10.1.2005

By Yuval Yoaz, Haaretz Correspondent

In a breakthrough for same-sex couples, the Supreme Court decided in a 7-2 ruling Monday that two lesbian women who have been living together for 15 years are allowed to adopt each other's children.

"The court must view things from the perspective of welfare of the child," the couple's attorney said.

The women have had three children in the last 15 years, all through a sperm bank. In 1997 they petitioned the Ramat Gan Family Court seeking the right to adopt each other's children, and court recognition of their joint parenthood. The court rejected the petition, but did grant them guardianship of each other's children, a precedent that has since become customary.

Their appeal to Tel Aviv District Court was also rejected in a two-justice majority over a minority opinion by Saviona Rotlevi, who wrote: "The need to provide the children and the family unit in which they are growing up a legal framework, fits the court's obligation to create social norms and stand strongly against the intolerance of parts of society toward those who are different."

Three years ago, the women appealed to the Supreme Court, which decided an expanded panel would hear the case.

Reactions to the court decision were strongly polarized.

Shas chairman MK Eli Yishai called the ruling a "a disgrace, and a black mark in the history of the Jewish people." In his view, "the court's ruling tramples on the Jewish family unit and tears away the distinction between the Jewish people and the rest of the world." Yishai stated that such rulings "will make the judiciary on every levels into an abomination in the eyes of the people, and will reveal the lack of a connection between the nation and its judges."

The assistant chairman of the National Religious Party, MK Zevulun Orlev, said that the court?s decision was an affront to Jewish family values and that the court favored gay and lesbian rights over the welfare of the child. MK Nissan Slomiansky (NRP) said that "the court has shown it will not only separate the people from its land and country, but will stamp out the basis of the Jewish family."

"It is good that there are judges in Jerusalem, and good that they are more advanced than the public's representatives in the government and Knesset," Yahad MK Yossi Sarid said. "Parental rights must be preserved for every couple, without excluding the many homosexual and lesbian couples."

Shinui MK Ilan Liebowitch said the court decision was "a brave step that reveals a degree of enlightenment that is not possessed by the government or Knesset."

The New Family organization - a legal advocacy group which focuses on gay couples, as well as single parents, families of foreign workers, and other groups it considers to be treated unfairly under Israeli family law - called court decision "revolutionary."

"One speaks of a revolution in the legal world more than in the real world, because the reality has existed for a decade or more," the organization said in an announcement following the ruling. "We hope the court will remove all obstacles faced by the homosexual and lesbian community."