruling ``absurd.''

''State and federal courts have already addressed the constitutionality of Florida's law, and both have upheld it,'' Staver said. He said Audlin ``has no authority to disobey state and federal court precedents.''

''I think this kind of ruling illustrates why judges should judge and not be activists,'' Staver added. ``Apparently, he should run for office, as opposed to sitting behind a bench.''

RULING HAILED

Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, which has litigated several cases on behalf of prospective adoptive parents who are gay, defended the ruling, saying, ''Child welfare policy has been held hostage by politics'' for too long.

''You won't find a child welfare professional or organization that does not believe judges ought to be able to make individual determinations as to who would be good adoptive parents, and who would not,'' Simon said.

As an order from a trial judge that has not been appealed, Audlin's ruling is unlikely to hold much sway as legal precedent, several constitutional scholars said. Florida's gay adoption ban has been upheld repeatedly by state and federal appeals courts, they noted.

''On the one hand, this is one trial judge in Key West,'' said Professor Michael Allen, who teaches constitutional law, federal courts and civil procedure at Stetson University's law school in St. Petersburg. ``But for these two men and their child, it has greater effect than any order by the Supreme Court.''

He said the ruling, and the adoption hearing set for next month involving a gay foster father from Miami, may start to chip away at the state law.

''Cracks begin to develop in legal doctrine,'' Allen said. ``Even if it has no effect as precedent, and it is not repeated someplace else, it's a crack. If you get enough cracks, things break.''