Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl.

Here's a case the Supreme Court accepted for review last month that's about a father who gave up his parental rights via text message:

Facts of the Case
When the biological mother of Baby Girl became pregnant she did not live with the father and the father did not support the mother financially. The mother sent the father a text message asking if he would rather pay child support or relinquish his parental rights. He sent a text back, saying that he would relinquish his rights, though he later testified that he thought he was relinquishing his rights only to the mother. The biological father was a registered member of the Cherokee Nation. The biological mother attempted to verify this status, but spelled the father’s name wrong and misrepresented his birthday in the request, so the Nation could not locate the father’s registration. The mother listed Baby Girl’s ethnicity as “Hispanic” instead of “Native American” on the birth certificate. The mother decided to put Baby Girl up for adoption because she had two other children that she struggled to support.

Adoptive Couple, who resided in South Carolina, began adoption proceedings in that state. The Cherokee Nation finally identified the father as a registered member and filed a notice of intervention, stating that Baby Girl was an “Indian Child” under the Federal Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). The father stated that he did not consent to the adoption and would seek custody of Baby Girl. After trial, the family court denied Adoptive Couple’s petition for adoption and granted custody to the biological father. The court held that the biological father was a “parent” under the ICWA because of his paternity and pursuit of custody as soon as he learned that Baby Girl was being put up for adoption. Adoptive Couple did not follow the procedural directives in the ICWA to obtain the father’s consent prior to initiating adoption proceedings. The Supreme Court of South Carolina affirmed.

Question
Can a non-custodial parent invoke ICWA to block an adoption voluntarily and lawfully initiated by a non-Indian parent under state law?

Does ICWA define “parent” to include an unwed biological father who has not complied with state law rules to attain legal status as a parent?

More info here:  Baby Girl was 27 months old and had been living with the adoptive couple since birth when South Carolina Supreme Court told them that they were "ideal parents" but they had to turn the the child over to the biological father she had never met. Under state law, the child would stay with the parents, but the federal law "calls for special procedures rooted in the sovereignty of Indian nations and a history of abusive child welfare practices involving Indian children."

"'By the way,' Jennifer blurted out, 'you know I have no legs, right?'"

Dominique Moceanu — the Olympic gymnast — finds out about her long-lost sister.

"Joyce Maynard Adopted Two Girls from Ethiopia Then Gave Them Up."

You remember Joyce Maynard, don't you?

[J.D.] Salinger contacted her after Maynard, at age 18, appeared on the cover of the New York Times Magazine wearing jeans and red sneakers. Long straight hair and bangs, large eyes and lanky arms added to her waif-like appearance.

Maynard called her cover story "An 18-Year-Old Looks Back On Life." Some 25 years later, she published her memoir, At Home in the World, which explores the Salinger relationship in riveting detail.

Here's that old cover story, from 1972. Excerpt:

I had never taken Women's Liberation very seriously. Partly it was the looks of the movement that bothered me. I believed in all the right things, but just as my social conscience evaporated at the prospect of roughing it in some tiny village with the Peace Corps, so my feminist notions disappeared at the thought of giving up eye liner (just when I'd discovered it). Media-vulnerable, I wanted to be on the side of the beautiful, graceful people, and Women's Libbers seemed--except for Gloria Steinem, who was just emerging--plain and graceless. Women's Lib was still new and foreign, suggesting--to kids at an age of still-undefined sexuality--things like lesbianism and bisexuality. (We hadn't mastered one--how could we cope with the possibility of two?)

Besides, male chauvinism had no reality for me. In my family--two girls and two girl- loving parents--females occupied a privileged position. My mother and sister and I had no trouble getting equal status in our household. At school, too, girls seemed never to be discriminated against. (I wonder if I'd see things differently, going back there now.) Our class was run mostly by girls. The boys played soccer and sometimes held office on the student council--amiable figureheads--but it was the girls whose names filled the honor roll and the girls who ran class meetings. While I would never be Homecoming Sweetheart--I knew that--I had power in the school.

And here's what the cover looked like — what J.D. Salinger saw:

Barack Obama, Sr. declared to immigration officials that he planned to put Barack, Jr. up for adoption.

The Boston Globe reports:

The elder Barack H. Obama, a sophomore at the University of Hawaii, had come under scrutiny by federal immigration officials who were concerned that he had more than one wife. When he was questioned by the school’s foreign student adviser, the 24-year-old Obama insisted that he had divorced his wife in his native Kenya. Although his new wife, Ann Dunham, was five months pregnant with their child - who would be called Barack Obama II - Obama declared that they intended to put their child up for adoption.

“Subject got his USC wife ‘Hapai’ [Hawaiian for pregnant] and although they were married they do not live together and Miss Dunham is making arrangements with the Salvation Army to give the baby away,’’ according to a memo describing the conversation with Obama written by Lyle H. Dahling, an administrator in the Honolulu office of what was then called the US Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Of course, Obama, Sr. could have been lying about the plan. (Obama, Jr. says he doesn't believe his mother ever considered putting him up for adoption.)

Although [Obama, Sr. ] told Duham that he had gotten divorced from his Kenyan wife, he apparently did not tell her about his other children.

Obama was a member of the Luo ethnic group, the third largest of Kenya’s tribes, among whose members polygamy was common. His own father had at least four wives. In fact, Obama was still married to his Kenyan wife, Grace Kezia Obama, and apparently worried about the financial burden of another child.

So, he was lying about the divorce? I don't understand that sentence that begins with the word "Although." There's no contrast between clause 1 and clause 2 of that sentence. He lied to her about 2 things. "Although" doesn't work.

Now, you may wonder, why would Obama Sr. lie to the authorities about adoption? Isn't his case for staying in the United States stronger if he is rearing a USC child? The article suggests that a new child combined with bigamy is what would make him a worse candidate and notes that the immigration authorities had been "alarmed" about his "playboy" ways. Once he married an American citizen, they anticipated that she would petition to make him a U.S. citizen, and the question of the validity of the marriage would arise. Officials considered "charging Obama with polygamy or bigamy in order to get a deportation order against him," but decided to watch him closely instead and question the validity of the marriage if he attempted to become a citizen. In the end, Obama Sr. left Hawaii (and Dunham and baby Barack) to go to Harvard, where he would find a new wife and "the question of how many wives he had would spiral into a confrontation with devastating consequences."

Why — let's ask the question again — did Barack Obama, Jr. write a book called "Dreams From My Father"? Why did this man, rather than his mother, deserve to be the centerpiece of his autobiography?

Andrew Sullivan presents — without cynicism — Bill Clinton's explanation of why he's now for same-sex marriage.

And the explanation is a big, verbose mush:

I think, what made me change my mind, I looked up and said look at all of this stuff you’re for. I’ve always believed that—I’ve never supported all the moves of a few years ago to ban gay couples from adoption. Because they’re all these kids out there looking for a home.... So I said, you know, I realized that I was over 60 years old, I grew up at a different time, and I was hung up about the word. I had all these gay friends, I had all these gay couple friends, and I was hung up about it. And I decided I was wrong.

That our society has an interest in coherence and strength and commitment and mutually reinforcing loyalties, then if gay couples want to call their union marriage and a state agrees, and several have now, or a religious body will sanction it, and I don’t think a state should be able to stop a religious body from saying it, I don’t think the rest of us should get in the way of it. I think it’s a good thing not a bad thing. And I just realized that, I was, probably for, maybe just because of my age and the way I’ve grown up, I was wrong about that. I just had too many gay friends. I saw their relationships. I just decided I couldn’t, I had an untenable position.

Clinton is a master blabber, but what did he say? He's not even for a right to marry, only for leaving it up to the states: "if gay couples want to call their union marriage and a state agrees...." He's only implicitly admitting that the Defense of Marriage Act — which he signed — was wrong. He doesn't even apologize for what he did back when he had actual power to do something. He's presenting it all as a personal journey of his. He's older and wiser. Bleh!

Clinton signed DOMA when he thought it was in his political interest, and I suspect he thinks it's in his political interest now to embrace same-sex marriage. I can understand Sullivan enthusing over whatever high-level support he gets for his big cause, but I would find him a much more interesting writer if he would shine a sharp, critical light on everything.

Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz, who are you?

I'm seeing that name, I think, for the first time, in the obituary of the repellent murderess, Susan Atkins. (It was Atkins who boasted that she "stabbed [Sharon] Tate, tasted her blood and used the blood to write the word 'Pig' on the front door of the house.")

In 1968, Ms. Atkins gave birth to a son. [Charles] Manson — who by all accounts was not the father — had her name the child Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz. While he was still a baby, the child was removed from Ms. Atkins’s care and later adopted.

Manson had already given Atkins the name Sadie Mae Glutz. I wonder if the (renamed) Zezozose Zadfrack ever got it into his head to go searching for his biological parents, the way adoptees so often do. I hope not. But surely, there are men born in 1968, who know they were adopted, who have stopped to wonder if they are Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz. Do you ever look in the mirror and think you're rather cute, but maybe you're cute like this?

"It is clear that sexual orientation is not a predictor of a person's ability to parent."

"A child in need of love, safety and stability does not first consider the sexual orientation of his parent. The exclusion causes some children to be deprived of a permanent placement with a family that is best suited to their need."

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman struck down the Florida law that excludes gay persons from adopting children, in a case involving 2 men who have been foster parents for 2 young brothers since 2004. Lederman wrote that once the state allows gay persons to be foster parents, there is no rational basis to discriminate when it comes to adoption.