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For Immediate Release
June, 13 2012, 12:58pm EDT
Contact:
Mike Meno, ACLU of North Carolina, (919) 247-5456 or mmeno@acluofnc.org
Robyn Shepherd, ACLU national, (212) 519-7829 or 549-2666; media@aclu.org
Same-Sex Couples Seek To Strengthen Families By Expanding Adoption Rights In North Carolina
ACLU Files Lawsuit On Behalf Of Six Families For Right To Provide Children With Two Legal Parents
GREENSBORO, N.C.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of North Carolina Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit today on behalf of six same-sex couples and their children seeking the right to obtain second parent adoptions.
A second parent adoption occurs when one partner in an unmarried couple adopts the other partner's biological or adoptive child. This can occur in both gay and straight relationships. In December 2010, the North Carolina Supreme Court banned second parent adoptions for same-sex couples.
"North Carolina's law denies children the permanency and security of a loving home simply because their parents are lesbian or gay," said Jennifer Rudinger, Executive Director of the ACLU of North Carolina. "This is fundamentally wrong. No parent should have to worry about what will happen to their children if something happens to their partner."
Marcie and Chantelle Fisher-Borne, one of the couples in the case, have been together for 15 years and live in Durham. Each woman carried one of their two children -- a three-year-old girl and a newborn boy. When their daughter was born, the couple was treated rudely by a hospital staff member who demanded their legal paperwork. If both women were able to be fully-recognized legal parents to their children, such encounters could be avoided.
"We were treated as if our family was less than other families during what should have been one of the happiest occasions of our lives," said Marcie Fisher-Borne. "We don't ever want there to be any question as to who should care for our children. If something were to happen to either one of us, it could tear our family apart."
Some of the protections that come with a second parent adoption include: ensuring that all children in the family are covered if one partner lacks health insurance, ensuring that families will stay together and children will not be torn from the only home they've known if something should happen to the biological parent, ensuring that either parent will be allowed to make medical decisions or be able to be by their child's bedside if one their children is hospitalized.
"The current policy is discriminatory and doesn't take into account what's best for a child," said Elizabeth Gill, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project. "These parents want the same thing as any other parents: to be able to provide the best possible care and protection for their children. The law should not stand in the way of allowing loving couples to share responsibility for their families."The full list of plaintiffs in the case are:
Marcie and Chantelle Fisher-Borne, Durham
Crystal Hendrix and Leigh Smith, Asheville
Lee Knight Caffery and Dana Draa, Charlotte
Shana Carignan and Megan Parker, Greensboro
Leslie Zanaglio and Terri Beck, Morrisville
Shawn Long and Craig Johnson, Wake Forest
Lawyers on the case include James Esseks, Rose Saxe and Gill of the American Civil Liberties Union; Christopher Brook of the ACLU of North Carolina; Garrard R. Beeney, David A. Castleman, C. Megan Bradley, W. Rudolph Kleysteuber IV, Daniel W. Meyler and Dustin F. Guzior of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP; and Jonathan D. Sasser and Jeremy M. Falcone at Ellis & Winters LLP.
For more information on this case, including video of some of the clients, please visit: www.aclu.org/second-parent-adoption-NC
This press release can be found at: www.aclu.org/node/35123
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
(212) 549-2666LATEST NEWS
'Oh Come on,' Says Senate Democrat After Jake Tapper Plays Voting-Against-the-Troops Card
"The American people don't want this war," said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut. "Virtually nothing good happened from sending thousands of Americans to die in Iraq in the 2000s and if we don't learn that lesson then shame on every single one of us."
Mar 08, 2026
Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut offered immediate push back on Sunday when CNN anchorJake Tapper said a vote against an expected $50 billion request by President Donald Trump to fund his attack on Iran would be seen as "voting against the troops."
"Oh come on," said Murphy, incredulous. "I mean, the American people don't want this war. They don't want this war—they have seen what happens when American troops go into places like Iraq, places like Afghanistan. Ultimately we get a lot of people killed, we waste a lot of dollars. The one thing the people of the American people have been clear about is that they don't want the United States dragged into another long-term war in the Middle East."
Polling has shown that Murphy is correct, with only one out of four people—a mere 25%—in a Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week showing any kind of support for Trump's war of choice against Iran.
"If you support the troops," said Murphy, "then you should vote against this war so that we get our troops out of harm's way. Virtually nothing good happened from sending thousands of Americans to die in Iraq in the 2000s and if we don't learn that lesson then shame on every single one of us."
TAPPER: "You have said you're a 'hell no' on funding the war. We have seen this movie before. We know that vote will be cast as - especially if you run for higher office - you voting against the troops."
MURPHY: "Oh come on I mean, the American people don't want this war." pic.twitter.com/lTB5isM8I7
— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) March 8, 2026
Trump has yet to make the formal request for the $50 billion in funding, but estimates for just one week of fighting have put the cost of the military operations thus far at something close to $1billion per day.
Murphy has said he is a "hell no" on any additional funding and other members of the Democratic caucus have echoed that message.
"Trump is already spending $1 BILLION PER DAY on his illegal regime change war of choice in Iran," said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) on Thursday. "Now, he's going to ask Congress to give him up to $50 BILLION MORE. My vote: hell NO."
"We could be lowering the cost of health care, but instead Trump is spending BILLIONS on his reckless war with Iran," said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) on Thursday. "Trump is blowing YOUR taxpayer dollars on war and causing gas prices to spike while he's at it."
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'We Can All See': Platner Rips Collins for Choosing War Profits Over Children Killed by US in Iran
Senator Susan Collins, said Platner outside the Republican senator's office in Portland, Maine, is more interested in the profits of weapons contractors "than the shame that we bring upon ourselves when we kill children."
Mar 08, 2026
Graham Platner, the Democratic hopeful running for the US Senate in Maine to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins, delivered a sharp rebuke Saturday to the war of choice launched against Iran last week by President Donald Trump—the kind of messaging, say anti-war progressives, that every lawmaker or politician seeking office should be giving in the face of a military campaign that a majority of Americans, across the political spectrum, adamantly oppose.
"We can all see what is happening right now," said Platner outside Collins' offices in downtown Portland, Maine on Saturday. "At least with the war in Iraq, they had the decency to try to trick us for months. At least they made Colin Powell go sully his name in front of the UN to try to trick us into thinking WMDs were real. At least then they tried to convince us that it was necessary. This time around, they're just doing it."
And the Trump administration is doing it, he continued, "because we have a system that does not hold people accountable. We have a Congress that for decades has abdicate its constitutional role in war making. It never should have been an option that a president can just start a huge regional conflict because he's afraid we're going to find out he might be a pedophile."
In a vote in the Senate on Wednesday, Collins sided against a War Powers Resolution that would have curbed Trump's ability to wage the war that has already killed more than 1,300 civilians, a large portion of them children. While the joint US-Israeli operation has unleashed chaos across the Middle East and been denounced as a criminal war of aggression by experts, Collins argued that passing the resolution "would send the wrong message to Iran and our troops."
"At least with the war in Iraq, they had the decency to try to trick us for months... This time around, they're just doing it."
Platner, who served multiple tours of combat duty in Afghanistan and Iraq as both a Marine and Army infantry soldier, expressed outrage at how willing politicians like Collins are to send young Americans off to kill and die for wars that bring such horror and carnage abroad while costing US taxpayers billions at home.
"Susan Collins is more interested in protecting the wealthy and the powerful. She is more interested in protecting the profits of the defense industry. She's more interested in protecting the interests of her AIPAC donors," Platner told the crowd, ripping Collins for her vote against the resolution. "She is more interested in all of that, than in protecting the sacred resource that is the lives of young American men and women who are willing to put their lives on the line for this country. She is more interested in their profits than the shame that we bring upon ourselves when we kill children."
On the first day of US bombing last week, a school in the southeastern town of Minab was struck, killing an estimated 165 civilians, most of them young students.
"She [Susan Collins] is more interested in their profits [AIPAC donors and the defense industry] than the shame that we bring upon ourselves when we kill children."
Watch Maine Democratic U.S. Senate candidate @grahamformaine confront Republican Senator Susan Collins. pic.twitter.com/9uaKqBcKix
— Zeteo (@zeteo_news) March 7, 2026
Norman Solomon, national director of the progressive advocacy group RootsAction, said "the content and location" of Platner’s remarks made them "doubly vital" and that other lawmakers and politicians would be wise to follow his lead and that others in the US should replicate such rallies where they live.
Across the country, Solomon told Common Dreams, "members of Congress who’ve voted for more high-tech slaughter in Iran are smugly going on with routine business in their offices, insulated from the murderous effects of their political positions. They do not deserve insulation, they deserve nonviolent and militant confrontation."
Showing up at local district offices of their members of Congress, "to protest with clear moral messaging" like those in Maine over the weekend, said added Solomon, "is long overdue and should become widespread. Most of us don’t live far from such offices. Why should politicians who enable mass murder from the skies be able to run their offices every day as though nothing is amiss?"
"Antiwar speeches and picket lines with moral clarity should become standard aspects of the political environment at the decentralized congressional offices," he said, "that for far too long have been aloof from the carnage and human anguish that craven elected officials continue to inflict."
Platner has emerged as potent anti-war voice in the week since Trump launched the US assault on Iran, repeatedly invoking the trauma he suffered and the horrors of war he witnessed as a soldier as a way to condemn repeating history, especially by lawmaker like Collins who appeared to have learned no lessons from the experience of the disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Talking to reporters after Saturday's rally, Platner referred to both Trump and US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as "morons" with no plan to get out of the mess they've created.
"I don't think these people have any idea what they're doing," Planter said. "And the problem with that is that that incompetent leadership is going to result in dead Americans—and it already has—and it's going to result in a region thrust into chaos and bloodshed."
If lawmakers won't stand up to stop Trump's war, Platner told News Center Maine in an interview that it will ultimately be up to the American people to organize and force an end to the conflict.
"The people who are going to send their sons and daughters off to fight, the people who are going to see their friends and families maimed and killed in combat, the people who are going to have to pay for all of this instead of getting health care," said Platner, "we need to stand together and show the political class in this country that we are not going to stand another foreign war."
In a separate post on Saturday, Platner reached out to Trump voters who may be disappointed or disillusioned after the warmongering of a president who told voters he would act to end wars in his second term, not start them.
"To all of those who voted for Trump," said Platner, "hoping for an end to stupid foreign wars: We may not agree on everything, but I promise to never waste your hard-earned money on a pointless quagmire in the Middle East."
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'Intentional Chemical Warfare': Toxic Black Rain in Tehran After US-Israel Bomb Oil Facilities
"The consequences of this environmental and humanitarian catastrophe will not be confined within Iran's borders. These strikes constitute war crimes," said a spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry.
Mar 08, 2026
In the wake of infernos unleashed across portions of Tehran the night before, the people of Iran's capital woke up Sunday to the hideous sight of ominous gray clouds above, choking-levels of smoke, and black raindrops full of toxic oil falling across the city.
Critics described "scenes of Armageddon" and characterized the bombings and the destruction they triggered as the latest crimes committed by the US and Israel since they launched their unprovoked and illegal assault on the Middle East nation last week.
Iranian officials urged residents to stay in doors to avoid the health impacts of the air quality following Israel's intentional bombing of several oil storage and processing facilities in the city on Saturday.
"On top of everything else, Israel and the US have unleashed an environmental disaster in Tehran," said Assal Rad, a fellow at the Arab Center in Washington, DC. "How many ways can they show you they have no regard for human life?"
Iran’s Red Crescent Society warned that the toxic rainfall in Tehran, home to approximately 10 million people, could be “highly dangerous and acidic” and issued exposure guidelines for residents.
Esmaeil Baqaei, a spokesperson for the Iranian Foriegn Ministry, condemned the attacks and resulting damage in stark terms.
"The US-Israeli criminal war against the Iranian nation has entered a dangerous new phase with deliberate strikes on Iran's energy infrastructure," said Bagaei in an online statement. "These attacks on fuel storage facilities amount to nothing less than intentional chemical warfare against the Iranian citizens."
"By targeting fuel depots, the aggressors are releasing hazardous materials and toxic substances into the air, poisoning civilians, devastating the environment, and endangering lives on a massive scale," he continued. "The consequences of this environmental and humanitarian catastrophe will not be confined within Iran's borders. These strikes constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide—all at once."
In a Sunday morning video, CNN correspondent Frederik Pleitgen showed the view from central Tehran, including the black water gathering on every surface:
It is raining oil in Tehran this morning after major airstrikes on oil facilities in the South and West of the Iranian capital. @CNN @cnni pic.twitter.com/2FBD9EnO9p
— Frederik Pleitgen (@fpleitgenCNN) March 8, 2026
Pleitgen also traveled to the Shahran oil depot, among the facilities bombed Saturday, where dark gray smoke continued to billow into the air and he described the amount of damage as "immense":
Managed to film at the Shahran oil depot in Western Tehran that was targeted by airstrikes last night. The oil still seems to be burning. We saw flames coming from some of the destroyed oil storage tanks. Also destroyed tanker trucks outside the gate. Sorry for audio issues, was… pic.twitter.com/DYrsJbaY3t
— Frederik Pleitgen (@fpleitgenCNN) March 8, 2026
"Though it is day, the sun cannot be seen in Tehran today because of all the smoke following the US and Israel bombing Tehran's oil refineries," said Trita Parsi, executive vice president for the Quincy Institute, a US-based foreign policy think tank. "People on the ground describe it as armageddon."
Though it is day, the sun cannot be seen in Tehran today because of all the smoke following the US and Israel bombing Tehran's oil refineries. People on the ground describe it as armageddon.
History will not forgive Reza Pahlavi, Masih Alinejad, Nazanin Boniadi, and all other… pic.twitter.com/Sy3LhtaDEK
— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) March 8, 2026
Parsi, who is of Iranian descent, also took aim at members of the Iranian diaspora who for weeks and months have pushed for the US and Israeli governments to attack their own country.
"History," he said, "will not forgive Reza Pahlavi, Masih Alinejad, Nazanin Boniadi, and all other 'leaders' who tricked Iranians into thinking this war would set them free."
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