Salon: Lesbian parent explains "Why I have to legally adopt my own son"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Sunday, Apr 3, 2011 18:01 ET
Why I have to legally adopt my own son
As lesbian parents, my wife and I are forced to jump through some strange hoops. This is definitely one of them
By Leslie Fenton



The author's wife and son with a sheriff's officer

http://www.salon.com/life/real_families/index.html?story=/mwt/feature/2011/04/03/adopting_my_son_open2011

I woke up that morning, thoughts racing, at 2:30 and again at 4:30. When I rolled out of bed at 6:00, I'd already been awake for hours, running through various judicial mishaps in my head. I drank less coffee than usual to avoid the jitters. I left for the Cook County courthouse 30 minutes earlier than necessary. Since I've been litigating family law cases for about five years now, I don't usually get this nervous before court. But that morning was different. That morning, I was the litigant.

Luckily, it's nothing serious. In fact, I wanted to file this case. Everyone else is delighted for us, but my wife, Ann, and I are just gritting our teeth until it's over. We can't help worrying that something will go dreadfully wrong, even though we're certain to get what we want in the end. But it's impossible to avoid white-knuckled anxiety when the stakes are so high: I'm petitioning the court to adopt my own son.

In addition to being terrified, I was overwhelmingly annoyed. I shouldn't have to do this. My wife conceived our son, Julian, through artificial insemination by an anonymous sperm donor. If I were a man, I'd be the legal father already. No one would have cross-examined me or performed a DNA test before allowing me to sign the forms for his birth certificate. But I'm not a man, so Ann and I can't get legally married and Julian is not considered my legal son. I have to go through the adoption process as if I were a stepparent, or relative caring for a neglected child. As if I hadn't married his mother almost five years before he was born. As if I hadn't woken in the middle of the night to his tiny feet kicking me from underneath my wife's skin. As if I hadn't been the first one to see his pinched, purple-lipped face emerging into the world, or the one who cut through the gristle of the cord that still bound his bloodstream to my wife's.

I should be grateful for this opportunity. And in truth, I was happier about it just a few short months ago, knowing that I came very close to not being able to adopt Julian at all. Ann and I moved to New Orleans in 2009. We'd briefly lived in NOLA before Hurricane Katrina, but evacuated to and eventually stayed in my hometown, Chicago. Ann, a California native, couldn't take the idea of a lifetime of frigid winters. I promised her that we could go back to Louisiana after she finished law school. Though I was apprehensive about the move, I was also exited: We'd both managed to land interesting jobs in a unique city where we thought we'd start our life together in earnest. I was 28 years old and not yet comfortable with a fully adult identity. I still had a taste for adventure, which is what New Orleans most resembled from the outside looking in. I imagined nights drinking beer on the bayou until the stars faded and gave way to dawn. I fantasized about winning federal civil rights lawsuits by day and crawling the jazz bars by night.

[tekisui]

1. knr.

[Lugnut]

2. K&R n/t