Category: In the News

Singapore allows same-sex fathers to adopt their surrogate son

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In a landmark decision, Singapore’s highest court has allowed a gay couple to adopt their son, who was conceived through surrogacy in the United States.

  • Singapore gay

The case began in December 2014 when fathers “James” and “Shawn” applied for James – whose sperm was used for the assisted reproduction – to adopt their son, “Noel”, hoping to remove the stigma of illegitimacy. Their real names have not been disclosed.

James and Shawn, who heard the news at 10.25am through their lawyers, were elated. They had gone to work as usual, despite knowing the judgment would be released on Monday morning.

“It was business as usual because we didn’t want to get our hopes too high,” said James, who is a doctor.

Shawn works in the marketing industry. Both men are 45, of Chinese ethnicity, and are Singaporeans. The men have been in a relationship for 13 years, living together since 2003.

James said the family was happy and relieved that the Court of Appeal has allowed the adoption of Noel.

“The fight to raise our family in Singapore has been a long and difficult journey,” he said. “We hope that the adoption will increase the chances of our son to be able to stay in Singapore with his family. His grandparents and us really want Singapore to be the home of our family. Our family will celebrate this significant milestone.”His grandparents and us really want Singapore to be the home of our family. Our family will celebrate this significant milestoneJames, father

The process was treated as single-parent adoption and will confer to James sole parental rights and responsibility for the child. Both fathers hoped this will make it easier for Noel, now four years old, to acquire Singapore citizenship. The South China Morning Post in January reported on the family’s legal limbo. Noel had been rejected for citizenship and at the time the fathers applied for his adoption, Noel was on a dependent’s pass that has since been renewed every six months.

Last year, the couple had their bid rejected by the Family Justice Courts one day after Christmas, although District Judge Shobha Nair said Noel would be provided for, with or without an adoption order.

By Kok Xinghui, TheStar.com, December 17, 2018

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Kentucky Appellate Court Rejects Lesbian Co-Parent Custody/Visitation Claim, Reversing Family Court

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Not So Welcome

Adopting a narrow construction of the Kentucky Supreme Court’s historic same-sex co-parent ruling, Mullins v. Picklesimer, 317 S.W.3d 569 (Ky. 2010), a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals of Kentucky, ruling on November 30, reversed a decision by Jefferson Circuit Court Judge Deana D. McDonald, and ruled that Teri Whitehouse, the former union partner of Tammie Delaney, is not entitled to joint custody and parenting time with a child born to Delaney during the women’s relationship.  From comments in concurring opinions, it seems clear that this Kentucky Court of Appeals panel deems the U.S. Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015), to require a bright-line test, under which it will be extremely difficult for unmarried partners to claim parental rights.  The opinion confirms the fears of some critics of the marriage equality movement who predicted that achieving same-sex marriage could undermine the interests of LGBT parents who chose not to marry.

The case is Delaney v. Whitehouse, 2018 WL 6266774, 2018 Ky. App. Unpub. LEXIS 844 (Ky. Ct. App., Nov. 30, 2018).  The court designated the opinion as “not to be published,” which means it is not supposed to be cited and argued as precedent for any other case, although Kentucky court rules say that an “unpublished” decision may be cited for consideration by a court if there is no published opinion that would adequately address the issue before the court.  The whole idea of “unpublished” decisions is archaic, of course, when such opinions are released and published in full text in on-line legal services such as Westlaw, Lexis, and Bloomberg Law, and readily available to practicing lawyers and the courts.

The opinion for the panel by Judge Robert G. Johnson (whose term expired after he wrote the opinion but before it was released by the court) accepts Judge McDonald’s factual findings, but disputes their legal significance.  McDonald found that the parties were in a romantic relationship and participated jointly in the decision to have a child, including the insemination process.  “The parties treated each other as equal partners and clearly intended to create a parent-like relationship” between Whitehead and the child, found Judge McDonald, who also found that “they held themselves out as the parents of this child since before conception.  They engaged in the process of selecting a [sperm] donor together, they attended appointments prior to insemination together, [Whitehouse] was present for the birth, and she has been known to the child as Momma.  The parties participated in a union ceremony, after the birth of the child, and they held themselves out as a family unit with friends and family.”

by Art Leonard, artleonardobservation.com, December 8, 2018

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Cambodia’s surrogate mothers go free after agreeing to raise Chinese children but some see it as a mixed blessing

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  • Cambodia banned commercial surrogacy in 2016, and police in June raided two flats where Sophea and 31 other surrogate mothers were being cared for in Phnom Penh
  • They were charged the following month with violating human-trafficking laws, but authorities released them on bail last week, under the condition they raise the children themselves
Cambodia

Sophea was eight months pregnant when Cambodian police told her she would have to keep the baby that was never meant to be hers – and forfeit the US$10,000 she was promised for acting as a surrogate for a Chinese couple.

Cambodia banned commercial surrogacy in 2016, and police in June raided two flats where Sophea and 31 other surrogate mothers were being cared for in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.

They were charged the following month with violating human-trafficking laws, but authorities released them on bail last week, under the condition they raise the children themselves.

Campaigners say Cambodia’s surrogacy crackdown is unlikely to end the trade as poverty means many women will continue to risk arrest for the chance to earn life-changing sums of money.

For some of the newly freed women, keeping their baby is a burden as they struggle to get by. For others, it is a relief.

Despite the financial loss, 24-year-old Sophea said she was happy the authorities intervened, and that her family had welcomed her baby boy.

South China Morning Post, December 11, 2018

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Source: Time for Families

DOJ Hires Kerri Kupac, Anti-LGBTQ Spokesperson

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Alliance Defending Freedom’s Kerri Kupec reported to be new Public Affairs chief

LGBTQ

The Justice Department has hired Kerri Kupac,  a new spokesperson drawn from a leading anti-LGBTQ litigation group, according to The Daily Beast.

Kerri Kupec, who has worked with the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), will serve as the DOJ’s director of the Office of Public Affairs. She recently worked in the campaign to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who faced serious allegations of sexual assault dating back to his time in high school.

Kupec played a visible and vocal role at ADF, which represented bakery owner Jack Phillips in the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission Supreme Court case. In that case, the court ruled in favor of Phillips, who refused to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple. The decision, however, was decided on narrow grounds that did not settle the underlying question of a business’ right to claim a religious exemption from nondiscrimination laws.

December 7, 2018, by Matt Tracy, GayCityNews.nyc

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From a Deceased Woman’s Transplanted Uterus, a Live Birth

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A novel uterus transplantation procedure may help more infertile women become pregnant.

A woman who received a uterus transplanted from a deceased donor has given birth to a healthy child, researchers in Brazil said on Tuesday. It is the first such birth to be reported.uterus

Uterine transplants from living donors have succeeded; at least 11 babies have been born this way since 2013. But a viable procedure to transplant uteri from deceased women could drastically increase the availability of the organs.

“We talk about lifesaving transplants. This is a life-giving transplant, a new category,” said Dr. Allan D. Kirk, the chief surgeon at Duke University Health System, who was not involved in the research.

“Biologically, organs of the living and the dead aren’t all that different,” he added. “But the availability of deceased donors certainly could open this up to a much broader number of patients.”

The operation, detailed in a case study published in The Lancet, followed 10 other attempted uterus transplants from deceased donors in the United States, Turkey and Czech Republic. It was the first successful uterine transplant in Latin America.

Infertility affects more than one in 10 women of reproductive age worldwide. The subject in this study, born without a uterus, received the organ from a 45-year-old woman who had delivered three children naturally. The donor had died of a stroke.

Seven months after the 10-hour transplant surgery — after menstruation began, and once it became evident that the patient’s body had not rejected the organ — doctors implanted the uterus with one of the patient’s own eggs.

A six-pound baby girl was delivered through cesarean section, according to Dr. Dani Ejzenberg, a gynecologist at the Hospital das ClĂ­nicas at the Universidade de SĂŁo Paulo in Brazil, who led the research.

In the future, patients may be able to turn to organ banks instead of searching for volunteers, and living donors could avoid risky complications such as infections or serious bleeding.

By Emily Baumgaertner  New York Times, December 5, 2018

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Source: Time for Families

Sam Thoron, former PFLAG president, dies at 79

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Sam Thoron sold insurance and raced sports cars — but he was better known for changing the lives of thousands of straight families with gay children.

His decades of work and eventual national presidency of Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, or PFLAG, began on the day in 1990 when his 19-year-old daughter, Liz Thoron, came home from college on vacation and told him she was gay.sam thoron

“I realized our daughter had not changed but that we needed support in integrating this new information into our lives,” Thoron said in an essay he wrote in 2007. “We found that support with PFLAG. I became deeply committed to the principle that my daughter deserves to be treated, in every aspect of her life, with the same respect and dignity as seems to flow so naturally to her two brothers.”

Thoron, who served for four years as national board president of PFLAG, died Nov. 17 of esophageal cancer in his San Francisco home at the age of 79.

Current PFLAG president Kathy Godwin said Thoron’s leadership was “personal, caring, thoughtful and filled with passion — but mostly it was about the right to love, to be authentic, and to share one’s life in joy and dignity.”

“He was the embodiment of what PFLAG stands for,” said Liz Owen, the group’s communications director. “Warm, loving, with a shoulder for everyone. A strong parental voice for equal rights, not just for his own child but for everyone’s.”

A native of Washington, D.C., Thoron was a 1964 graduate of Harvard University and a U.S. Army veteran who had a brief stint as an amateur race car driver in New England until his wife persuaded him, after an accident, to knock it off.

by Steve Rubenstein, sfchronicle.com, November 30, 2018

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Taiwan voters reject same-sex marriage

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Taiwan

Taiwan voters rejected same-sex marriage in a referendum Saturday, dealing a blow to the LGBT community and allies who hoped the island would become the first place in Asia to allow same-sex unions.

In Taiwan, three referendum questions initiated by groups that opposed marriage equality passed, while those put forth by same-sex marriage advocates did not.Taiwan
 
For instance, the majority vote was yes on a question that asked, “Do you agree that Civil Code regulations should restrict marriage to being between a man and a woman?”
Voters, meanwhile, rejected a question put forth by LGBT activists that asked if civil code marriage regulations “should be used to guarantee the rights of same-sex couples to get married.”
Amnesty International Taiwan’s Acting Director Annie Huang called the result “a bitter blow and a step backwards for human rights” on the island.
 
“However, despite this setback, we remain confident that love and equality will ultimately prevail,”Huang said in a statement. “The result must not be used as an excuse to further undermine the rights of LGBTI people. The Taiwanese government needs to step up and take all necessary measures to deliver equality and dignity for all, regardless of who people love.”
 
By Hira Humayun and Susannah Cullinane, CNN.com, November 25. 2018
 
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Chinese Scientist Claims to Use Crispr to Make First Genetically Edited Babies

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Crispr

The researcher, He Jiankui, offered no evidence or data to back up his assertions. If true, some fear Crispr could open the door to “designer babies.”

Ever since scientists created the powerful gene editing technique Crispr, they have braced apprehensively for the day when it would be used to create a genetically altered human being. Many nations banned such work, fearing it could be misused to alter everything from eye color to I.Q.Crispr

Now, the moment they feared may have come. On Monday, a scientist in China announced that he had created the world’s first genetically edited babies, twin girls who were born this month.

The researcher, He Jiankui, said that he had altered a gene in the embryos, before having them implanted in the mother’s womb, with the goal of making the babies resistant to infection with H.I.V. He has not published the research in any journal and did not share any evidence or data that definitively proved he had done it.

But his previous work is known to many experts in the field, who said — many with alarm — that it was entirely possible he had.

“It’s scary,” said Dr. Alexander Marson, a gene editing expert at the University of California in San Francisco.

While the United States and many other countries have made it illegal to deliberately alter the genes of human embryos, it is not against the law to do so in China, but the practice is opposed by many researchers there. A group of 122 Chinese scientists issued a statement calling Dr. He’s actions “crazy” and his claims “a huge blow to the global reputation and development of Chinese science.”

If human embryos can be routinely edited, many scientists, ethicists and policymakers fear a slippery slope to a future in which babies are genetically engineered for traits — like athletic or intellectual prowess — that have nothing to do with preventing devastating medical conditions.

While those possibilities might seem far in the future, a different concern is urgent and immediate: safety. The methods used for gene editing can inadvertently alter other genes in unpredictable ways. Dr. He said that did not happen in this case, but it is a worry that looms over the field.

Dr. He made his announcement on the eve of the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong, saying that he had recruited several couples in which the man had H.I.V. and then used in vitro fertilization to create human embryos that were resistant to the virus that causes AIDS. He said he did it by directing Crispr-Cas9 to deliberately disable a gene, known as CCR₅, that is used to make a protein H.I.V. needs to enter cells.

By Gina Kolata, Sui-Lee Wee and Pam Belluck, NYTimes.com – November 26, 2018

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Dutch Clinics to Start Offering Surrogacy to Gay Couples

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Gay couples who want to have a child through a surrogate mother can do so at Dutch clinics from next year, according to a survey by television program De Monitor. Until now that has been impossible in the Netherlands due to strict regulations, newspaper AD reports.

At least two Dutch clinics will start offering surrogacy to gay couples next year – MC Kinderwens in Leiderdorp and Nij Geertgen clinic in Elsendorp. In Leiderdorp the surrogate mother must also donate the egg. In Elsendorp the surrogate and egg donor may be different people. 

“I think it’s too crazy for words that gay couples, but also women with oncological complaints for example, have to go abroad to fulfill their desire to have children”, Nij Geertgen director Marc Scheijven said to De Monitor. “While we have all medical and technical experience in house.”

By Janene Pieters on November 13, 2018 nltimes.nl

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Can a Fired Transgender Worker Sue for Job Discrimination?

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In 2013, a funeral director who had been known as Anthony Stephens wrote to colleagues at a Michigan funeral home, asking for patience and support.

“What I must tell you is very difficult for me and is taking all the courage I can muster,” the letter said. “I have felt imprisoned in a body that does not match my mind, and this has caused me great despair and loneliness.”

“I will return to work as my true self, Aimee Australia Stephens, in appropriate business attire,” she wrote. “I hope we can continue my work at R. G. and G. R. Harris Funeral Homes doing what I always have, which is my best!”

Ms. Stephens had worked there for six years. Her colleagues testified that she was able and compassionate.

“He was a very good embalmer,” one said. “He was very, very thorough. Had obviously had a lot of practice prior to coming to the Harris Funeral Home. Families seemed very pleased with his work. He did a good job.”

Two weeks after receiving the letter, though, the home’s owner, Thomas Rost, fired Ms. Stephens. Asked for the “specific reason that you terminated Stephens,” Mr. Rost said: “Well, because he was no longer going to represent himself as a man. He wanted to dress as a woman.”

Mr. Rost also said he did not want to address Ms. Stephens as Aimee. “I’m uncomfortable with the name,” Mr. Rost said, “because he’s a man.”

The case went to court, and Ms. Stephens won in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati. Discrimination against transgender people, the court ruled, was barred by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids discrimination on the basis of sex.

“It is analytically impossible to fire an employee based on that employee’s status as a transgender person without being motivated, at least in part, by the employee’s sex,” the court said. “Discrimination ‘because of sex’ inherently includes discrimination against employees because of a change in their sex.”

by Adam Liptak, NYTimes.com, November 12, 2018

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Source: Time for Families