After describing her role as the lead litigator in the landmark case United States v. Windsor that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in her new book “Then Comes Marriage,” attorney Roberta Kaplan told Off Square Books patrons Monday she believes Mississippi’s same-sex adoption ban will be overturned.
Roberta Kaplan signs her new book “Then Comes Marriage,” in Off Square Books Monday.
Kaplan is the lead counsel in the lawsuit Campaign for Southern Equality v. The Mississippi Department of Human Services, which seeks to reverse one sentence in the state’s law that reads “adoption by couples of the same gender is prohibited.” The lawsuit was filed on behalf of four Mississippi same-sex couples – two of whom have a child and two who are seeking to adopt – this past August in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.
Mississippi is the last state to deny same-sex couples the right to adopt children even though 29 percent of the 3,484 same-sex couples in living in Mississippi were raising children younger than 18 according to 2010 census data. Gov. Phil Bryant has encouraged the state attorney general’s office to fight the lawsuit vigorously.
Kaplan argued the constitutionality of state’s adoption law in a court hearing in Jackson on Friday. In that hearing, Kaplan said that one of the plaintiffs, Donna Phillips, who has been in the Mississippi National Guard for 19 years, cried on the stand while expressing her wish for her wife Janet Smith to have custody over their daughter.
Kaplan said the entire courtroom felt the emotional impact delivered by Phillips’ testimony, and she feels the presiding judge, Daniel Porter Jordan III will soon arrive at a conclusion and strike down the state’s same-sex adoption ban.
At Off Square Books, Kaplan, who has a wife and a son, discussed how writing about her own difficult journey in identifying as gay and finding acceptance in her new book helped her in telling the story behind the defeat of the Defense of Marriage Act through the case United States v. Windsor. The book heavily focuses on the relationship of the case’s plaintiff Edith Windsor and her now deceased wife Thea Spyer, and Windsor’s battle against DOMA. Because of DOMA, the federal government refused to recognize Windsor’s marriage to Spyer, which, in turn, required Windsor to pay a large tax estate bill after her spouse died. DOMA was struck down on June 26, 2013.
After Kaplan spoke on her book, Pari Bhatt, a University employee and native of India who has a girlfriend with children, asked Kaplan how her family came to terms with her sexual orientation, to which Kaplan immediately replied that it was primarily her son, along with time, that changed the way her parent’s viewed same-sex marriage.
Diana Farrar and her wife Charlotte Moellering, who have children and grandchildren, traveled from Dallas to attend Kaplan’s book signing, as a gesture of support as Kaplan fights the last legal statute in the country which bars same-sex adoption.
On fighting Mississippi’s same-sex adoption ban, Kaplan said, “I feel incredibly proud, especially if we win. We will win, sooner or later.”
