Posted on 07/12/2004 4:23:39 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley .
In 1992, two women, Kristine and Lisa, began a “long-term relationship.” Ten years later, it ended but not before one of them had given birth.
Sorting out the mess created by this relationship’s breakup has now produced a landmark legal decision—one that demonstrates how our culture has turned marriage and family law on its head.
After Kristine became pregnant by artificial insemination, the pair entered into a domestic partnership agreement agreeing that both would be the child’s parents. Lisa, however, never adopted the child, even though, under California law, she could have done so.
Two years after the child’s birth, Kristine ended the partnership and sought to sever Lisa’s “parental” rights. Kristine contended that, under Californialaw, the only way that Lisa could ever be considered the second parent was if she had adopted the child.
Lisa countered by citing the provisions of the domestic partnership agreement. Last week, a California appeals court ruled that the issue of parentage “cannot rest simply on the parties’ agreement.”
If the court had stopped there, we might be celebrating the ruling. But, of course, it didn’t. It ruled that Lisa was entitled to rights as a “presumptive father” under California’s Family Code.
California’s Family Code says that a man is presumed to be the father of a child if “he receives the child into his home and openly holds out the child as his natural child.”
How did the court apply this to a woman? By ruling that the statute must be read in a “gender-neutral manner.” As the court acknowledged, the legislature never “expressly” contemplated such a result, but it said that it’s what “gender-neutrality” requires.
The provision, like most state provisions on the subject, incorporates the Uniform Parentage Act, or UPA. At the time of the UPA’s drafting, there were no such things as domestic unions. When the drafters used the male pronoun, they really meant “father.”
What’s more, the purpose behind the UPA was to protect the interests of children whose paternity was called into question. It was adopted in the wake of Supreme Court decisions that outlawed discrimination on the basis of illegitimacy.
The goal of enacting a uniform set of standards to determine paternity was to protect the rights of children with regards to child support, inheritance, and government benefits. It was not to sort out visitation and custody arrangements between two people who already acknowledged a parental relationship to the child.
The court’s decision in California turns this purpose on its head by making the rights of adults, not children, the primary concern of the law. In this way, it is perfectly in keeping with the Massachusetts decision that mandated same-sex “marriage.” Rather than being the means by which a society safeguards its children’s well being, marriage and family law are becoming a vehicle for adult self-fulfillment.
All of this is to the detriment of our kids. It takes the focus off the most important and vulnerable members of our society and makes their well being something we see to after the so-called “needs” of adults have been met. In other words, it turns the law and thousands of years of human history on its head.
In a strange sort of way; they are saying that Lisa cannot be the mother; even though she is a woman. And she is obviously not a father; so how can they say she is which is illogical at the very least?
In a way they are talking traditional marriage; because it seems they are saying a child can't have two mothers(two dads). Kind of burst the balloon in their theory of two gays raising a child as two parents. I call it stupid logic.
Old men who wear dresses to work are capable of ruling poorly on anything,anytime, and anywere--and generally do so.
Susan B. Anthony is not the problem with our society today. She did many good things to help women out of a situation that needed fixing, much as early abolitionists and Civil Rights activists did. The problem is modern day feminism that was birthed in the 1960s and 1970s forward.
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