Nov 07 2009
Instituto Colombiano De Bienestar Familiar To Contest Lesbian Adoption
In a country filled with contradictions in the law system as is Colombia is amazing that gay and lesbian unions are accepted, it’s another story when they law speak about adoption as well the public in general. To only way to know a country is by living in it and even with all the progression in terms of law it is a difficult place to live because unless you have money you will have certain stability in your life otherwise is going to be another story.
It’s difficult to describe Colombia because in many ways the laws are made in base of emulation of the European and American laws but applying them in the practice is another story. One of the recent cases in the country relies on a mother who has a daughter who was conceived via in-vitro fertilization and the mother is a lesbian who has been in a steady relationship over the past 5 years. She went to the Antioquia ICBF (Colombian Institute of Family Welfare by the abbreviation in English) only to found that the Headmistress of the institution will contest the rule of the First Tribunal of Rio Negro to avoid the rule in favor of the couple.
The headmistress Elvira Forero argue that a family is only constituted by a mother, father and their children not by a same sex couple; even so if the worse situation happens the victim will be the child of the couple because she won’t be able to have the social benefits from her adopting mother and even so the headmistress argue that lgtb couples can’t adopt because of the Infancy and Adolescence law that explicitly says about how a family should be constituted and what privileges they have as a “conventional family”. So in one point of the balance there are some social progress in the country but at the end they are hollow because there is not welfare for anyone or social security for a couple that wants to give a safe home to a child.
