Order to take baby from lesbian foster parents under review

A Utah family court judge has ordered that a one-year-old child must be taken away from the foster parents who’ve been raising her because the foster parents are lesbians, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Utah’s Department of Child & Family Services has said it can not defy the judge’s order, but wants to review the decision.

Ms Hoagland and Ms Peirce were among the first dozen or so same-sex married couples who were allowed to become foster parents in Utah after last summer’s Supreme Court ruling making gay marriage legal across the US. According to Salt Lake City’s CBS affiliate, KUTV.com, Johansen claimed there was “a lot of research that indicated children who are raised in same-sex parent homes do not do as well as children who are raised by heterosexual parents”. Tuesday they went for a “routine hearing” with 7th District Court Juvenile Judge Scott Johansen.

The division has heard no complaints about the care the child has received while in Hoagland and Peirce’s care, he said.

He said the state does not track the number of same -sex married couples who are fostering children but the state needs as many married couples as possible to help raise the state’s 2600 children now in foster care.

“It hurts me really badly because I haven’t done anything wrong”, Ms Hoagland said.

Thought Platt says he doesn’t intend to disobey the judge’s order, he plans on having his division’s attorneys look into it. “Any loving couple if they are legally married, and meet the requirements, we want them to be involved”, he said.

“[Johansen] said through his research he had found out that kids in homosexual homes don’t do as well as they do in heterosexual homes”, told Hoagland to KUTV News.

“The mother has asked us to adopt”, Hoagland said.

Instead, the decision seems to based exclusively on the judge’s disapproval of the foster parents’ relationship. He ordered the child removed from their care within one week. “And the law, as I understand it, reads that any legally married couple can foster and adopt”.

Meanwhile, Platt said, DCFS is looking for an alternate home for the infant, so as not to run afoul of Johansen’s order. The agency was not aware of any other issues with their performance as foster parents.

Unlike Johansen’s unsourced baloney research, Human Rights Watch offered an actual list of studies that say “a parent’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with his or her ability to be a good parent”.

Attorney Mandie Torgerson (representing the baby’s biological mother) corroborated the couple’s statement telling KUTV that the judge refused to cite the alleged research he referenced saying only that “there are “a myriad” of studies that support his order”.

“Removing a child from a loving home simply because the parents are LGBT is outrageous, shocking, and unjust”.