I just saw this headline in the Des Moines Register:
“Judge: Put both moms’ names on
the birth certificate.”
“Both moms?!?!?!” Yes, you read it right: “both moms.”
Judges created same sex “marriage” in Iowa in a case called Varnum v Brien. So, now another judge rules that the spouse in a same sex marriage should be listed as the child’s other parent. Listen:
“Pursuant to Varnum v. Brien, where a married woman gives birth to a baby conceived through use of an anonymous sperm donor, the Department of Public Health should place her same-sex spouse’s name on the child’s birth certificate without requiring the spouse to go through an adoption proceeding,”
The State Attorney tried to argue that the state law’s wording in regards to parentage is gender-specific, and not open to interpretation. (Hold it right there: do you mean to tell me that a State Attorney was actually defending the state’s family law?!?! We aren’t used to that here in CA. Out here, the Attorney General and the Governor just flatout refused to defend Prop 8. But I digress!) The State Attorney quite sensibly stated:
“It is a biological impossibility for a woman to ever legally establish paternity of a child.”
But the law doesn’t care about biological reality: only its own power, exerting its own muscles, even over the natural world. This is exactly what I predicted back in 2008, when I created a 4 lecture series called Same Sex Marriage Affects Everyone.
The two women in Iowa are still a functioning couple. They both want both names on the birth certificate. According to data from around the world, lesbian couples are the least stable type of couple.* What happens when the partnership breaks down?
Check out this story from the Los Angeles Times. “Both lesbian moms have parental rights, Florida court rules”
One of the women donated the egg. The other had it implanted in her womb, and carried it to term. So, they are both mothers and both have custody rights. The child’s father was an anonymous sperm donor. He is completely out of the picture. No one cares about him. No one cares that this poor little girl will never know her father. Unlike the previous case, these two mothers are quarreling. Their relationship has broken up and they are fighting over custody.
There is no just solution to this situation.
The courts are trying to do the impossible: create justice out of an intrinsically unjust situation. The response from the Life-Style Left, as well as the Libertarian Right is: “let people do whatever they want. The law should be in the business of accommodating people’s wants. The courts should figure something out. ”
But I say the business of the law is to prevent injustice, not to give people what they say they want. Children have some rights too. Children have identity rights, the rights to know who he or she is, and to have a relationship with their own parents and heritage. The proper conclusion to draw from these cases is that it is not possible to do justice. There is no result that gives all the adults what they want, and that protects the child’s identity rights.
The correct result is to shut down the IVF clinics. They are generating injustices right and left. At the very least, ban gamete donation and sales.
This is the Brave New World we will leave to our children and grandchildren, if we don’t do something about it.
Give to the Ruth Institute today.
*For Sweden, the divorce risk for partnerships of men is 50%
higher than the risk for heterosexual marriages, and that the divorce risk for
female partnerships is nearly double that for men. For Norway, divorce risks are
77% higher in lesbian partnerships than in those of gay men. Andersson, Gunnar,
Turid Noack, Ane Seierstad, and Harald Weedon-Fekjaer, “The Demographics of
Same Sex Marriages in Norway and Sweden,” Demography
Vol 43, No. 1 (February 2006) 79-98.
A study of California domestic partnerships asks the
question, how likely is it that these couples live in the same household five
years later. Male couples were only 30% as likely, while female couples were
less that 25% as likely, as heterosexual married couples, to be residing in the
same household for five years. Gates, Gary, “Characteristics and Predictors of
Coresidential Stability among Couples,” California Center for Population
Research, Working Paper, CCPR-069-06, December 2006.