There was a time in Pennsylvania when the family law landscape for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender litigants was so bleak that most LGBT parents stayed away from the court system. The hysteria over the AIDS crisis, particularly in the decade between 1985 and 1995, resulted in restrictions being placed on the visitation rights of many HIV-infected parents. Indeed, the discrimination was so pronounced that an LGBT parent was considered morally deficient, and those who fought for the right to see their children risked being labeled parentally unfit.
When I graduated from law school 25 years ago, there were no reported appellate cases in Pennsylvania on whether lesbian and gay non-biological parents had third-party standing in child custody proceedings. As a member of the Women’s Law Project’s Working Group on the Legal Rights of Lesbian and Gay Parents, I recall the precarious fight for second-parent adoption, a proceeding that allowed a lesbian mother’s partner to adopt her biological or adoptive child — without the necessity of a voluntary termination of parental rights. Back then, domestic violence protection was unavailable to LGBT victims, and there was no mechanism in the law to impose a child support obligation on former domestic partners.
