10.1.2005

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled, by a 7-2 majority, that a lesbian couple is able to legally adopt each other's children.

The decision sets a precedent in relations between same-sex couples with regards to adoption.

According to the literal wording of the law, only married couples are allowed to adopt children, except in rare circumstances. Recently, the court handed down a ruling allowing a common law wife to adopt her partner's children. Based on the above ruling, the court expanded the principle to include same-sex couples.

The court also released the name of the parents: Tal and Avital Yaros-Hak.

Director of the "New Family" organization, attorney Irit Rosenblum, said Monday's court ruling was revolutionary.

"Our organization is also helping a gay couple, who wish to be recognized as the adoptive parents of a child that was legally adopted in the US, and are now suffering from bureaucratic caprice and prejudice regarding the rights of a same-sex family. We hope the court's ruling will lift the remaining obstacles."

MK Roman Bronfman (Yahad), the leading campaigner in the Knesset for homosexual rights, said the principle of "ensuring the welfare of children," was victorious over the conservative approach to families.

Shinui MK Hemi Doron said the decision shows that as opposed to several MKs "who are living in the dark ages," the court is operating according to norms of the 21st century. He said he hoped that the next step would be civil marriage.

Labor MK Orit Noked said the decision was an important and significant step toward ending discrimination and granting full rights to homosexuals.

However, the court decision also brought about less accepting responses, especially from religious and ultra-Orthodox parties.

Shas Chairman Eli Yishai went so far as to call the ruling "a mark of disgrace in the history book of the Jewish people."

MK Zevulun Orlev (National Religious Party) said he was "deeply saddened" by the court decision, which he called another decision of the High Court of Justice that is undermining the Jewish foundations of the state. He said the decision was a call to arms against Jewish family values.

The women have lived together for the past 15 years. During the 1990s, one of them gave birth to two children and the other to one child.

In 1997, the couple petitioned the Tel Aviv Family Court for the right to formally adopt each other's offspring. The attorney-general at the time, Elyakim Rubinstein, opposed the request on the grounds that the Adoption Law did not make any provision for homosexual couples to adopt children. The family court accepted the state's argument and rejected the petition out of hand.

The couple then appealed to the Tel Aviv District Court against the lower court decision. Two of the judges backed the family court ruling but the third, Saviona Rotlevi, ruled in the couple's favor.

The couple then asked the Supreme Court for the right to appeal to it against the district court decision. The request was granted.

The couple argued that Article 3 (2) of the Adoption Law allows an unmarried person to adopt a child "if the parents of the child up for adoption are dead and the person seeking to adopt the child is a relative of the child and unmarried." Furthermore, Article 25 of the law declares that in "special circumstances" where "it is for the good of the child" the court may ignore the condition that the natural parents must be deceased and the person seeking to adopt the child must be a blood relative.