When the State Discriminates
In 1984, Don Babets and David Jean, a gay couple living in Boston, asked a friend to contact the Massachusetts Department of Social Services to inquire whether their sexual orientation rendered them ineligible to serve as foster parents. After officials assured their friend that it did not, the couple attended a six-week foster care training program. They were also visited at home several times by a social worker who interviewed them for hours on end.
For most individuals, approval by the social worker after a home visit would have led to their certification as foster parents. But because Don and David were a gay couple, their application was forwarded to the department’s headquarters in downtown Boston for special review. After several months went by, and after Don called on a weekly basis inquiring about the application’s status, DSS finally issued them foster parent licenses.
Don, who was 36 and worked as an investigator for the Boston Fair Housing Commission, and David, who was 32 and worked as a nursing home administrator, had met nine years earlier on a blind date as Don was finishing an eight-year stint with the army. The two men hoped to adopt children some day, but wanted to start with foster parenting as a way of proving to themselves, and to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, that they could be good parents.
In April 1985, DSS placed two brothers in Don and David’s care; the older boy was 3 years old, the younger one 22 months. The boys’ mother, who was going through difficult times but hoped to regain custody of her sons later that year, consented in writing to the state’s placement of her children with the same-sex couple.
http://www.advocate.com/politics/2012/09/27/chronicling-lgbt-familes-who-used-court-system-change
