Who Looks Better On Paperwork....

...and no, I am not referring to a perspective adoptee.  We attended a meeting on LGBT adoption Tuesday night (despite me being sick as a dog) and were smacked with a very heart breaking reality.  When the adoption ban was determined to be unconstitutional there was no rewriting of the law.  They simply made it so that gay people could adopt.  However, this means that there is nothing written with regards to second parent adoption or couples adoption.  We were told that if someone challenged the law at this point in time it would more than likely lead to the law being put back in place and the LGBT community in Florida would be right back to where we started.  What this means for us though is that we now have to decide between the two of us who looks best on paperwork.  That means who has the best job, references, traits and on and on.  It also means that only one of us will be the legal parent of our child.  One. Of. Us.  The fact that we would both be recognized (or so we thought) was one of the things we were both so thrilled about with adoption.  Mere words cannot express my disappointment and, to be honest, bitterness at this point.  Mama S got her negative feelings out of her system earlier this week, but it really hit me hard and I am not sure what to do with these feelings.  There are feelings of heartache, bitterness, anger, fear for our future child, and more than anything, the feeling of being teased by the carrot on the stick of equality again.  I fear for our child because I am so afraid as to what would happen if (God forbid) anything happened to the one who was able to legally adopt our child.  Yes, there are Wills that can be written and yes, there are measures we can take (like remaining active in the foster care system as one social worker suggested), but at the end of the day how safe will our child be?  We all have heard horror stories of the birth/legal parent of a child dying and then the partner's rights to the children they had raised be contested by the birth/legal parent's surviving family...and the family wins and the children are taken away.  One can hope in this day and age that would not happen, but we do, after all, live in the south.  Besides this, how can we really pick who is the best to represent our family?  We are a unit, as all couples are, and we are raising our children within said unit.  The beauty of our relationship is that, where one lacks the other makes up for (patience, experience, etc).  We are being denied the right at being recognized as a family, and it REALLY SUCKS!  I feel like we are being forced, in a way, to live a lie by "pretending" that we are not both the parents of our kiddos.  That is not fair to our children nor is it to us!  We are both just stunned that it is even a question.  MT sympathized with us today, and gave us some tips as to how to keep our family safe should anything happen to the legal parent, but it still stings.  My heart breaks too at the thought that when our child/children see their birth certificate and ask why only one Mama is listed on it instead of both that we will have to explain to them that the laws do not recognize our family. What will it do to their little hearts?  I hope that they know that our love is deeper than what the law imposes on us.  But, for now, we still have to decide who looks better on paperwork...