Children can have two mothers...whhaaa??!??
I didnt think this was possible but apparently the courts may think otherwise..
CHILDREN CAN HAVE TWO MOTHERS: COURT
Today’s Family News
June 14, 2006
The negative fallout from the decision by Canada’s Parliament a year ago to nationally legalize same-sex marriage has officially hit home.
Last week, as the Globe and Mail reported, an Ontario judge gave provincial politicians one year to change the Vital Statistics Act to allow a lesbian couple to be registered as “co-mothers” of a baby conceived artificially with sperm from an anonymous donor.
The provision in the Act for registering a live birth was struck down as unacceptably unequal treatment because it requires the names of a baby’s father and mother. This, Superior Court Justice Paul Rivard ruled, caused lesbian couples unjustified “pain and hardship” by suggesting “there is something wrong or unnatural about their families.
“Likewise,” Rivard added, “for children of lesbian mothers – who are even more vulnerable than their parents to the lack of symbols of their families in popular culture – exclusion of their parents from birth registration furthers this vulnerability.”
The case involved an application by four lesbian mothers who had been denied their request to have their partner’s names officially registered along with them as the children’s parents – or “co-mothers” – on their birth certificates.
Ontario law already allows for a non-biological mother to be declared a parent by adopting her partner’s child. Yet “some found the notion of being required to adopt their own children ‘immoral,’” the Toronto Star reported.
Rivard declared all four women to be the parents of their partner’s children. But he suspended the effect of his ruling for one year to allow the Ontario legislature time to bring the law in line with the equality provisions of the Charter.
Writing in the Woodstock Sentinel-Review, Kristi Setterington applauded the ruling.
“Given last year’s decision regarding same-sex marriage,” she wrote, “it seems only fitting we have taken the next step.”
The Canada Family Action Coalition, on the other hand, denounced the notion a child can have two mothers as “a biological impossibility and a foolish ideology to be promoting.”
“Telling children this false information is destructive and ought to be illegal. Are there not laws that could prosecute a person who intentionally promotes false information? Yet here we have a court doing just that,” CFAC commented on their website.
Rivard’s decision appears to conflict with a decision in April 2003 by Ontario Family Court Justice David Aston. He rejected an application by the biological parents of a boy then two years old to grant his mother’s lesbian partner equal status as a parent.
Had the case proceeded and a judgment rendered in favour of the applicants, it would have marked the first time in Canadian history that a child was declared to have three parents.
An appeal of that decision is now scheduled this September before the Ontario Court of Appeal. According to the Star, one of the lawyers for the four lesbian couples said they may seek to intervene.
Focus on the Family Canada is a member of a coalition that has intervener status in the three-parent case.
CHILDREN CAN HAVE TWO MOTHERS: COURT
Today’s Family News
June 14, 2006
The negative fallout from the decision by Canada’s Parliament a year ago to nationally legalize same-sex marriage has officially hit home.
Last week, as the Globe and Mail reported, an Ontario judge gave provincial politicians one year to change the Vital Statistics Act to allow a lesbian couple to be registered as “co-mothers” of a baby conceived artificially with sperm from an anonymous donor.
The provision in the Act for registering a live birth was struck down as unacceptably unequal treatment because it requires the names of a baby’s father and mother. This, Superior Court Justice Paul Rivard ruled, caused lesbian couples unjustified “pain and hardship” by suggesting “there is something wrong or unnatural about their families.
“Likewise,” Rivard added, “for children of lesbian mothers – who are even more vulnerable than their parents to the lack of symbols of their families in popular culture – exclusion of their parents from birth registration furthers this vulnerability.”
The case involved an application by four lesbian mothers who had been denied their request to have their partner’s names officially registered along with them as the children’s parents – or “co-mothers” – on their birth certificates.
Ontario law already allows for a non-biological mother to be declared a parent by adopting her partner’s child. Yet “some found the notion of being required to adopt their own children ‘immoral,’” the Toronto Star reported.
Rivard declared all four women to be the parents of their partner’s children. But he suspended the effect of his ruling for one year to allow the Ontario legislature time to bring the law in line with the equality provisions of the Charter.
Writing in the Woodstock Sentinel-Review, Kristi Setterington applauded the ruling.
“Given last year’s decision regarding same-sex marriage,” she wrote, “it seems only fitting we have taken the next step.”
The Canada Family Action Coalition, on the other hand, denounced the notion a child can have two mothers as “a biological impossibility and a foolish ideology to be promoting.”
“Telling children this false information is destructive and ought to be illegal. Are there not laws that could prosecute a person who intentionally promotes false information? Yet here we have a court doing just that,” CFAC commented on their website.
Rivard’s decision appears to conflict with a decision in April 2003 by Ontario Family Court Justice David Aston. He rejected an application by the biological parents of a boy then two years old to grant his mother’s lesbian partner equal status as a parent.
Had the case proceeded and a judgment rendered in favour of the applicants, it would have marked the first time in Canadian history that a child was declared to have three parents.
An appeal of that decision is now scheduled this September before the Ontario Court of Appeal. According to the Star, one of the lawyers for the four lesbian couples said they may seek to intervene.
Focus on the Family Canada is a member of a coalition that has intervener status in the three-parent case.
all together now...Deep cleansing breaths. Sigh...
Okay..I love the new lingo in the second most recent post...'ASB' is a great term...it's been added to my vocab box.
Posted by
Son of Man |
June 18, 2006 8:50 p.m.