This morning, I attended a hearing concerning our adoption of Selina.  The parental rights of her birth-parents were terminated without objection from either.  The court proceedings were brief (though the time in the waiting room wasn’t).  It only took a few minutes for the judge to announce his decision, at which point our social worker grabbed my shoulder and whispered, “Congratulations.”  We are now officially Selina’s foster parents working toward adoption.  The rest of the process will take a little over two months, we think.  Once things are finalized, our daughter’s name will legally be the one she already enjoys singing, “Selina Tolins-Cary.”

The judge who normally presides in our courtroom (in the building pictured above) was out today and another judge took her place.  He was an Orthodox Jew, I believe, and he wore a yarmulke.  As a struggling (lapsed?) Jew myself, I was oddly moved by that.  This wasn’t his courtroom and he wasn’t particularly in command of what needed to be done, but he was warm and friendly and took the guidance of the lawyers and social workers present without a hint of annoyance or frustration.

I was there alone (Cary attended the previous hearing), but the judge did know that I was a gay father.  He read the social workers’ reports on Selina’s life with us (which are glowing, according to them).  If he had any reservations about placing this little girl with two gay dads, he didn’t show it.  Indeed, he offered me an encouraging smile.

The fact that the judge was a hamishe mensch with the demeanor of a reformed Rabbi shouldn’t have mattered to me.  But it did.  I felt, or chose to feel, a moment of acceptance by the culture I grew up in.  Here was the law, as personified by a wise, well-meaning Jewish judge, saying, “We approve.  Go and have a happy family.”

Or maybe he was just trying to follow instructions and get through the day.

Not everyone has such a happy day in court.  This afternoon, I read, courtesy of Crooks & Liars, a story about my own Democratic senator, Dianne Feinstein, who has chosen to support the appointment of one Judge Leslie Southwick.  The People for the American Way say this in their examination of Southwick’s record:

In 2001, Southwick joined a ruling that upheld a chancellor’s decision to take an eight-year-old girl away from her mother and award custody to the father, who had never married the mother, largely because the mother was living with another woman in a “lesbian home.” Southwick went even further by joining a gratuitously anti-gay concurrence which extolled Mississippi’s right under “the principles of Federalism” to treat “homosexual persons” as second-class citizens. The concurrence suggested that sexual orientation is a choice and stated that an adult is not “relieved of the consequences of his or her choice” – e.g. losing custody of one’s child.

The C&L story’s headline is, “Say It Ain’t So, Dianne!”  That’s putting it mildly.  How about, “How dare you?”

While I waited for Selina’s hearing to begin this morning, I watched the parade of families in crisis going by.  There were parents at the end of their financial tether with large broods to take care of.  There was a woman offering lame excuses to explain her positive result on a drug test.  (The amazingly patient social worker wasn’t buying it.)  At one point, a woman emerged from another courtroom howling in pain, yelling, “They’re going to charge me with reckless endangerment!”  The string of obscenities that followed made me fear for the unsuspecting children around her.  As the two and a half hours passed, I saw mental instability, substance abuse, and obesity.  Things to make you rage at the system, or break your heart.  Or both.

And I wondered, with all the difficulties children face in our society, are families like mine really that big a threat?  Are we even in the top ten?  Judge Southwick seems to think so.  Do you, Senator Feinstein?

Today’s hearing was a big step toward legal acceptance and protection of our little family.  We can’t wait till the whole process is over, for obvious reasons.

- Jon