Although a bill to ban gay adoption did not materialize in the Georgia General Assembly this session, state Rep. Karla Drenner (D-Avondale Estates) said such a bill is coming.

“It’s not if, it’s when,” Drenner said this week.

The legislative session wrapped up at about midnight April 20, but the governor is likely to call a special session in the near future to finalize a budget.

Drenner said while no outright anti-gay law was passed this year, the anticipation of one — especially a ban on gay adoption that has been rumored to happen for years now — is stressful.

“I was told to expect a gay bill and am always constantly anticipating and waiting for that bill [to ban gay adoption],” said Drenner, an adoptive mother herself. “I’m just glad this session is over. We live to fight another day.”

Drenner and gay-rights allies faced a scare March 27, the 33rd day of the annual 40-day session, which is the deadline by which a bill must clear one chamber of the General Assembly in order to be taken up by the other.

Drenner said some Republican members lawmakers told her late in the day that there was the possibility a bill dealing with the adoption code would be amended to ban gay adoptions. Drenner and Georgia Equality rallied advocates to speak to legislators to vote against it should it come up for a vote, and the bill eventually never materialized.

“It’s clear the GOP caucus is split on the issue. There are fiscal conservatives and social conservatives,” Drenner said. “Many of them don’t want to get into it, while some rank it right up there with abortion.”

Kathleen Womack, political chair of Georgia Equality, said November 2005 polling showed 54 percent of Georgians would vote against a state constitutional amendment to ban gay adoption while 37 percent stated they would never allow gay adoption.

“A lot has changed since then, with more states recognizing civil unions and other rights for gay people,” Womack said. “Adoption is the next big thing, but if there is not a lot of support against it, like the anti-gay marriage push, there’s the possibility it will not surface as an issue.”

‘UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES’

The possibility of the amendment to an adoption bill to ban gay adoption came up in the General Assembly days after the Georgia Supreme Court refused to hear a case that dealt with the right of gay men and lesbians to enter into what’s commonly called second-parent adoptions.

In that case — Wheeler vs. Wheeler — the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from a biological mother who was trying to terminate the adoptive rights of her former lesbian partner, even though the child was conceived using artificial insemination when the Wheelers were a couple.

While the state high court gave no reason for its Feb. 26 refusal to hear the appeal, Justice George Carley wrote a dissent arguing that since gay partners cannot be legally classified as “spouses,” it is unclear why they should be granted adoptive rights if a biological parent does not surrender his or her parental rights.

“Our biggest fear is that the Wheeler case pointed out what they [lawmakers] needed to do to close a loophole,” Womack said. “The dissenting opinion set the stage to tell the General Assembly what to do if they want to ban second-parent adoption.”

In another recent case, Wilkinson County Superior Court Judge John Lee Parrott removed a young girl from a lesbian seeking to adopt her because he believed her sexual orientation would be detrimental to the child. He also ruled there was no clear law defining whether gay people can adopt because they cannot legally marry in Georgia.

Hadaway gained legal custody of Emma Rose in June after the girl’s birth mother, also a lesbian, said she could no longer take care of her.

“Superior Court judges have a broad amount of discretion and [Parrott] is clearly not going to allow a lesbian to adopt a child,” Womack said.

“The problem is when you have this kind of discrepancy, it makes it ripe for the General Assembly to come in. The last thing we need is for some state representative to come in and say they can fix a problem,” Womack added.

Drenner said the Wheeler vs. Wheeler and Hadaway cases only bring more attention to the issue of gay adoption and fuel the fires of anti-gay activists as well as anti-gay lawmakers.

“There are some unintended consequences from these cases,” she said. “And they are indicative of things to come.”

HATE CRIMES

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