Posted on 02/08/2013 2:23:21 PM PST by NYer
MIAMI, February 8, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) - In what could become a landmark decision, a Florida judge has ruled that a 23-month-old girl can have three people listed on her birth certificate as her parents.
Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Antonio Marin approved a settlement between a lesbian couple, Maria Italiano and Cher Filippazzo, who were legally "married" in Connecticut, and Massimiliano Gerina, a homosexual who donated sperm for Italiano to become pregnant.
Under Florida law, a sperm donor for artificial insemination has no paternity rights.
However, Gerina claimed that in the verbal agreement he entered into with the lesbian couple when they asked him for his sperm thathe assumed he would be able to participate in the life of the child he fathered.
“They asked me,” Gerina told The Miami Herald. “I was flattered by it. I thought what a great opportunity for me to have a baby.”
The women, he claimed, “wanted a father for the baby, not just the sperm.”
Two weeks after being artificially inseminated with Gerina's sperm, Italiano learned she was pregnant. The lesbians planned that Filippazzo would adopt the baby and they would both raise the child under the designation of "parent 1" and "parent 2."
About seven months into her pregnancy, Gerina said the women called him and asked him to sign a contract relinquishing any rights to the child.
“When they gave me the paper to sign that I had to give up all my rights to the baby, I didn’t,” Gerina said.
Instead, Gerina hired a lawyer and filed a lawsuit claiming paternity rights.
“My papers said I would have parental rights, a visitation schedule,” Gerina said. “They hated it. They said this wasn’t what they wanted. I said, ‘Now that you’re already pregnant, you should have thought about that before.’ ”
“The paternity lawsuit was filed right after the birth of the child,” said Gerina's lawyer, Karyn J. Begin. Emma was born March 10, 2011.
A trial was set for January 31. However, a week before the hearing the lesbian couple and the homosexual father settled their dispute privately.
With Judge Marin's approval, Filippazzo has legally adopted Emma, and she, with birth mother Italiano, now have "sole parental responsibility" for the little girl.
Judge Marin ordered that the state recognize Gerina as the father and grant him twice-weekly visitation rights.
“We’re creating entirely new concepts of families," said Begin.
"If you have two women seeking to be listed as Parent One and Parent Two, that does not exclude listing a man as father,” she said. "There are three parties involved. I agree that makes the case unique."
The lesbian couple's lawyer, Kenneth Kaplan, said, "People have to understand, the case is really a second-parent adoption, meaning that there are not three equal parents.”
"There are three involved but there are two people who have sole parental responsibility," Kaplan said. "Under Florida law, they make all the decisions for the child. This is an adoption by two women, with him receiving certain rights."
“The mothers are in charge," said Gerina. "They are the parents, I’m just going to spend time with her.”
There are also adoptions.
I don't know that there's ever been any moral or legal objection to 70-year-old Aunt Bertha getting married to Old Bachelor Bert. True, procreation isn't possible (barring a Sarah-style Geriatric Pregnancy miracle) but if they are still able to unite as a husband and wife with a marital act, then more power to them.
Happy Honeymooning at Viagra Falls!
That's not even remotely related to contraception. Contraception involves the intentional impairing of one's sexual wholeness. It's taking a naturally fertile act and twisting its so it's chemically or structurally incapacitated. Old Aunt Bertha and her Old Bert aren't doing that. They're not disabling themselves.
Women are naturally infertile most of our lives, due to being pre-puberty, post-menopausal, pregnant, lactationally anovulatory, or just in the 3 infertile weeks of every month. Add that up, and at all those times intercourse cannot result in conception. That does not mean that sex at those times is "contraceptive." It isn't contra anything. It's still natural sexual union.
Gay sex isn't even a "sexual union," which means an act that "unites the sexes."
Contracepted sex, and gay sex, aren't even the marital act. That's become a mini-embarrassment in the U.K., where gay marriage campaigners have discovered that there is no act in "gay marriage" which actually matches the legal definition of consummating a marriage.
Neither is there any act possible with gay couples which matches the legal definition of adultery.
Now I suppose they'll protest because those who can't marry, can't divorce! Or because they're only "allowed" to commit adultery heterosexually!
Bizarro world.
You, as a Roman Catholic, have every right to that view, which is also echoed in some evangelical quarters. The idea to many other sincere Christians is that they are letting married Cousin Jane temporarily put herself in some semblance of the biological position of Aunt Bertha, with the consent of her husband. Good Christians do differ over this. And I do not want to offend anyone’s sincere faith in Christ.
The underlying idea is this: the healthy, normal, human body, complete in every detail: God demonstrates very, very often that that's what He wants for us.
God's design for us at the outset, at Creation, was very good (that was the First Reading at Mass today!). That's why real medicine is legitimate: because legitimate medicine has the aim of restoring the body, as far as possible, to its normal, healthy condition.
Contraception (to impair the body with a drug, device, or surgery, to disable its power and design)) treats the good, fertile, womanly body as if it's got a design defect. Something that's bad. This is an untruth, and rather an aspersion cast upon the Creator, as if to say, "You made me, and all other healthy normal women, wrong, wrong, seriously wrong: but AHA! I'll nullify it."
Fertility isn't a design defect. It's a design feature. And the Designer said so.
So drugs, devices and surgery are OK if they are directed toward restoring, healing, curing, returning the body back to normal function. BUT...
Think of hormonal drugging & surgery to change one's ... er, what do they call it? gender? ... It has a whole lot in common with contraception: using drugs, devices, and surgery to change one's sexuality by making oneself a procreative neuter.
If Cousin Jane "put herself in some semblance of the biological position of" Nephew Gary, it wouldn't conform to any revelation of the Will of God that I know of.
Um... Book of Neuteronomy?
(I'm not trying to offend anyone's sincere faith. Certainly not your, my dear HiTech. I'm just applying the principle to discover the implications.)
(And the priciple, "It's OK to chemically/surgically impair your body to alter or disable your sexuality," is wrong.) I don't see how the practice of medicine can ethically intentionally cause a disorder, rather than cure it. Contraception, like sex-change surgery, causes a disorder, wether it's temporary or permanent. I would have to call that a disordered medical practice.
I would welcome a further discussion, if you want.
Um.
Otherwise, I'm outside to plant more garlic if the weather holds. :o)
Sounds Mormon to me ;-)
Some questions:
1) Is that Hitlery?
2) Are those tatoos on her arms?
3) will those ugly things impact her ability to run for POTUS? (Please, God, Say YES).
I sense another florida constitutional amendment comming forward.
“A Child will have only ONE mother and ONE father where father is defined as a bilogical male and mother is defined as a biological female.”
Unknown.
It could be the sleeves of a blouse under the outer garment.
O...
K...
Sometimes fraternal twins have separate fathers...
Sometimes the only phrase that can come to mind is what Stan Marsh says on SouthPark, “Dude, this is pretty *messed* up, right here.” (That’s the clean version)
Polygamy??
I respect your point of view and as I said it has some advocates in the evangelical community as well. By means of medications or things that have the action of medications, many perfectly natural things can be deferred to serve one or another purpose. Drinking coffee can defer sleep so you can study or work more. Swallowing pills containing certain hormones can defer ovulation so that you will conceive children when your family is in a position to support them. (The immature eggs remain there in the ovaries, they do not die, but also do not mature and come out until the hormones are stopped.) Some are horrified at the thought of either or both, even though intercourse could also be timed such that the possibility of pregnancy is mostly evaded, and hardly anybody complains that THIS is evil.
Anyhow — surely procreation is one of the biggest mysteries of which mankind is aware and some very understandably do not want to tread on that holy ground at all.
I was being silly of course!
I was being silly of course!
Yes. Me too.
YOur last sentence, my brother, shows a good insight. May you have a good Lent and may the Lord have mercy on all of us, for we are under judgment.
that what she said ...
Well, thanks in part to being on Weight Watchers “Simply Filling” regime I will have a Lent and maybe the whole rest of the year too without eating anything really rich. Maybe I’ll take a diet holiday and indulge for a morning at a church breakfast on Easter, and maybe Thanksgiving and Christmas, but feasting for a “Mardi Gras” just sounded unseemly to me. Might sound strange coming from one who is pretty much indifferent to temporary contraceptive measures in marriage. But the bible didn’t say Jesus stuffed His face to prepare for that 40 days of desert testing. For me it’s not going to be even testing, it’s just an exercise in, well, “extreme moderation.”
Must have been that Saint Pie-us who recommended that...
:oP
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