The Forgotten Children: Same-Sex Partners, Their Children and Unequal Treatment

Abstract

Many of today's family relationships no longer fit within the traditional one-mother, one-father model. Families created by gay and lesbian couples are on the increase and the issues relating to the legal protections of these families remain uncertain. Many state courts and legislatures have refused to legally recognize, through second-parent adoptions, the relationship of children born to a homosexual couple with their non-biological second parent. The refusal to permit secondparent adoptions denies the children of homosexual couples, as a class, many of the legal benefits and protections afforded to children of heterosexual couples. This Note argues that such classifications of children born to same-sex couples punish children for the actions of their parents and thus results in unfair treatment violative of the Equal Protection Clause.