Moving for Fairness
By Kris
My partner and I have wanted to be co-parents since we first started dating. We live in South Carolina, a very conservative state that feeds on homophobic biblical traditions. My partner has experienced first-hand the difficulties of not being a legal, adoptive parent in South Carolina. Her former partner adopted a child in South Carolina and she had no legal rights to the child. When they separated, the adoptive mom refused her visitation for a year and a half. My partner's absence from her daughter's life was tragic and senseless, and the child had no protection. It was heartbreaking.
We know we have no hope of forming our own family here in South Carolina. We are blessed to have a male family friend who is willing to help us start our family, but we will have to move to a gay-friendly jurisdiction to protect our future child and ourselves. This means moving our home and jobs away from our family and support networks in order to secure our family system. Of course it is our luck that all the gay-friendly jurisdictions are in the icy cold Northeast!
This Florida girl will have a hard time adjusting to that. Luckily, we have some financial resources to accomplish this difficult task. Not all people in our situation are so fortunate. But, we are willing to undertake the financial expense and time away from our permanent home to ensure that our child(ren) will be legally secure with my partner and I as parents. We don't want custody fights or South Carolina courts coming into our home in the future to say we're unfit parents just because we're gay. So we'll go to whatever lengths we must to protect our child(ren).
Sept. 17, 2002