I guess I'm the only one here who favors the biological father. Ignore the homosexuality stuff for a moment. Sure, it's bad, but that doesn't impact the legal point, which is the expectations of both parties when they entered into the agreement. The man thought he'd simply be providing sperm and that would be the end of it; the women claimed to want to be parents and take responsibility for the children. That's the issue. I don't know what the contract specifically said, but the story seems to make clear (though one never knows) the general terms. People need to be able to freely enter into contracts, and one of the few responsibilities government should have is to enforce those contracts.
The legal reasoning is that child support is a right of the child rather than the parent, and as such any contract by the parent waiving it is invalid. I can't speak for Sweden, but US courts have upheld the principle on numerous occassions.
One more reason why I will never be a sperm donor.
I agree. I think the departing "spouse" lesbian should be responsible for child support. I view it more like adoption, I guess. Adoption doesn't relieve one "parent" of liability.
You're not the only one. But some discussions are pointless.
This point has been long debated in U.S. Constitutional law. Marriage was originally considered an institution of God's design, and U.S. law until very recently tended to deny the rights of couples to design their own variations. Great legal wars were fought to suppress polygamy and incest, for instance, or plural marriage. Until the 60s, there was a general legal expectation that the man was the breadwinner because of the woman's role as the childbearer. Marriage was not a contract, but a covenant (the couple's promise to God to follow his rules for marriage, for the good of the entire society).
The invention of the so-called "fool-proof" pharmaceutical birth control in the 60s, coupled with Roe v. Wade, changed all that. And California began the tidal wave of judicial activism on the family in the 60s by approving the "palimony" claims against Lee Marvin and initiating the "no-fault" divorce revolution in the early 70s. During this decade, invitro fertilization techniques and lesbian activism also came on board, along with leftist social workers insisting on affirming out-of-wedlock mothers and of placing abandoned children for adoption with single gays and lesbians. Thus the "contract" view of sexual relations began to rise: the couple's agreement with one another, not with the rest of society.
5,000 years of Judeo-Christianity, dismantled in a single decade.