PITTSBURGH — A Pennsylvania man is seeking to “marry” another man that he adopted as his son three years ago.
Nino Esposito, 78, had been with his partner Roland Bosee, 68, for 40 years when the two decided that Esposito would adopt Bosee as his son so that they could be considered “family” under the law.
“[The adoption] gave us the most legitimate thing available to us,” Bosee told reporters.
They were granted their request in court and have lived under the law as father and son, but after a judge struck down Pennsylvania’s same-sex “marriage” ban last year, the two decided to annul the adoption and instead “wed” each other.
But after filing paperwork to do so, Esposito and Bosee were rejected since fathers are not allowed to “marry” their adopted sons.
Judge Lawrence O’Toole of the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, who is considered to be an advocate for homosexual causes, told the men that although he was “sympathetic” to their situation, he could not grant the request “because they are legally father and son.”
The men, who are being represented by the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), are now seeking to find a way to annul their adoption and convert it to a “marriage.”
“The ACLU is hopeful that the Superior Court will apply established legal principles to allow annulment of adoptions by same-sex couples who that they can finally partake of their constitutional right to marry,” the group told CNN.
The ACLU says that it discovered that there were others in the state who also adopted their partners as a way to seek recognition under the law.
This week, Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey (D) sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to request that she get involved in the matter.
“LGBT couples should have the right to obtain a marriage license, no matter the state or jurisdiction in which they reside,” he wrote. “In adoption cases such as these, the law has changed dramatically since the adoptions were first carried out.”
Christian author and commentator Dr. Michael Brown says that he has warned about consensual adult incestual relationships becoming the next civil rights quest.
“[I]f the taboos against homosexual ‘marriage’ are now considered outdated and intolerant, why can’t the same thing be said about the taboos against adult incest?” he wrote in a recent article entitled “[I]f Leviticus 18 does not apply to believers today (including, of course, the prohibition against homosexual practice in Leviticus 18:22), then why should the prohibitions against incest in that same chapter (found in verses 6-17) still apply? After all, Jesus didn’t say anything about incest, so it couldn’t be that important, right?”
“Haven’t we heard all these arguments before when it comes to homosexual unions?” Brown stated. “This is the inevitable downward slide that results when you separate marriage from procreation and from joining children to their mother and father.”
“The good news is that history is still being written and, just as we are the generation that opened wide the floodgates of radical, negative change, we are the generation that can put the brakes on this social madness and return to higher ground,” he said.