I don’t really know April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, though we’ve briefly met, but I can tell you this much about them: They are authentic American heroines.
That’s for a number of reasons, but first, because they asked the State of Michigan to allow them to serve as foster parents for some special needs children nobody else wanted. Rowse and DeBoer, both nurses, are a couple, and have since gotten married, but they didn’t foster or adopt the children together, not officially anyway, because the state wouldn’t allow them to.
And the fact that the State of Michigan denied them permission to do the most loving thing I can imagine led to two women who never wanted the spotlight changing society.
Michigan did not allow two unmarried people to jointly adopt children back in the long-ago world of, of 2014. Nor did Michigan allow same-sex marriages. Single people could adopt, so each of the women had formally adopted two children.
They lived together as a six-person nuclear family. Then, after barely avoiding death on the highway in 2011, Rowse and DeBoer tried to draw up a will to give each other custody of all four kids should one of the women die. Both were the only parents the kids had ever known.
But lawyers told them that Michigan law wouldn’t allow them to do that, and if a disaster happened to one of the women, a judge could easily break up their family and send her two kids away. Lawyers said there was nothing they would do. Gay rights groups wouldn’t help. Finally, seven years ago, a lawyer did take their case, a young woman who sued for them in federal court.
The judge they drew was a Reagan appointee who had ruled that the University of Michigan law school’s affirmative action policies were unconstitutional.
The attorney general of Michigan himself got into the case, arguing that to allow these two women to jointly adopt the children they loved would be bad morally and bad for society.
Oddly, the judge suggested that Rowse and DeBoer amend their suit to challenge the constitutionality of Michigan’s law banning same-sex marriage as well.
They felt they had to. And in a stunning verdict, U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman ruled that they were right, and that they could jointly adopt the kids and, by the way, marry.
Michigan’s humiliated attorney general appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where their case was combined with several others. In June 2015, the highest court in the land ruled in their favor. Yes, they could adopt together and yes, they could marry.
Two weeks ago today, their attorney, a woman named Dana Nessel, was elected attorney general of the state of Michigan. The current attorney general, the one who had tried so hard to prevent the two nurses from adopting the children they had fostered, children no one wanted, tried to become governor and lost in a landslide. Sometimes the good guys win.
By the way, there’s a big myth that most adoptions turn out badly. In fact, a huge survey by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that on balance, adoptive families are slightly happier and closer than those where the kids are born naturally.
And as we approach Thanksgiving, I can’t imagine a more selfless act than to serve as a foster parent, especially for an older or special needs child. Let’s give thanks for every adoptive and foster parent in this state, this week and all year long.
(Thanks to Michigan Radio for use of photo of April and Jayne’s children)
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