A Service of Rainbow Law

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - A Fayette County judge erred by assuming a 15-month-old girl would be better off being adopted by a married couple, the lawyer for the lesbian couple who has cared for the child for most of her life told the state Supreme Court justices Wednesday.

The infant, identified in court documents only by her initials B.G.C., was born to a drug-addicted mother in December 2007. On Christmas Eve 2007, the state Department of Health and Human Resources placed her with Kathryn Kutil and Cheryl Hess, a same-sex couple who had already been approved as foster parents.

Almost a year later, Circuit Judge Paul M. Blake Jr. ordered the child removed from Kutil and Hess' home so that she could be potentially be adopted by a more "traditional" family, one with a mother and a father.

Fayetteville attorney Anthony Ciliberti Jr., representing Kutil and Hess, said Wednesday that Blake failed to consider what was best for the child.

There are three categories of people who may legally adopt a child, he said: a single person; a married person with permission from his or her spouse; or a married couple.

"I don't believe there is any basis under West Virginia law for interpreting 'most family-like' as being a mother and a father," Ciliberti said.

Thomas Fast, the lawyer who was appointed to oversee the child's legal interests, said it was clear that having two legal parents is better than being forever limited to one, which is what would happen if the child was adopted by one of the women.

"If we're going to do what's in the best interest for the child, we should find [her] a legal mother and a legal father," Fast said.

Justice Robin Davis, who has twice led "Year of the Child" initiatives during her time as chief justice, interrupted to ask if anyone had considered the consequences of removing the infant from the only real home she had ever known.

"Nothing could be worse than to rip a child out of a family that has bonded [with her] for two years," Davis said.

Fast maintained that the trauma of being removed from a loving home early in life was outweighed by the benefit of having two adoptive parents over a lifetime.

"I don't have any real problem with the preference for two parents over one at the outset [of the placement process], but once the child has bonded [with a foster family], what about the child's rights?" asked Justice Margaret Workman.

"Our state statute [on adoption] makes no distinction between two parents and one parent," Davis said.

Fast replied that logically, a man and a woman would be the best choice to raise the child.

Read the original article in The Charleston Gazette

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