From: "Bill Adams" Date: Thu, 30 Jun 1994 11:27:01 EST Others have addressed some of the questions about legal distinctions between gays and straights, but I would add the following: Although any two persons may purchase property together, certain legal protections apply when the persons are married, including rights in various states that preclude a person from transferring the property or trying to disinherit a spouse. The inheritancy laws are a real problem--I suspect several persons reading this message do not have wills, health care surrogates, powers of attorney, etc., which would allow their partner to not be dispossessed, prevented from visiting them in the hospital, making health care decisions, etc., should the person be in an accident. The law's presumption for spouses is meant to protect us from our procrastination, avoidance of considering death, etc. Even with those documents, one of my AIDS clinic clients was denied permission to have his lover's body released from the coroner because our statutes do not clearly authorize these documents to permit decisions to be made about funeral arrangements. Although we eventually got the body released through threats of creative litigation, it is not clear we would have been successful in court, and it was clearly a significant trauma to the person's partner. With adoptions, as I have previously stated, Florida and New Hampshire flatly prohibit homosexuals from adopting. Although some states provide preferences which disadvantage single persons, gays and lesbians of course cannot do anything about changing their single status, which raises the real dilemmas in adoption law. In most states, we cannot jointly adopt children like heterosexuals. We cannot adopt our partners' children unlike heterosexuals. This inability results in our being unable to obtain the legal protections necessary to continue contact with children when our relationships dissolve. As one appellate court told the partner of a lesbian who sought visitation with her ex-lover's biological child whom she had helped raise, she was a"biological stranger" to the child and thus, without rights. In litigating cases for PWA's and lesbigays, I see these distinctions causing real and siginificant harm. Some of the issues we advocate for in the lesbigay civil rights movement are symbolic, of direct relevance to only small numbers of persons, or even esoteric (which doesn't mean that they shouldn't be fought). These issues are real and affect us and our brothers and sisters on a daily basis, however. Bill Adams Adamsb@law-lib.law.nova.edu