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Lesbian Couple Prevails in Miss. Fight
ANNE WALLACE ALLEN
Associated Press
MONTPELIER, Vt. - A lesbian couple from Vermont have won a fight to have both of their names listed on the birth certificate of a boy adopted from Mississippi five years ago.
A Mississippi judge this week ordered that state's Bureau of Public Health Statistics to issue a revised birth certificate reflecting the name of the boy and his parents, Holly Perdue and Cheri Goldstein of Worcester.
If the ruling stands, "we can get him a passport; we can register him in school, we can get him a Social Security number," said Perdue, who adopted the boy as a newborn.
Perdue and Goldstein filed suit in the fall of 2001 in Hinds County Chancery Court asking the judge to order Mississippi to issue the birth certificate showing them as the boy's adoptive parents.
New York-based Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a gay rights advocacy group, and a Mississippi attorney represented the couple.
The Bureau of Public Health Statistics held up the issuance of the birth certificate because they noticed on documents that both adoptive parents were female.
But in his decision, Chancery Judge William Hale Singletary said there was nothing in state law at the time of the adoption saying what gender the parents should be. Mississippi has since outlawed adoptions by gay couples.
He ordered the bureau to deliver the revised birth certificate within 10 days of the decision.
"(The child) was lawfully adopted in Vermont and that adoption is due the recognition of the courts and administrative agencies of Mississippi," the judge wrote.
The validity of the adoption was never at issue in Vermont, where a court approved it in April 2000.
Assistant Mississippi Attorney General Peter W. Cleveland said Wednesday the state had not decided if it would appeal.
Perdue and Goldstein have eight adopted children ages 5 to 23 and also serve as foster parents to two mentally retarded adults in their home.
Perdue, 46, said Wednesday that when she and Goldstein filed their suit, they were seeking only to get the birth certificate for practical reasons. But now she considers the court decision to be "a huge victory" for the people of Mississippi.
"Here in Vermont, lesbian and gay people almost have full civil rights," she said. "In Mississippi, they don't have any rights."
She added that she could probably get her son registered at school or get him a Social Security number without the birth certificate, using his adoption certificate instead.
But with the birth certificate, "people don't have to know the circumstances of him joining the family; it doesn't separate him out from other kids," Perdue said. "It offers him a level of privacy."
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