From
James Esseks, Director, ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & AIDS Project:
Greg and Stillman Stewart have a knack for nurturing children with
serious needs. The two men have been together for over 30 years and are
parents to five children that they adopted out of the California foster
care system. Most of the kids came to them after suffering years of
abuse and multiple foster home placements. When one of their children
first came to live with them, at five years old, he was still in
diapers, didn't know how to use utensils, and suffered from severe
speech impediments. By 17, he brought home a report card with all As and
one B. Another child, who had been through 17 foster home placements
and three failed adoptions in three different states, is now a college
sophomore.
The whole family moved to Lincoln, Nebraska in 2011, when Greg, a
United Church of Christ minister, took a position at First-Plymouth
Congregational Church there. As their kids have grown and some have
moved out of the house (their youngest is 13, their oldest 20), Greg and
Stillman realized they wanted to open their home to more children in
need. When they applied for a foster parent license in Nebraska,
however, they were turned away because they're gay men.
Nebraska bars gay people from being foster parents and also bars any
unmarried couple that lives together from being foster parents. Since
Nebraska screens all foster care applicants by doing a home study,
checking for criminal history or past child abuse, reviewing medical and
mental health records, and evaluating the family's stability and
ability to care for children, this ban simply means that Nebraska is
kicking out lesbians and gay men who would pass the regular foster
parent screening. And it's depriving kids in the Nebraska foster care
system (there are 3,854 children in that system now, 48 percent of whom
have been there for more than a year) of what could be just the home
they need. After all, there aren't many foster parent applicants with a
record like Greg and Stillman's.
Today the ACLU filed a constitutional challenge, on behalf of three couples
to Nebraska's ban on foster parenting by gay people...
Read more on ACLU's blog.
(Via OUTLinc.org)
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