Imperial County’s newly elected clerk-recorder, Chuck Storey (no, not really).
I swear, these anti-gay bigots are like zombies. You whack 'em down, and they get right back up again and again and again.
And like zombies, they are not long on brains (aside from those they eat), but they are legion.
Imperial County, CA, nearly laughed from the standing hearing not two months ago in their bid to defend Prop 8 in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger case (video here), are back for more. They're still gnawing at the bit to do all they can to keep the gay people of California out of the sacred institution of marriage.
From the Sacramento Bee:
The elected clerk of Imperial County, Chuck Storey, filed a motion Friday to intervene in ongoing proceedings over Proposition 8, the 2008 voter-approved ballot measure that prohibited same-sex marriage.
The filing follows the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' rejection of a similar request for standing in the case made by the county's Board of Supervisors and unelected deputy clerk. The three-judge panel had found last month that "the board plays no role with regard to marriage, which is 'a matter of statewide concern' rather than a 'municipal affair.' "
Yes, we've been here already. The previous Deputy Clerk of Imperial County tried to get in on the action at the standing hearings in January. Watching the attorney argue for standing I experienced a mix of schadenfreude and pity. The Justices seemed loath to contain their contempt and derision at their sad, little claim to standing, and pretty well laughed the guy out of the court. The argument from ruling
(PDF) of January 4, 2011 was thus:
“Plaintiffs seek to enjoin all relevant state officials from enforcing Proposition 8 and, ultimately, to require them to issue such orders as may be necessary to ensure that all county clerks across California issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.” Because “the outcome of this action will affect [Imperial’s] ability to comply with Proposition 8,” Movants argued, “the Clerks’ interest in the effective performance of their duties and the threat of an injunction impacting those duties – either from a federal District Court or the California Superior Court seeking to enforce an order from the Attorney General or other state officials – justify intervention.”
So essentially the clerk's interest in the case is they wish to respect Prop 8, and deny gay people marriage licenses. But the problem is none of their bosses agree. Not Jerry Brown (Previous Attorney General and current Governor), Arnold Schwarzenegger (previous Governor), nor Kamala Harris (current Attorney General). They all decided it's best the clerks should comply with the decisions made by the Federal court.
And so Justices said:
We affirm the denial of the intervention motion, although on different grounds from those relied upon by the district court, and correspondingly we dismiss the appeal on the merits for lack of standing.
They also said:
None of the Imperial County movants has demonstrated a “significant protectable interest” at stake in this action, as it was brought by Plaintiffs, and we affirm on that basis alone.
In short, the desire not to hand out marriage certificates to the gays does not qualify as a "protectable interest." Nor is concern the bosses at the attorney general office and the Governor's office have erred in their decision making process.
A change of personnel at the Clerk's office doesn't change that reality.
Imperial County won't win. They won't get their way, but they may manage to sandbag the process. Roadblocks, red tape, individuals undermining the process at every step of the way, is what they're down to. They see the clock ticking down, but every moment they can block the equality of LGBT Americans, however fleeting, is a win for them.
The exhausting part of following LGBT stories is how frequently our opponents rise from the dead. A decisive victory in California's Supreme Court, is snatched away when opponents, not likely the Justice's interpretation of the Constitution, swiftly rewrite the Constitution. In Maine, we do the substantial work to convince a legislature to pass marriage equality and convince a reluctant Governor to sign it, only to have it nullified at the ballot box.
Unfortunately, because they are legion and our political, legislative and judicial systems are labyrinths, there is no dearth of opportunities for them to mess with the gays.
The problem is the real damage these strategies can wreck on real lives. A strategy of delay, and bureaucratic stonewalling may have been employed by some zombies across the Atlantic in Europe to thwart the unity of a gay family. From MSNBC comes this sad tale of toddler's three-year odyssey from conception to foster homes, to an orphanage, and finally into the anxious arms of his expectant fathers.
Two years and three months of bureaucratic nightmares kept Laurent Ghilain and his Belgian husband apart from their infant son, Samuel. The Belgian couple had contracted a Ukraine woman to serve as a surrogate. But following the birth, the couple fought one redtape roadblock after another to bring their Samuel home. They even resorted to a failed attempt to smuggle him illegally into Belgian. The story finally came to a happy ending this week:
The problems persisted until this week, when the Belgian Foreign Ministry, following a court decision in the couple's favor, finally issued Samuel a passport.
Belgian law is silent on surrogate motherhood, leaving wide room for interpretation. There is no specific legal bar to a gay couple — or any couple — using a surrogate mother abroad and bringing the child back home.
But Ghilain and Meurrens ran into continued obstacles. The couple believes that some bureaucrats, both in Ukraine and in Belgium, were anti-gay.
Ghilain's husband, Peter Meurrens, is quoted as saying:
"It has been better than we thought to see him again after one year," Meurrens said at Brussels' main airport, adding that he felt "lots of joy and relief to him again."
"This morning was the most stressful of my life until we got the final message from Lviv in Ukraine that they passed border control and were on the plane," he said. "That was incredible."
Whatever the ultimate facts of the hold-up here turn out to be, the sad reality is there ARE people making decisions like this that hate gays enough, they'd rather see a child rot in an Ukrainian orphanage than be raised in a loving home of two men (or women).
If someone in Belgian or Ukraine was motivated by anti-gay animus to slow-walk or lose paperwork, consider how craven a heart beats in the chest of such a person. Consider that someone may have used their authority to hold up that child's passport, because they disproved of the household to which he was headed? And they saw fit to leave a family torn apart for two years? And left a newborn child to languish in foster homes, and an orphanage, for more than two years?
Florida even had a law on the books compelling such a policy. And it was struck down as unconstitutional in state Court in September 2010. So, of course, the Florida House Speaker is seeking to resurrect the overturned gay adoption ban. The magic wooden stake evades us, still, as foes rise again from the grave.
Unfortunately, such people do exist. People so blinded by their hatred and prejudice they are completely apathetic to the collateral damage their vendettas visit on the most helpless and vulnerable. People like American Christian Dominionists that are pushing their anti-gay eliminationist agenda on Africa.
But today, let's extend félicitations to the not-so-new dads. May they revel in the joyous, wondrous experience of growing as a family.
If I was a Hollywood director, the soundtrack in the scene of little Samuel's homecoming would include Five Stairsteps. I play them to remind myself that at times it may not seem like it, but indeed, "Some day, we'll get it all done."
Someday these monsters will be told decisively they must to leave our families alone.
"O-o-h Child"
Ooh-oo child, things are gonna get easier
Ooh-oo child, things'll get brighter
Ooh-oo child, things are gonna get easier
Ooh-oo child, things'll be brighter
Some day, yeah
We'll put it together and we'll get it all done
Some day
When your head is much lighter
Some day, yeah
We'll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun
Some day
When the world is much brighter
Updated by Clarknt67 at Mon Feb 28, 2011, 12:50:54 PM
And JPMassar has a round-up of where the zombies are out in full force, wrecking their havoc on gay families.
UPDATE: Thanks to ChitownDenny for directing my attention to this Belgian news story for about the father's struggle. You can turn on the closed captioning for English.
Below is an English transcript from YouTube (emphasis mine):
Can you imagine? Bearing a child and not being allowed to see it grow up? It is happening to Laurent, for already 2 years and 2 months. Laurent is the biological father of Samuel, a boy conceived by a surrogate mother in Ukraine. That was the only way he and his (legally married) husband Peter saw it possible to make a child.
It seemed to them a legally watertight solution, but this was not the case with the Belgian authorities. Laurent and Peter are trying to move heaven and earth to bring their child to our country (Belgium). The whole thing would cost them 25.000 EUR, but it has already left them 80.000 EUR poorer.
This is the story of 2 fathers, who may not be a father, apparently, A little town in the south of France, the Belgian couple Peter and Laurent moved here 2,5 years ago. Laurent started his own fitness bussiness and Peter works as a cardiologist at the local hospital
We were very well received here, although maybe you would think that in a small town in the south of France, a couple of 2 guys would not be easily accepted, but that was not at all a problem, on the contrary. For the 2 of us it was very clear we both wanted children, we have both always wanted that.
How could we fill that the desire for children? That was of course not evident.
Of course we informed ourselves first about adoption in Belgium. We had friends that had tried that but never succeeded, and they were on a waitinglist for more than 3 years! Gay couples can legally adopt children in Belgium since 2006 but Peter and Laurent hear that it is very difficult in reality. For both domestic and foreign children are same-sex adoptive parents almost never accepted. So then we informed ourselves about surrogate mothers, first in our circle of friends and family.
There were girlfriends that had once said: "if you ever want children, we can always talk about that". We talked about it, and it of course it was not that easy, so nothing was really possible that way. Then we started to look for countries where it is possible, where there are programs for surrogate mothers the USA, Ukraine, India, ..
Ultimately the couple chooses for Ukraine, because they have the most trust an in organisation over there. An egg is fertilized by IVF with sperm from Laurent, and implanted in the surrogate mother.
On November 24, 2008 their son Samuel is born!
We arrived there at 10:00 a.m. We immediatly went to see him at the hospital. Beforehand I had a lot of questions: How will it be for the first time? How will I react? But the first time you take your child into your arms, you forget all about that, and everything goes very naturally. It was paradise, we followed his rhythm, everything was perfect!
And the intention was that everything would remain perfect.. We met the surrogate mother, and we felt very empathic about her, thinking how it must be for her.. but she was very cool about it, everything was fine by her! We asked her if she would like a present from us, but she only wanted us to pay for her taxi, and that was it for her.
Everything goes according to plan, until they take their baby to the Belgian embassy in Kiev. The consul refuses to give Samuel a Belgian passport! According to the spokesperson of Foreign Affairs, this is because surrogacy is not legally regulated in Belgium. Strangely, it is not forbidden, but it is not allowed either!
People go abroad, they find themselves a surrogate mother, after 9 months the child is born and they come with their birth certificate to the embassy, and they ask for us to recognize that birth certificate. We have no legal basis to recognize the birth certificate, and on that basis we can also give no official papers to that child.
Was it naive to think that Belgium would accept a child born from a surrogate mother? Maybe.. but I had informed myself in the Belgian Embassy, and they didn't tell us that it's Belgium that's going to block it, and that they wouldn't be able to give us the papers that we needed to get Samuel to Belgium! If they told us that beforehand, we would never have started it..
Peter and Laurent are forced to hope and wait for an answer from Foreign Affairs or a Belgian court. They return home, because their jobs are waiting, and they leave Samuel in a foster family in Ukraine. The foster family were he was staying, was ok. they were expensive, 1000 EUR per month, but they were friendly.
It was a family with children, and we felt confident about that place. I have no idea who and at what point could have taken a decision, or who could have provided a solution. It was not the ambassador, not the Foreign Policy Minister,..
They're all stabbing their heads in the sand, nobody wants to compromise themselves. But we always had hope.. It wasn't until the interim (court procedure), that we first heard from the counterparty.
The prosecutor was simply devastating, when I came out of there I felt like I was a monster! That I was a selfish person and only thought of myself and never about the welfare of my son!
Meanwhile, the time is ticking away without Samuel. 2 times the case is presented in interim (Belgian court), 2 times the judge gives a negative answer.
Even with a DNA test that proves that Laurent is the father. Peter and Laurent visit Samuel a few times, but when the situation drags on for longer than one year the foster family starts to threaten them!
They said they had enough, if we couldn't get a Belgian passport, they would put Samuel anonymously on the street or in an orphanage so we would never be able to find him, and that would be the end of the story. That put us with our backs against the wall so we decided to go get him anyway.
An act of desperation, because bringing a child without official papers to Belgium, is kidnapping. The foster family didn't want to give him up because we had no official papers, so I just took him and we left.
It was after all our own son! We took him to the other side of the country, to the border with Poland. There a girlfriend was waiting for us, she would get him across the border, and we would wait for her on the other side.
But that went completely wrong! The next day we went to the police because we saw no one and we weren't able to reach anyone by phone. In hindsight, they lost their Mobile to the Police during their arrest on suspicion of child abduction and child trafficking.
They're able to bail their girlfriend out of jail for 10.000 EUR. Samuel ends up in a Ukrainian orphanage.. I've seen the footage, it seemed to be clean in the sense that each child had his own bed, clean clothes, some toys and activities, so good..
But he no longer smiled on that film, while he was actually a very open and jovial child was as we knew him! And he was cared for by people in white aprons, very sterile, no real parental figures.
I don't know it anymore. This is no way of living. Of course there is the guilt, because there is still a child in an orphanage, and that's probably our responsibility. You keep asking yourself a lot of questions. Whether it was a good decision.
one wonders whether ..if we we shouldn't have done it, If it might have been better not to go through with it. Maybe we had better ignored our desire to have children.
You do not choose to be gay, but ... it's not allowed in Belgium, OK. Maybe in a few years time it is.
We hope indeed that a humanitarian solution can be found, and we certainly follow his situation closely. We are committed to it, and it's indeed very difficult to see that the child has to stay this long in an orphanage. Foreign Affairs says it can do nothing, as long as surrogacy is not legally regulated.
And without a government, (February 1, 2011: Belgium 232 days without government) everything is blocked! The Belgian court for its part, promises a verdict this month. If that's negative for the 3th time, Peter and Laurent want to bring it to the European Court.
Laurent never comes into this room.. never, never, never. I'm scared that Samuel, because of those 2 years, 1 year in a foster family, and already more than 1 year in the orphanage, that he will experience difficulties because of that.
And also that he would end up here with people that are strangers to him, that it would be once again a new situation for him. That's the worst.
That we might have to give up on him one day. To think of him. To give up before he begins to understand what's all happening around him.
That maybe he should better be adopted by another loving family. We have already said to each other: perhaps that decision forces itself upon us, if Belgium is not quick to make a decision.
Fortunately they did not give up. That's what good parents do, stay in there for the long haul. Congratulations Daddies.