aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Monday, July 16, 2007

Criminy! The group marriage bogeyman again

Elizabeth Marquardt, a vice president of the Institute for American Values and author of the forthcoming “My Daddy’s Name Is Donor” (golly, what do you guess her political persuaion is?) raises the alarm on the OpEd page of the NYTimes today:

SOMETIMES when the earth shudders it doesn’t make a sound. That’s what happened in Harrisburg, Pa., recently.

On April 30, a state Superior Court panel ruled that a child can have three legal parents. The case, Jacob v. Shultz-Jacob, involved two lesbians who were the legal co-parents of two children conceived with sperm donated by a friend. The panel held that the sperm donor and both women were all liable for child support. Arthur S. Leonard, a professor at New York Law School, observed, “I’m unaware of any other state appellate court that has found that a child has, simultaneously, three adults who are financially obligated to the child’s support and are also entitled to visitation.” [...]

Astonishingly, few legal experts, politicians or social commentators have considered the enormous risks these rulings and proposals pose for children. Those who have noticed tend to say they are nothing new, because many children already grow up with several parent figures. But this fails to recognize that stepchildren and adopted children still have only two legal parents.

Her list of woes doesn’t send a silent shudder through me.