When it is declared a child "has" more than two parents what does it mean to be a parent anymore?
State Sen. Mark Leno is pushing legislation to allow a child to have multiple parents.
"The bill brings California into the 21st century, recognizing that there are more than Ozzie and Harriet families today," the San Francisco Democrat said.
Surrogate births, same-sex parenthood and assisted reproduction are changing society by creating new possibilities for nontraditional households and relationships.
... Under Leno's bill, if three or more people who acted as parents could not agree on custody, visitation and child support, a judge could split those things up among them.
... Examples of three-parent relationships that could be affected by SB 1476 include:
• A family in which a man began dating a woman while she was pregnant, then raised that child with her for seven years. The youth also had a parental relationship with the biological father.
• A same-sex couple who asked a close male friend to help them conceive, then decided that all three would raise the child.
• A divorce in which a woman and her second husband were the legal parents of a child, but the biological father maintained close ties as well. -- The Sacramento Bee
39 Comments
You do realize that 2/3 of the scenarios are heterosexual, right? I hadn't heard of this bill before I saw it here on NOM, so I can't say whether or not I support it.
However, the fact that children are being raised by multiple parent figures has little to do with marriage equality; it primarily reflects the fact that straight couples have kids, separate, and re-couple with new people with an alarming frequency.
Kids have had more than one set of parents long before marriage equality was even dreamed of.
Kids can have many adult role models growing up. Teachers, priests, policemen, firemen, uncles, aunts. None of them have to be considered "parents" to have a positive influence on a child.
This is just another case of mislabeling that promotes confusion in society and deconstructs the natural family, just like calling a same sex couple "married."
Unless the laws of nature have changed, children always have just one mother and father.
This is more misguided legislation imported from Canada.
Marriage and family are already in trouble, so legislators redefine them both, rendering them meaningless.
These folks don't want to do the difficult work of rebuilding marriage and family.
So they legislate the demise of both, making the irresponsible adults feel OK about themselves and their adolescent behavior.
Every child naturally has one mother and one father. Step parents do not change this fact.
It is only when laws are changed to support the fiction that a child can have 2 moms or 2 dads that parenthood becomes nothing more than a legal status unsupported by any biological reality.
When that happens, the idea that a child can have more than 2 "legal" parents becomes a possibility.
Don't blame Canada. Same-sex couples are already allowed to marry in many other countries - Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Iceland and South Africa, plus some regions in Mexico and Brazil. Denmark, the UK, Ireland and France are expected to legalise gay marriage next.
And what are we to do with artificial insemination from donors by straight married couples who want a child? Maybe if we follow RC doctrine sterile couples who want children should not have access to this Frankenstein procedure?
"Same-sex couples are already allowed to marry in many other countries - Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Iceland and South Africa, plus some regions in Mexico and Brazil. Denmark, the UK, Ireland and France are expected to legalise gay marriage next."
If a bunch of people jump off a cliff, Shane/John, would you do the same?
Errr, this sort of thing already exists. I mean it's not even like we're talking about polygamy, but when parents get divorced and then re-marry, then you have a mother, a father, a step-mother and a step-father. Anyone who thinks this doesn't/can't exist when 50% of marriages end in divorce has a LOT of learning to do and catching up with the times. Stop being stuck in the Dark Ages NOM.
@ sonofsam
Same-sex marriage is the new global reality as are mixed race couples and their children. That used to be against the law when some churches preached that the races should not mix and certainly not marry. It's not about jumping off of cliffs but taking a leap of faith in supporting loving, caring couples and their families all around the world.
OH NO!!! I had multiple parents over fifty years ago. This is NEWS?
Forward down the road of redefining parenthood, muddying the waters of family law, and deemphasizing biology as the primary determinant of familial connections.
I recommend all marriage supporters read this article from Susan Appleton, a law professor who supports ssm. She acknowledges the impossibility of applying the marital "presumption of parentage" to same-sex male couples, unless we allow children to have three parents at birth.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=884442
Once we remove natural realities from consideration, such as the reality that children descend from the union of a man and woman, it's not hard to go from "Parent A and B" to "Parent A, B, C...."
Although the article notes that this proposed law resulted from a court case in which a woman in a lesbian relationship got pregnant by a man during the couples' brief separation, lesbian and gay families have been pushing the boundaries of family law in a few places.
The E. C. v. J. V. case in California gave parental status (against the mother's will) to a lesbian partner. The case history shows that the child in question did not result from planned fertility services, but from the mother's sexual relationship with a man who stop contacting the child shortly after birth. He is NOT an anonymous donor. Now, it is beyond me why this man wouldn't be able to establish paternity and gain parental rights (as all unwed fathers are allowed to do), thus thrusting the child into a three-parent scenario.
In Canada, the "three parents" thing got started when a lesbian co-parent petitioned to have herself listed as a child's parent, along with the biological mother and friend/sperm-donor. Since ssm necessitated that the government replace every reference to natural parent with "legal parent," the two-parent model--which was based on natural parentage--was no longer an impediment to this group of people.
We always talk about how children fare when raised by two women. But how do children fare when raised by two women who share custody with the gay dad? How do children fare when raised by two women who share custody with the gay dad AND his partner? What happens when four people split?
I'm glad that there were sensible people cited in the article who raised concerns about the legal and social ramifications of assigning parenthood to multiple people. I didn't hear anyone mention how judges will now have discretion in forcing natural parents to share parentage with others, but this is such a big change that it's hard to unpack everything in one short article.
The real question is why should a child with three parents suffer the stigma of her parents not being allowed to marry?
Apparently these legislators were taught the gay curriculum in school, which would explain why they don't know where babies come from or what parents are.
The buying, selling and trading of human gametes should be stopped. Children are not pets to be bred like puppies. Matter of fact there are more regulations on dog breeding than there are on human breeding.
What's aggrivating is that similar laws are already in effect, but they only limit legal guardianship to two people.
Mark Leno obviously has an agenda here. I hope that the assembly develops the common sense to reject it but knowing California Democrats, they'll go against the moral convictions of the people and do as they please.
“I mean it's not even like we're talking about polygamy”
“…the new global reality as are mixed race couples and their children.”
Global reality both new and old also includes polygamy and the children of polygamous families. Polygamy is accepted as loving and caring throughout a wide swath of the inhabited globe. There are roughly a billion Muslims in the world, and their numbers are growing fairly rapidly, both in the U.S. and around the world.
@Shane/John
This is not about racial segregation, but family values. When government enforced SSM is legalized, the view that marriage is nothing more than coupling becomes more commonly held. That leads to more couples forgoing natural marriage and having more children out of wedlock. Most people won't go through the trouble of getting married to have children if marriage isn't about children. Most won't tie themselves to one person if they don't need to.
And as illegitimacy rises, not only are children raised in broken homes, but the rest of us are forced to pay higher social costs because of the resulting increases in crime, poverty, taxes, and social spending.
Just look at the state of Scandinavia and the Netherlands who have had SSM the longest for confirmation.
And Communism was once the new global reality. Every hear of the domino effect? But it declined, just as state enforced SS"M" will as its disadvantages become more and more clear.
Sean, there is a difference between parents and step-parents. Nice strawman, though.
It would be California that would come up with
some bizarre definition for parents?????
I live here and know our legislation is out of sync with reality.
@sonofadam
How amazingly powerful a few thousand marriages in the USA of committed loving s-s couples could have on the millions of straight people and marriage. Is heterosexual marriage that fragile? Stupid me...I thought divorce, adultery, unwed mothers and abandonment of husbands and fathers would have a far greater affect.
What, if any, is the proposed moral justification for this proposed legislation?
Right. It circles back to the unsupported moralism of the SSM campaign.
Jim, there is no homosexual conception of children. You knew that. But your comment depends on pretending otherwise.
Sam-sex couple should stick with their dogs and cats. Its when they try to make children into pets is when government needs to say you have crossed the line.
@ Shane/John
Over time, SS"M" has just as much a damaging and destructive effect on society as over 40 years of no fault divorce laws which has caused countless children to be raised in broken homes and costs us billions of dollars a year.
That's what happens when the government tampers with marriage: an important cornerstone of a stable society and civilization.
@sonofsam
I like to deal in facts and statistics....you seem to know so much about s-s marriage so you can easily provide empirical evidence that "SSM has just as much damaging and destructive effect" Studies show that children of s-s parents are very well adjusted, have very attentive, nurturing parents and have statically a less than 1% incident of physical or sexual abuse.
Son of Adam, Shane Mahaffy:
What people neglect to mention about the miscegenation case of Loving v. Virginia is that Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter were criminalized for their relationship. The issue of homosexual relationships was decided in Lawrence v. Texas. While I don't think the case was correctly decided, it is past, and no one here is seeking to re-litigate it.
“divorce, adultery, unwed mothers and abandonment of husbands and fathers” do have a huge impact on marriage.
What is eroding our civilization and will lead to its collapse is PC liberalism and its exaltation of the sexual revolution above all other norms and values, of which the SSM movement is an integral part, but which is only one battle in a broad front war against what Son of Adam has called family values.
A few thousand same sex couples won’t have much influence on society unless they are unceasingly promoted as the new norm and allowed to redefine and de-gender marriage and the foundations of family law for all families.
PC liberalism will support no compromise short of changing the foundations of family law.
There are already children at school, in the playground and yes...even at church whose friends and playmates have s-s parents. The s-s couples who are married have nothing to promote. They are too busy working, paying taxes and raising a healthy, happy family. Without any effort these children and their generation will see s-s family as perfectly normal.
Will they also see divorce, adultery, unwed mothers and abandonment of husbands and fathers as perfectly normal? The children of these families are at school, in the playground, and in church. Some appear to be healthy and happy. These situations are now very common.
As for "nothing to promote," do you really mean they are not trying to redefine marriage?
"How amazingly powerful a few thousand marriages in the USA of committed loving s-s couples could have on the millions of straight people and marriage."
The law affects everyone. When the law is changed to reflect genderless marriage and parenthood we all pay the price.
Amen, AM. That's like asking how loosening divorce laws (which governs *every* person's marriage) to create an easy exit for a few thousand unhappy couples could possibly affect marriage for everyone.
Well, actually, people did ask that question when advocating for no-fault divorce.
Ash
I'm sure back then folks who worried about the changes in divorce law were accused of being fear mongers and woman haters.
You know the saying: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice..."
AM, the "fool me once" saying is the perfect encapsulation of my view of the ssm debate.
According to SSMers, we have to impress yet another nonsensical idea into family law with no distinct societal good arising therefrom.
And the only way we can even *consider* evading this ridiculous proposal is if we "prove" that it will result in harm; never minding the fact that the other stupid ideas of the past were likewise promised as benign, and the harms often didn't manifest until decades later.
Kiss my grits!
Support is fading and NOM is not posting news that the drive for signatures in WA to get a ban on s-s marriage on the ballot failed and Iowa GOP are backing off from s-s marriage ban because they feel too many people in their state now support s-s marriage
I don't know where you are getting your information Shane/John, but a referendum on gay marriage in Washington state has qualified for the ballot. Sponsors turned in 247,331 signatures, far more than the minimum of 120,577 valid voter signatures required. And we'll see if as many people in Iowa favor SS"M" as the media says when Iowa Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins gets voted off the bench this fall.
Fact: a child has only two parents, the male and female whose genetic material combined to create him/her. Adoptive "parents" are not parents, per se; the name "parent" is used to make people feel better about themselves; but it is a delusion. They are not parents; they are caretakers of other parents' children.
In an effort to make people feel better about themselves, liberals redefine terms. Homosexual couples can never be married, per se; just as an adopted child is not being brought up by his parents.
right, this bill doesn't mean they are going to allow children to be created that are not from a man and a woman's genes, this bill is only about the legal status of being a parent.
Remember also that the legal status of being a parent is not dependent on marriage. Allowing three people to marry each other would be saying that we approve of them all joining their genes together to literally make a child from three biological parents (not that we need to allow it because it isn't currently illegal anyhow, except in Missouri, where there is a man-woman requirement to create children).
How is this news? Kids have been raised by Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents, Godparents, Foster and Adoptive parents for centuries!
Giving birth or otherwise "creating" a child biologically, does not in my eyes make you a parent.
Yes, kids all have biological parents, that is true. However, if the so called "parents" do not look after said children, to the best of their ability, then they do not deserve the title of "Mother" and/or "Father."
Many of my friends have step parents, were raised by uncles and aunts, by godparents, grandparents, some even by their siblings, either through a tragedy or out of necessity. They are still families!
There are many different types of families out there. In many cultures extended family is very important, to others they may not be.
In mine we address every adult as Aunt or Uncle, sometimes we even address some of the Elderly as "Mother/Mum" out of respect and to show how strongly we believe in family unity. Many of our close friends are treated and called family.
NOM, I hope you do not consider yourself to be Judge and Jury as to what a family should be! No one holds the "right" definition of family, because they are all different and often the definition is subjective. If the kids are well adjusted, then stop labeling or insinuating that they are not real families.
As to adoptive parents not really being parents, I think quite a few adopted children might not take too kindly to that.
My cousin being one of them, said this of her adoptive Mum, "That woman (biological mother) might have given birth to me, but she (adoptive parent) will always be my Mother."
SR, I built my family by adoption. I don't think adoption is what they're talking about here. This is an attack on the basic family structure.
Basic family structure? Would you be so kind as define that?
Also, please bear in mind, the so called "Nuclear Family" is not a basic family structure in many religions, cultures or even considered as such by many individuals.
Marriage between a man and a woman is a remarkable thing. It's what hundreds of independently evolving societies have settled on as the most stable unit of society. Even today, no one argues that the gold standard of parenting and social stability is anything but the nuclear family, with a mother and father at the head. They've tried to say that random groups of adults connected through ssm and other structures are not detrimental, or are comparatively good when compared to divorced or single mom families, but that is not a structure society embraces, for good reason. We don't promote single motherhood or divorce. Why should we promote ssm?
The family is founded by mom and dad and not by government. Extended families arise from this. This basic structure has manifested itself -- quite obviously -- across the historical and anthropological records.
That SSMers today seek to arbitrarily revise those records only demonstrates the dumbing down that goes on the pro-SSM side. They must say stuff -- and presumably believe it also (or at least act like they believe it) that gets stupider and stupider.
But that sort of nonsense goes beyond SSMers. The beyonders -- those who disparage the marriage idea and insist that society drop the basic family structure to a barely tolerative status in the name of so-called diversity -- well, they have been descending into greater and greater stupidity in their assertions for a few decades now.