Louisiana Adoption

I debated for a while whether or not to talk about this.  But, I decided I would.  The reason I hesitate is that it doesn't solely affect Southern gay couples, but I feel that gay couples are the target of the spirit f the law.  Louisiana recently defeated a bill that would have allowed unmarried singles to adopt children together.  Married couples and single individuals are not affected by this bill. 

Ok, so what's the harm? Married couples can adopt.  Great.  They should be able to.  But not everyone can legally marry, effectively keeping children out of loving homes of gay couples.  There's still single adoption, right?  Well, sure.  There's nothing that explicitly says that a single gay person can't adopt children.  However, that leaves one parent with absolutely no parental rights.  They can't make medical decisions in an emergency or technically even sign a permission slip for a field trip.  It doesn't matter how much that 2nd parent is involved in the child's life.  They have no say.  I'm assuming here that in the event the legal adoptive parent dies or is unable to care for the children, they would be placed in state custody, even if the 2nd parent was willing and able to take care of them.  It's possible that state custody would be temporary, but it would require court hearings and a lot unnecessary red tape.  And there's always the chance that the courts would say no, especially if they came before a judge that was adamantly opposed to gay adoption in the first place.  Let's be honest; as much as I love the South, we encounter more obstacles here than other parts of the country.  I hope to see the day that these issues aren't a problem here.  But there's a lot of work to be done.  

Mississipi Is On A Roll...

Mississippi has really been hit hard this year in the public realm.  Or rather, they've been hitting LGBT youth pretty hard.  There have been 2 major cases of LGBT discrimination in high school from my neighbor to the south of home in the past couple months.  In the first, an Itawamba County refused to allow a lesbian student and her girlfriend to attend prom together.  When the courts ruled that the school was violating Constance's civil rights, they canceled the prom all together.  
But this second case is just ridiculous.  A lesbian student was completely left out of her senior yearbook because the school didn't like that she was wearing a tuxedo in photo that she submitted.  Come on, now!  There's not a single thing wrong with the photograph.  She's not flipping the bird, sticking her tongue out, throwing a peace sign, and she doesn't even have any facial piercings for them to complain about, all things that were complained about during my senior year!  It's a cute photo!  Not only did they leave out her photo, they didn't even mention her.  They just straight up left her out.
How can anyone think that just leaving a student out of a yearbook is even remotely appropriate?  I was livid when the photo studio submitted my unretouched photo for the yearbook because I didn't order prints from them, even though they promised they'd retouch it either way.  I feel so bad for this poor girl.  Mississippi's gonna need to take a step forward in time if they want to stay out of the public eye for things like this.  I know both of these decisions were made by local school authorities, but the state of Mississippi can step in if they chose to.  I think it's about time.  
On a semi-positive note, a Georgia student was allowed to take his male date to his prom.  I say semi-positive because even though he was given some level of public approval, he got kicked out of his parents' house. I can only hope that he had plans for college and to live in the dorms.  Maybe by the end of his first year, they'll realize that he's still their son.