Texas "Morality Clause" forces lesbian couple to split up

[quote]The rights of same-sex parents in Texas are at the center of allegations leveled this month against Judge John R. Roach, who presides over the 296th District Court in McKinney. On May 8, state resident Page Price claimed in a Facebook post that Roach had enforced a "morality clause" in a custody agreement between her lesbian partner, Carolyn Compton, and Compton's ex-husband. Price said the judge's ruling will effectively split the same-sex couple apart. For gays and lesbian living in Texas, the state's prohibition on same-sex marriage does not simply limit whom they can and cannot marry. The ban also affects everything from medical power of attorney and estate planning, to parental custody. According to a statement emailed to The Huffington Post by Barrett Stern, Compton and Price's attorney, the[b] state's morality clause makes it illegal for Compton to have anyone she is dating or is intimate with -- but is not related to by blood or marriage -- be at her home with her two children after 9 p.m. Price currently lives with Compton but cannot marry her because the state of Texas forbids such a union.[/b] "Carolyn Lang Compton and I have been together almost three years and have a very happy and healthy home," Price wrote on Facebook. "Our children are all happy and well adjusted. By his [Roach's] enforcement [of the clause], being that we cannot marry in this state, I have been ordered to move out of my home." Price was given 30 days, as of the May 7 custody ruling, to pack her things and find a new home. Stern said in his email to HuffPost that, although his clients were "disappointed" with Roach's decision, "Ms. Compton and Ms. Price plan to comply with the Courts clarification order, even though it will be disruptive to their family and has the potential of being harmful to the children." He added that he believes the ruling to be "unconstitutional" and that it constitutes "a burden on parents, regardless of their sexual orientation, that takes away and unreasonably limits their ability to make parental decisions." Ken Upton Jr., senior staff attorney for Lambda Legal’s Dallas office, told the Voice that he was familiar with the case and was watching it closely. According to him, these morality clauses are rarely enforced, but can be used to target homosexual ex-spouses. “What the clause has become is an extra burden on gay people because they’re no more likely to violate it than straight people,” Upton said. “It’s a problem that continues with homophobia.” Compton can appeal the decision, but ThinkProgress notes that she will be forced to defend herself in "the notoriously conservative Texas court system." Indeed, Judge John Roach, a former Marine, makes no attempt to hide his Republican Party leanings: He ran for reelection under the tagline "Proven conservative" and claimed on his website to have been "involved in the Collin County Republican Party since the age of 8." Price and Compton's legal roadblock echoes the 2011 ruling that used a morality clause to prohibit a gay Texas father from being alone with his partner's children. At the time, Harris County Associate Judge Charley E. Prine Jr. ruled that William Flowers could not leave his children alone with any man not related to him “by blood or adoption." This meant that Flowers' husband, Jim Evans, was in violation of the ruling, according to the Houston Chronicle. Though the pair were married in Connecticut, where same-sex unions are legal, Texas did not recognize their union.[/quote] This is really stupid and incredibly unfair for same-sex couples. It basically forces same-sex couples to live apart if one of them wants to have custody of children from a previous marriage since they cannot marry. I don't even know why the law exists in the first place.