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The adoption proceedings of Emma Rose concerned an application for the adoption of a seven-year-old Georgia girl, Emma Rose, by Elizabeth Hadaway, a lesbian prospective mother. Judge John Lee Parrott, a judge in Wilkinson County, Georgia, ruled against the adoption and ordered Emma returned to her biological mother, citing reasons rooted in the fact that the prospective adoptive mother, Elizabeth Hadaway, was a lesbian. Parrott then found Hadaway in contempt of court when Hadaway retained custody of the girl involved. After Emma was moved into foster care, Parrott refused to abide a court order from Bibb County, Georgia, restoring custody of Emma to Hadaway. Contributing to the case's notoriety were the fact that Hadaway had had legal custody of Emma without incident for several months prior to the adoption hearing over which Parrott presided, and the fact that Deborah Schultz, the girl's biological mother, refused to take custody of Emma, having been fully supportive both of Hadaway's initial custody of Emma and of the attempt to make the adoption permanent. ==Case== In January 2007, Parrott made his ruling denying Hadaway's adoption of Emma. Parrott accused Hadaway of being deceitful in her petition by applying as a single parent despite the fact that she was living with a domestic partner and had been for seven years. He also said that treating the couple as a family unit for the purposes of adoption would be a de facto violation of the state's constitutional ban on same sex marriages, reasoning that such treatment would mean that the couple would receive one of the benefits afforded to married couples. Parrott argued that adoption by a legally married couple would provide a more secure environment for Emma than would Hadaway and her partner, because of the inability of a court to order child support payments if Hadaway and her partner split. Finally, Parrott expressed concern about the possibility of the child suffering a psychologically harmful stigma in being raised in the rural community with two openly homosexual women as her parents. Parrott apparently learned, upon reading the case's home evaluation report at a November 2006, hearing, that Hadaway was homosexual and was living with her partner. While all had expected that the hearing would complete the adoption, Parrott, upon learning this information, declined to rule, saying that he needed to study state laws to determine whether adoption by homosexual parents was legal. Believing that Parrott would now rule against her, Hadaway subsequently terminated her relationship with her domestic partner and moved to Bibb County, a less rural area which Hadaway hoped would prove more sympathetic to her case. For her part, Hadaway asserted that she was completely honest and forthcoming about her sexual orientation and living situation with the social worker who had visited her home, and that this is why the information was in the home evaluation report. She also said that she had the financial resources to pursue the adoption alone, and had included her partner's financial information only because the report mandated that information for all adults in the household. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Adoption proceedings of Emma Rose」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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