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Court considers Oklahoma law banning gay couples' adoptions

14th Nov 2006, 22:02 GMT

Nov 14, 2006: DENVER - An attorney for the state of Oklahoma asked a federal appeals court Monday to revive a law that denies recognition of adoptions by same-sex couples from other states. Assistant Attorney General Martha Kulmacz told a three-judge panel of the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that a federal judge in Oklahoma City was wrong when she struck the law as unconstitutional and ordered state officials to issue birth certificates to two lesbian couples listing both women as parents. But Ken Upton of Lambda Legal, a civil rights group that represented the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the 2004 law, said before that law was passed, the state attorney general had decided that valid adoptions from other states had to be recognized in Oklahoma, no matter who the parents were. "So for them to say what's blocking it now is the old statute is a hard argument for them to make," Upton said. "Really, there is no impediment if the (new law) isn't an impediment." The judges didn't say when they would rule. The lawsuit was filed by three same-sex couples who had adopted children in other states and sought recognition of those adoptions in Oklahoma. Two of the couples live in Oklahoma. The third, who live in Washington state, claimed they could not travel to Oklahoma so their daughter could visit her birth mother, as they promised. The trial judge dismissed their case, saying they couldn't prove the law hurt them. Kulmacz said under Oklahoma's law, all adoptions from other states are interpreted as if they had occurred in Oklahoma, where two people can adopt a child only if they are married. That's why state health officials refused to recognize adoptions by the plaintiffs, she said. Judge Harris Hartz questioned whether the appeals court could even consider the state's arguments, saying state attorneys failed to bring them up in the trial court. "Your only reason for not issuing a birth certificate (in both parents' names) was that the (new) sta

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