Presuming the impossible
The Supreme Court of Hawaii earlier this month ruled in a landmark case about same-sex parental rights. The ruling comes as more and more lesbian couples are in court disputing parental rights to the children of one of the women in the relationship and a sperm donor.
The justices upheld a lower court ruling that a woman whose spouse conceived a baby with a sperm donor without her consent while the two were legally married is presumed to be the child’s biological parent under the state’s Uniform Parentage Act and therefore must pay child support.
When Hawaii established same-sex marriage in 2013, the state said any sex-specific terminology in state law—husband, wife, widow, widower—must be read as “gender-neutral” when it comes to the rights and protections of marriage. State law establishes a presumption that a child conceived by a man’s wife is his, therefore a child conceived by a woman who is married to another woman is the child of both women, even though it isn’t biologically possible.
“It is ironic that advocates of redefining marriage insisted the institution has nothing to do with procreation,” Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow for policy studies at the Family Research Council, told me. “The rash of ‘presumed parentage’ court cases proves otherwise.”
He said that if marriage does not relate to procreation, the presumption of paternity should not be applied to same-sex unions. But, instead, we have “gone from ‘presuming’ something that is almost always true—that the husband is the father of a child born to his wife—to ‘presuming’ what cannot possibly be true—that the same-sex spouse is ‘parent’ of a child born to her partner,” Sprigg said. “This is an absurdity.”
Of the five justices who ruled in Hawaii, three said the lack of consent to artificial insemination does not negate the presumption of parentage. (After all, what would that mean for the man whose wife stopped taking birth control without his consent.) The other two justices said lack of consent could be used to challenge parentage but that the former spouse did not prove her lack of consent.
“While there are details unique to each case, I believe that in the absence of a legal adoption or some contractual agreement regarding the conception and birth of this child—neither of which were present here, the courts should not ‘presume’ the impossible,” Sprigg said. —K.C.
Comments
Xion
Posted: Fri, 10/19/2018 07:09 pmI actually support having government get out of the marriage business. Government can provide civil contracts for whatever. Let them call it a civil partnership and let what churches do be called marriage. Let God define what marriage means and let Ceasar have his coinage.
Laneygirl
Posted: Sun, 10/21/2018 05:26 pmRelationships are a living Jenga game nowadays. My husband's company provides same sex benefits even though now they can get "married", but do not provide the same for cohabitating hetero's. When you pull the bottom out of the truth, your tower of lies needs tricky work to stay up.
KeithT
Posted: Sun, 10/21/2018 07:32 pmYou mentioned some of the common benefits. What are some of the dissimilarities?
phillipW
Posted: Mon, 10/22/2018 11:59 amWill the last Christian to leave the planet, please take the Bible with them.
I am so confused by all of this. Pontius Pilate was a man before his time when he mocked Jesus with, "What is truth?"