in 2006, Oren Adar and Mickey Ray Smith legally adopted a Louisiana child while they were living in NY; they wanted both their names to appear on the birth certificate. Their simple request that Louisiana acknowledge reality was ruled against by a federal appeals court, and now the Supreme Court has refused to hear the case.

In their appeal, spearheaded by the gay rights advocacy group Lambda Legal, the couple said it was important both practically and symbolically they both be listed as the legal parents.

“Obtaining an amended birth certificate that accurately identifies both parents of an adopted child is vitally important for multiple purposes, including determining the parents’ and child’s right to make medical decisions for other family members at the necessary moments; determining custody, care, and support of the child in the event of a separation or divorce between the parents,” the legal brief said.

Lawyers for the men also said it is vitally necessary for Social Security and tax purposes, inheritance, insurance, school registration, and obtaining a passport.

Adar and Smith tried to have the birth certificate changed in Louisiana. All states have laws creating a right to accurate, amended official birth and identity documents that would be recognized in other states and by the federal government.

Darlene Smith, Louisiana’s registrar of vital records and statistics, refused their request. She took the position that the term “adoptive parents” in the applicable section of state law applies only to married parents, because in Louisiana, only married couples may jointly adopt a child.

Not that marriage in New York was an option open to this couple when they adopted their son. But the adoption did go through. Ms. Smith appears to have been pretending that these gentlemen were married for purposes of adoption, but not for purposes of record-keeping.

Why, Darlene, why such time and effort to screw people over, including innocent children? These men are both the parents–your employer, the state of Louisiana, would seem to have acknowledged as much by allowing the adoption. Why couldn’t you have made a note of the fact in the public record and let everybody get on with their lives?

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports today:

The U.S. Supreme Court today upheld an appellate court ruling that the Vatican can be sued for sexual cleared the way for St. Paul lawyer Jeff Anderson to sue Pope Benedict on behalf of sex-abuse victims when it refused Monday to hear the Vatican’s appeal of an Oregon lawsuit. …

In declining to hear the case, the court upheld an appeals court ruling that the Vatican can be sued for sexual abuse if church officials knowingly reassign priests who have been accused of such acts in their previous parishes. The Vatican appeal had argued that the U.S. courts lacked jurisdiction over the Rome-based church.

This is great news — but it comes too late for countless youths who have been sexually abused by the likes of ex-gay activist Mike Jones — whose Michigan-based Corduroy Stone ministry was a veteran member of Exodus International. Truth Wins Out exposed Jones’ wrongdoing last year — but Exodus did not sever ties with Jones until nine months later. Not only has Jones not faced justice; Jones’ abusive activities have been hosted for free on Michigan State University’s web site. Like other member abusers, Jones was sheltered by Exodus long after his abuses were publicly exposed.

And the Supreme Court decision also comes too late for countless youths who were detained by Exodus’ flagship Love In Action-Refuge boot camp in Tennessee. For years, LIA reportedly exposed youths to potential predators during counseling sessions and hired untrained amateurs to control youths’ access to vital medications. By 2005, Tennessee regulators became alarmed by these reports and sought to take action. But in 2007, state officials — who again are funded and kept in office by Christian Right lobbies — overruled the regulators, effectively determining that the “religious freedom” of Christian Rightists serves as an absolute defense against Christian Rightists’ felony abuse of youths and against the freedom of religious minorities. To this day, LIA’s “Families and Friends Weekends” train relatives and peers to stubbornly trust in defamations about their loved ones despite all factual evidence to the contrary.

In both situations, government officials — intimidated or funded by Christian Right lobbyists — failed to prosecute and convict sexual, physical, and religious abuse.

The latest Supreme Court ruling gives hope to hundreds of thousands of clergy sex abuse victims. But until state and federal officials shed their financial and political ties to the Christian Right, victims of “ex-gay” abusers will continue to watch Exodus shield its abusive counselors. These victims also will continue to be shunned by the public officials who were elected and employed to ensure freedom, safety, and justice for all — not just for the Christian Right.

And folks, that’s an accomplishment. I mean, he is really wigging out.

In his intellectually dishonest way, Bryan Fischer actually does cut to the heart of my concerns about having a gay on the bench:

My main argument against adding a homosexual to the bench is simply this. That individual would have already made up his (generic use) mind on one of the central public policy issues of they day, whether homosexuals deserve special rights or just the equal rights the rest of us have.

He’s right. Because if we’re going to have a gay Supreme Court justice, I want it to be a gay who squarely supports the special rights nearest and dearest to my heart, like gay-only parking spaces in all parking lots (at the front), even at Southern Baptist churches, and the ability to show a pink triangle pass which would let us cut in line at the DMV and anywhere food is being served.

Of course, the actual, principled opposition to Kagan is coming from Glenn Greenwald, etc., so if you’re so inclined, read this and this.

Imagine attending college from freshmen year through senior year without asking a single question in class.

It is unfathomable that one could graduate after four years of such an elongated stretch of conspicuous silence. Obviously, professors and peers would lose respect for this student’s cognitive abilities and think this individual was concealing a basic lack of knowledge.

At best, they would consider the pupil intellectually incurious, and at worst, they would label him or her mentally deficient.

To the point, I was reading the newspaper this morning and stumbled upon this startling fact: Justice Clarence Thomas has not asked a question from the bench since February 2006.

This is absolutely outrageous and speaks to the man’s ignorance and arrogance. Imagine the chutzpah he has thinking that he does not have to participate in the process. If each SCOTUS member behaved in such an irresponsible manner, the court could not function.

Justice Thomas is a disgrace to the Supreme Court and it is insulting that he has a say in the most important decisions that affect our nation. It is time he starts joining the discussion or he should step down before he degrades the court any further. If he does not have the wherewithal to ask pertinent questions, we ought to question his fitness to serve on the Supreme Court.

Like flowers in spring, the culture war is in full bloom. The most explosive flashpoint this past week was President Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor. She is under fire for saying, “I would hope a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Her comments caused the de facto leaders of the Republican Party, Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh, to become apoplectic and accuse her of reverse racism. The battle over her nomination seems like a flashback to the old battles in the 1970s and 80s over identity politics.

In Kansas, George Tiller, a brave and fearless abortion provider, was gunned down in his church. Of course, the anti-abortion fanatics deny any wrongdoing. But, this movement knows full well that when they single out and accuse individuals of killing babies, they are inviting extremists to take vigilante action.

“Who me?” they ask, as they disingenuously feign innocence.

Strangely, the one place a national consensus is building (albeit in its budding stages) is marriage equality. A landmark federal lawsuit by conservative lawyer Ted Olsen and his liberal counterpart David Boies has crystallized this phenomenon. They are charging that denying marriage licenses to gay couples is a violation equal protection and due process under the United States Constitution.

“This is not a liberal or conservative issue,” said Olsen on CNN’s Larry King Live. “This has to do with human decency, human rights, and equality under the law.” On the same show, Boies deftly dispatched the argument that civil unions are acceptable, because they are marriage by another name.

“You’re from Japan,” Boies said on the show. “You can vote. You can do all the things that other individuals can do who are citizens. But, we are not going to allow you to use the word ‘citizen’ because you are from another country. That would be discrimination on an unacceptable basis. That is what we have here.” (Read More)