Then Comes Marriage Read Online Free PDF

low-heeled black pumps. Judge Kaye was having a meeting with some other appellate judges in the conference room next door, and someone asked, “What’s going on?”
    â€œOh, don’t mind that,” Judge Kaye apparently replied. “That’s just my law clerk, Robbie.” Judge Kaye had no idea what I was carrying on about, but it was obviously good, and she knew that I would tell her soon enough. When I did, she was thrilled and I knew that my deep respect for her was well founded. For the first time ever in New York State, gay and lesbian partners would be free to adopt each other’s children, giving their families desperately needed legal protections.
    The way that the majority opinion written by Judge Kaye framed the inquiry produced the answer to the question in the case:
    Under the New York adoption statute, a single person can adopt a child. . . . Equally clear is the right of a single homosexual to adopt. . . . These appeals call upon us to decide if the unmarried partner of a child’s biological mother, whether heterosexual or homosexual, who is raising the child together with the biological parent, can become the child’s second parent by means of adoption.
    Ultimately, Judge Kaye’s opinion for the court held that individuals who were participating in raising their partner’s child should be permitted to become a second parent:
    To rule otherwise would mean that the thousands of New York children actually being raised in homes headed by two unmarried persons could have only one legal parent, not the two who want them.
    Judge Kaye’s opinion actually says very little about the rights of gay people; rather, it focuses almost exclusively on the rights of the children. The truth is, in 1995, we would never have found the votes for this case by arguing for the rights of gay people. At that point, most people did not believe that gay people deserved the same rights as straight people. Judith Kaye and her colleagues needed to make a different argument, essentially saying that these kids were being born whether society liked it or not, and that it was obviously in their best interest to have two parents, rather than one. As Judge Kaye put it, to deny children:
    the opportunity of having their two de facto parents become their legal parents, based solely on their biological mother’s sexual orientation or marital status, would not only be unjust under the circumstances, but also might raise constitutional concerns in light of the adoption statute’s historically consistent purpose—the best interests of the child.
    If Judge Kaye had not made her bold decision to carry the case over to the next session, the decision in Jacob and Dana would have gone the other way, with disastrous consequences for gay families throughout New York State. On a purely personal note, I would not have been able to adopt my own son, Jacob, in 2006.
    And without the ability to marry, we would have had no standing to defeat the Defense of Marriage Act, the odious law passed the very next year by a panicky Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
    IN THE SUMMER of 1996, marriage equality was not a reality anywhere in the United States, but the state of Hawaii was coming way too close for many conservatives’ comfort. The Hawaii marriage case, filed by those three pioneering couples, had made its way up to that state’s Supreme Court, which in 1993 declared for the first time that denying gays the right to marry was a discriminatory act. The Hawaii court then sent the case back down to a trial court to determine whether such discrimination was justifiable under the state constitution.
    This sent the right wing into a frenzy. Not only was Hawaii flirting with marriage equality, but President Clinton—the first Democratic president in twelve years—had declared his intention to end the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military. Conservatives fought