16 Year old Gay rights Emancipation in New York

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TygerTyger

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My jurisdiction is: New York

My girlfriend and I live in a small town in upstate New York. She is sixteen since the end of November, and I'm seventeen since the end of April. She comes from a large, low income, very religious family who didn't know she was gay. We were forced to conduct our relationship in secret, though her parents finally became suspicious enough to hack her email. They found messages in her garbage can explicitly going into the nature of our relationship, leaving no doubt what was going on. Since then she's been on total lockdown from any communication device, isolated, berated, and her parents are taking her out of our school to get her away from me and sending her to a local Christian academy. All of this is done with religious intent to somehow "help/fix" her. She is totally not with their program, is tired of having her sexuality treated like a disease, and wants to get emancipated. I'd much rather we just waited until she had graduated next year and turned eighteen, but the whole yanking from school thing has put us both over the edge. So I've been researching emancipation for her. However, I've run into lots of confusion so I would really appreciate some help:

1. Because of her family's low income, she essentially supports herself already. She has a part time job, and pays for everything but food and upkeep/utilities of the house. However, she makes no where near enough to afford and apartment, and she is an excellent student who certainly shouldn't drop out of school. Would it be acceptable to a court if she found someone else to live with? We have a close friend who might be able to take her in. Furthermore, are there legal issues if she came to live with me and my father since we are romantically involved? I am the total enemy to her parents, and they will attack me legally if they can.

2. I've read that you have to be living apart from your family to petition for emancipation. As in, if you act emancipated you have the right to have it legally verified. Problem is, her parents are totally committed to fighting her emancipation, and wouldn't let her leave the house. It within her legal rights to leave her home now? For example, could she be called a runaway and dragged back home by the police if she left to stay with me or a friend while she filed the petition?

3. I've also read that you still need parent signatures to get your permit and license. As of yet she has neither, and will need them in the months to come. Is there a way around this? If she left her family they would do everything in their power to squash her life, and would never consent to such signing.

4. Once again, I've read that your parents need to sign off on your emancipation. At first her parents didn't want her in the house, but now they've become committed to taking her back into the church and "fixing" her sexuality. Would their emotional abuse, forced move in school, and religious condemnation of her sexuality be grounds for emancipation? I suppose this is essentially a gay rights issue, so is/should that be an adequate and convincing case for non-parental consensual emancipation in New York?

5. Should she get a lawyer/social worker involved?

I'm sorry if these issues have been previously addressed on the board, but I've read through most of the threads and haven't found anything that also combined the gay rights issue.
 
This has nothing to do with gay rights. NY has no statute for the emancipation of a teenager regardless of the situation. Her ONLY option is to wait until she is 18. Period.
 
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