The San Francisco Chronicle reports that California’s Assembly has passed a bill allowing “more than two” individuals to have legally recognized claims to the parenthood of a child:
Lawmakers approved SB1476 by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, on a party line vote, with Democrats supporting it. The legislation would allow judges to legally recognize multiple parents when it is in a child’s best interest to have more than two parental relationships.
“We live in a world today where courts are dealing with diverse circumstances that have reshaped California families,” Leno said in a statement. “This legislation gives courts the flexibility to protect the best interests of a child who is being supported financially and emotionally by those parents.”
This is an exasperating syllogism: the “world today” and “circumstances” (read: decades of our liberationist policies, like virtually uncapped IVF) have now resulted in unusual, problematic outcomes. Therefore we ought to formalize (i.e., empower a court to run) the show.
Because law has a didactic effect, this bill will of course reinforce and legitimize the “unfortunate” situation its authors imagined they were responding to by codifying the arrangement even as it claims to manage it. As Elizabeth Marquardt (Institute for American Values) and John Culhane (professor of law, Widener University) write in a joint op-ed against the bill:
The “rule of two” for assigning legal parenthood has rarely been breached, for good reason. Again, consider In Re M.C.. Reunification is always challenging; here, it is unlikely to succeed with anyone except (possibly) the biological father. Is it really wise to deploy already-strained government resources toward three parents? And what if, in another case, reunification with all three parents were achieved?
The problems would then multiply. It is hard enough for even two parents to agree on how to raise a child. Three parents in conflict would be still worse. Constant judicial involvement in decision-making would be the unintended but entirely predictable consequence. If there were a custody battle, the child might end up being shuttled between all of them. In fact, a Pennsylvania court has ordered custody to be shared among three legal parents.
And why stop at three? Senator Leno’s bill places no limit on the number of possible parents. If three’s a crowd, four or more is a mob.
If for some reason you don’t accept the objection that a child having three or more legal “parents” is in some way “unnatural,” keep in mind that a result of this unconcern is almost always a larger bureaucracy and a more intrusive state. Who else has a universally regarded claim to manage the inevitably public outcome of unconstrained individual choice? Certainly not an “oppressive” religious group or lateral social network.
August 31st, 2012 | 1:39 pm
I am currently rereading RobertBork’s 1996 book, “Slouching Towards Gomorrah”. It is so prophetic, and this is exactly the type of culture decline due to modern liberalism and radical egalitarianism that he writes about.
We are seeing the culture war played out before us everyday, and comparing the two political conventions will no doubt be further evidence of it.
I felt hopeful watching the RNC convention last night, and realizing that there are still conservative values alive and well in this country. I have felt demoralized over the decay during the last several years watching our current president, liberal senate leaders, and left wing media bias, cheerleading for “change”, which I see as a great decline in our culture with mandates from these types of changes by our current government and judiciary in certain courts.
Thank you for your blog, though it saddens me to read it.Godspeed to Romney and Ryan, and I hope if they are elected, we will see a return to traditional values, or at least a slowing of the assault on them by the left.
August 31st, 2012 | 2:17 pm
. . . . this is exactly the type of culture decline due to modern liberalism and radical egalitarianism that he writes about.
Jill R,
But the case that prompted this bill was one in which the law didn’t allow a baby’s biological father to be considered a parent!
It seems to me the (conservative) objection to this bill is that it gives more discretion to judges to decide what is in the best interests of children in complicated situations, and conservatives don’t trust government (in this case, judges) to make good decisions. If we trust judges to sort out who a child’s two legal parents are, I don’t see why we can’t trust them, in rare and complex situations, to decided that a third or even a fourth person can be considered a legal parent.
As Elizabeth Marquardt and John Culhane point out, although the case that prompted this bill involved a same-sex marriage, the same circumstances would arise when a pregnant woman marries a man other than the biological father of her child. (It also seems to me it would arise when an already married woman conceives a child with a man other than her own husband.)
We have had numerous commenters insisting that it is the right of children to be raised by their biological parents. Here is a bill that was designed to bring the biological father back into the picture when the law excluded him.
August 31st, 2012 | 2:36 pm
I see your point, David Nickols, but isn’t the real legal problem the case points back to built into the recognition of gay marriage as marriage, entailing as marriage does the presumption of paternity? To avoid such a bizarre situation of the law asserting something so blantantly false, you either have to eliminate the presumption from marriage altogether, or differentiate gay marriage in this respect. (But somehow I doubt that’s where you were going with this.)
August 31st, 2012 | 3:32 pm
ARM,
The authors of the op ed piece point out the following:
It seems to me situation is far, far more likely to occur with an unmarried woman becoming pregnant by a man and then marrying (while pregnant) a different man. Realistically, given that gay men and lesbians make up about 4% of the population, what are the odds that a woman is going to get pregnant with a man and then marry a woman? Just for the sake of argument, let’s say that 20% of the population is either gay or bisexual. That still leaves only 10% of women in the category of those who might get pregnant by a man and then marry a woman.
In terms of making babies, I am finding it difficult to think of anything that a same-sex couple might do that there won’t be opposite sex couples doing a lot more.
I suppose this situation might also arise with artificial insemination and IVF if the male donor is known, but all of the fertility technologies that complicate parenthood were in use decades before same-sex civil unions, let alone same-sex marriage.
I am of course biased, since I don’t see same-sex marriage as a problem, but it seems to me that for those who do, it is an extremely minor problem when put in perspective: Forty-one percent of children are born out of wedlock: only 46% of children grow up in intact homes; and of women with two or more children, 28% have had the children by two or more fathers.
August 31st, 2012 | 5:09 pm
If it is so minor, then why not use the two-parent rule? That itself can cause enormous pain for the child on breakup. Why magnify it with more adults?
August 31st, 2012 | 8:28 pm
True, the initial situation could have happened with two men and one woman, in straight relationships. Happens all the time. But would it have gone to a higher court, and had three parents affirmed? No, because the case would have been settled by a simple paternity test, right? But this case couldn’t be settled that way, because the presumed “paternity” of the lesbian “wife” was a legal fiction to start with. Since everyone knows it’s nonsense biologically, it could no more be disproven than proven. That’s why this is new ground, isn’t it?
August 31st, 2012 | 10:21 pm
Some people are just consistent and persistent rank apologists for social decay. As the article mentions, they are always at the ready to lock in an reinforce that change with law when possible.
They are simply degenerates with no abilityto be self critical or reflective of the damage they do. There minds are to preoccupied with defending there own personal sin & the past transgressions of there sexualy revolutionary brethren.
September 1st, 2012 | 9:10 am
David,
In my recent article, “Marriage, Essentially” at MercatorNet.com (http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/marriage_essentially)? I made the deductively-valid argument, with a true conclusion, that same-sex “marriage” must—must—lead to such situations as we are now seeing in California. In addition to this—wait for it—the logic of the argument shows unequivocally that same-sex “marriage” leads to man-boy love, inevitably. This is so once society recognizes that children already do give informed consent for a whole host of issues, including the delicate issue of participating in research.
See if you can refute my logic and if you cannot, then as a rational individual please come over to the side that you cannot refute.
September 1st, 2012 | 10:18 am
This story is more important than the Brasil/ three person union story. Legal recognition of more than two parents is already quite widespread. If marriage is the right to marry and found a family, and if the law accepts that three people can be a child’s parents, then how can California/Canada et al refuse to allow the child’s parents to marry? Surely it would be “In the child’s best interests”?!
It is important to note that when states redefine marriage they no longer legally recognise the physical reality of parenthood (one man one woman). The number 2 becomes irrelevant but no other number can become relevant. The number 2 is as relevant as 3, 33…333….
September 1st, 2012 | 12:08 pm
ARM,
I have been reading something about the case (In Re M.C.), and it has a lot more to do with California law than “common sense” or biological parenthood. It would take a lawyer to really explain the issues, and I am not a lawyer, but here’s my take.
No, because the case would have been settled by a simple paternity test, right? But this case couldn’t be settled that way, because the presumed “paternity” of the lesbian “wife” was a legal fiction to start with.
No, I don’t think so. Biological paternity had little or nothing to do with it. There was no question in this case who the biological father was. Biological fatherhood in no way guarantees legal parenthood. Matthew Cantirino says the following:
I think the problem in the “world today” is not so much that unusual “circumstances” arise, but that DNA testing allows determination of parenthood with virtual certainty, rendering the “presumption of paternity” arguably outdated. As I understand it, if a baby is born in a legal marriage, the biological mother and the mother’s spouse (which in the vast majority of cases will be a man) are the legal parents, and the biological father has no parental rights whatsoever if the legal spouses do not grant them. DNA tests proving biological fatherhood do not make a man the legal father of the child.
We have had many discussions on First Things about a child’s rights to be raised by his or her biological parents, but current law is not set up to guarantee such a right. It made a great deal of sense, before DNA testing, to presume that the children of a married woman were the children of her spouse. It may very well make sense to go with that presumption today. But today we can know, and yet the law largely still goes with presumption even when the presumption can be proven to be incorrect.
Even accepting (as I do) Matthew Cantorino’s point that there are many new situations today (surrogacy, anonymous sperm donors, anonymous egg donors, IVF, artificial insemination, etc.) that are very messy for the law to deal with—situations that in many cases arguably ought not to be—it is nevertheless the case that the law does have to deal with them, and the “old rules” just don’t apply any more.
September 1st, 2012 | 12:12 pm
Increasingly, I think we are slouching not only to Gomorrah–we are also slouching to the loony bin. We are being asked to believe things are other than they are. We are becoming untethered to Truth.
I lived in Iraq during the “War Between the Cities”, when Scud-B missiles were launched against Baghdad once or twice a week. It was illegal to admit that the Iranians had successfully breached Iraqi defenses. I was in the British Council library when a Scud hit a nearby building. An Iraqi soldier immediately ran into our building, shouting that “nothing happened. You heard nothing”, against a backdrop of an enormous mushroom cloud and massive destruction. The Iraqis around me all started chanting “we heard nothing. We see nothing. Nothing happened. Nothing happened”.
It seemed as if the entire country suffered a psychotic break because they could not speak the truth. The Americans in these recent bizarre marriage/parentage stories remind me of the Iraqis. I refuse to live in fantasy land.
September 1st, 2012 | 2:36 pm
The difference between legitimate adoption and every other “family arrangement” (including most of the ones currently fashionable among the “sexual revolution” warriors): when what the parents want and what is best for the child are in conflict, how is the dispute negotiated?
The “sexual revolution” relies on the idea that parents’ “needs” (and ideological commitments) are deadly important, while kids’ actual, real needs are irrelevant. Children are “resilient”, and kids live without parents all the time; adults are fragile, and if they don’t get everything they want, they melt.
The real civil rights issue of our time: the way adults traffic in, claim, experiment on, manipulate, exploit, and outright use children.
September 1st, 2012 | 2:37 pm
The ugly reality is that if you are not the child’s biological parent, and you have not been deemed by a judge to be the legal replacement for the missing parent via adoption, you are not a parent, you are a stepparent. They are not the same thing.
This whole issue disappears if you look at babies as human beings with interests separate from that of their parents (instead of looking at babies as things to claim possession of).
September 1st, 2012 | 2:47 pm
It seems to me the (conservative) objection to this bill is that it gives more discretion to judges to decide what is in the best interests of children in complicated situations, and conservatives don’t trust government (in this case, judges) to make good decisions.
Judges don’t make good decisions. In California, where this bill is, judges send cases to so-called “mediators” who are overworked, who allot a single hour of listening time before they make up their mind what the custody situation “ought to be”. Then the judge rubber-stamps that arrangement. This is called “may the best liar win”, since the mediators refuse to allow evidence (it’s entirely a matter of which parent talks best during that hour).
So, yes, there is the fact that people don’t think it’s wise to let “government” more latitude to rule that parenthood can be whatever an ideologue judge wants it to be – at least not while that same family court is so overworked that it can’t handle its caseload.
But the part I don’t get is why you think this has something to do with the child’s best interest. It’s not in a child’s best interest to be forced to pretend that a stepparent is a real parent. What’s in a child’s best interest is for the relationship with the real parents – both of them – to be supported. The only time either parent should be replaced is if the parent relationship is so inappropriate or impossible that it’s literally in the child’s best interest for the judge to sever the entire relationship (which, according to California law, is a prerequisite: a stepparent cannot adopt a spouse’s child until the child’s relationship with the other parent is severed by law).
Now, I can see where it might be in the adult’s best interest, as perceived by the adult. To be a stepparent is hard; you have to be a grownup, and put what’s best for the child above your own ego, and some people have a really hard time with that. But that’s not a reason for blurring the child’s sense of reality. No child should be forced to live in a parent’s fantasy-reality. Such a situation – aside from being kafkaesque – reduces the child to a mere pawn in someone else’s game.
Or, to put it another way, if King David threatened to split your child between yourself and the other claimant, would you let the other person have your child (in order to keep the child safe), or would you be the one who insists on what’s yours, even if it means cutting a baby in half?
(Then again, sexual revolution warriors don’t seem to mind dead babies.)
September 1st, 2012 | 3:07 pm
Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons,
I see three very serious flaws in your article right off the bat. You say:
First of all, you are inventing a definition of marriage that doesn’t fit with the facts. I often like to quote this passage often from Dictionary of the Bible by John L. McKenzie:
Marriage in history (and currently) has had many reasons, and one of the most common one was and remains economic, not romantic. The marriages of billions of people even today are arranged marriages. Many in arranged marriages may grow to love each other, but is that essential? Were people in Biblical times who did not grow to love their spouses, or are people in arranged marriages today who do not love their spouses, not married?
Second, you assert a definition that excludes polygamy. And yet polygamous marriage already is marriage. Approximately fifty countries in the world have civil polygamous marriage. Some of the greatest religious figures in the Bible (Abraham, David, Solomon) had multiple wives. Polygamous marriage goes back to prehistoric times and continues even today. How in the world do you claim it isn’t marriage? It may be a form of marriage that in modern society creates enough problems so that it ought to be prohibited, but it is certainly marriage.
And it is simply nonsense to claim that broadening the definition of marriage to include same-sex partners would somehow legalize or sanction pedophilia. If that were the case, your definition of marriage would legalize incest. Under your definition of marriage, there is no reason an adult brother and sister, or a widower and his adult daughter, or a widow and her adult son could not or should not marry. They are capable of a loving relationship and of conceiving and raising children just as well as couples who are not related to each other.
The very notion that, since a two-or- three-sentence definition of marriage could be interpreted to cover relationships that are currently considered immoral or illegal, adopting that definition would give legal and moral permission for those forbidden relationships is not an argument against the definition. It is an argument that the definition isn’t sufficiently complete.
September 1st, 2012 | 5:07 pm
It’s not in a child’s best interest to be forced to pretend that a stepparent is a real parent. What’s in a child’s best interest is for the relationship with the real parents – both of them – to be supported.
Blake,
So what you are objecting to—it seems to me—is California law (and the law of virtually every state, not to mention every Western country that I know of) that recognizes the spouse of a woman who gives birth as the second legal parent of the child. This is nothing new. It is very old. As Michael PS has explained many times, the husband of a woman who gives birth is legally presumed to be the father of his wife’s child.
Here, very briefly, is the case we are discussing. Melissa and Irene had a “romantic” relationship, but they were not married. Melissa left Irene and had a relationship with Jesus, by which she became pregnant. Melissa then left Jesus and legally married Irene. Melissa then gave birth to baby M.C., and Melissa and Irene became the legal parents of baby M.C. Now, many who are opposed to same-sex marriage will no doubt argue that it is crazy to consider two women to be the two parents of a child. However, if Irene had been, say, Isaac, and Melissa and Isaac had joined in a conventional marriage, Isaac would still have been the legal father of baby M.C. even though the evidence could prove conclusively that Jesus was the biological father.
The fact that the marriage in this case was a same-sex marriage is a total distraction. Jesus would not have been considered the legal parent of the child even if Melissa had married a man.
What you seem to be objecting to in reality is the “presumption of paternity” in favor of the legal spouse instead of the “reality of paternity.”
But of course there is something to be said, in general, for the presumption of paternity (or parenthood) when a child is born into an existing legal union. Suppose a wife conceives a baby before marriage, or commits adultery and conceives a baby within marriage. Would anyone really want a general rule that said the wife and the biological father of the child should jointly raise the baby? This would be the law requiring a married woman to raise her child with her lover rather than with her husband. Of course, every case must be decided on its own merits, but would anyone argue that, in general, a married woman should raise a child with the biological father, her lover or ex-lover, than with the man she is married to?
September 1st, 2012 | 5:09 pm
It was King Solomon, not King David, who threatened to cut the baby in half.
September 1st, 2012 | 8:54 pm
David,
You certainly have a number of things right. Marriage is not about “love”. That arranged marriage is so common is evidence of that. Polygamous marriage has been and still is, in some places, part of the traditional. But what made each of every one of them marriage was the possibility of children.
As to polygamy, in Western civilizations, we have come to believe that men and women should be equal in the family, that polygamy (polyandry having always been rare) results in some women and their children being treated as second class. Lastly, we reach for the love that nurtures children even in arranged marriages, but caring for our children should come first. At least, we used to so believe, even if we not infrequently fell short.
September 1st, 2012 | 9:06 pm
Thank you, David, for your rebuttal to my article. I disagree with your words “serious” and “flaw” and as you will see, my view is neither one of these.
First of all, we could take out the word “loving” from my definition and then your first criticism fall away. Yet, I am hesitant to take that word out for this reason: I am talking about “essence” (what a thing is at its core). You, instead, are talking about what a thing is “in history.” What a thing is in its essence need not be mirrored at a particular point in historical time. Your hidden assumption, which is false, is this: Whatever marriage is at point X in time is what marriage is. Why would you say that? As an example outside of our discussion, if most people at time X live in caves, do we then say, “Oh, a cave is a building because the essence of a building is a structure in which people live, and people live in caves, therefore it follows that caves are buildings.” The problem, of course, with this labeling is that a building is more than—more than—a place where people live. It is and always has been the same with marriage and that is why people have fought so hard (and have won) to negate the equating of marriage with something arranged and even polygamous.
I think we have now addressed your second point as well. Polygamy in history has been called marriage, but over time most societies have developed—developed, David—to see more clearly and so polygamy has been banned.
The take-home message is this: Marriage is not relative to history or to culture or to opinion. It is what it is and when societies begin to define it erroneously, they begin to see the negative consequences of this and therefore to develop a more adequate definition without so many tragic flaws, as has happened characteristically with arranged and polygamous marriages.
Oh, and by the way, have you ever been to Jerusalem? Do you know what the hill is called (and seems to have been called since ancient times) where Solomon had his “wives”? Right—The Mount of Scandal.
Now, David, you realize that you have added to my list of woes whenever marriage is taken out of the context of its essence and its purpose. You have added what I forgot to include—incest. Did you know that in Argentina and Brazil, there is no criminal penalty against incest when defined in certain ways (and always including a blood relative)? I hope you do not find that shocking because your fight for same-sex “marriage” is opening the door for this and your word “ridiculous” is dismissive without addressing my issues.
Oh, one more thing. In your free time, you might want to read the articles about the “three way marriage” in Brazil that has been causing an uproar lately. It should do nothing of the sort if—if—marriage is taken out of its essence and purpose. What just happened in Brazil follows logically from the kinds of thinking in which you engage.
David, you have not refuted a thing. I am still waiting.
September 2nd, 2012 | 8:54 am
“The fact that the marriage in this case was a same-sex marriage is a total distraction”
Hardly. I think this is refered to as the “circumstances” in “the world today”.
The problem in this mess is the status of Irene. You say, “IF Irene were Isaac…”, but she is not Isaac. She is neither Melissa’s husband nor MC’s mother. Calling them a married couple does not make them so, any more than a man who calls himself Loretta is a woman, even if he hopes to gestate a fetus in a box. That’s how bizarrely ridiculous these situations are, brought about by the sexual “liberation” crowd who didn’t think things through. It would be funny if not for the MCs of the world.
I suppose it could be a satisfying legal problem to hash through, too—hours of enjoyment—for people who like those kinds of puzzles and can forget the attendant suffering of innocent humans.
September 2nd, 2012 | 10:21 am
“Because law has a didactic effect, this bill will of course reinforce and legitimize the “unfortunate” situation its authors imagined they were responding to by codifying the arrangement even as it claims to manage it”
Not only that, the credulous will accept as truth the bumper sticker tenet that multiple “parents” are better than the traditional two—more people to love the little mite! All those grandparents to spoil the little guy!
Of course, human nature will assert itself, usually right away. It will take years before society admits that it engaged in magical or wishful thinking, though.
September 2nd, 2012 | 3:10 pm
Calling them a married couple does not make them so . . .
peg,
Of course it does. They were legally married in California, and consequently they were a married couple. I know of no one who has maintained that same-sex couples who have civil weddings in those areas (countries and states) where same-sex marriage is permitted are not legally married. It is a fact people may not like, but it is nevertheless a fact.
As I have already pointed out, the authors of the op-ed page piece criticizing the law say the following:
I suppose it could be a satisfying legal problem to hash through, too—hours of enjoyment—for people who like those kinds of puzzles and can forget the attendant suffering of innocent humans.
In other words, good people are too sensitive to discuss the legal issues here. It’s something only the cold-hearted would do, for their own amusement.
September 2nd, 2012 | 6:05 pm
“They were legally married in California, and consequently they were a married couple.”
It’s a ridiculous fantasy. Much of our society is living in la-la land. It’s the same as those mushroom clouds and destroyed buildings in Iraq, whose reality were “illegal”. I didn’t buy that, either.
September 2nd, 2012 | 11:22 pm
Hello David,
Polygamous and arranged marriage may be “Marriage” under the natural law and even – at one point – the divine law.
But both still have/had as one principal – certainly possible – component: the procreation and rearing of children.
Talk of infertile or aged couples is really beside the point. Marriage was not made for them.
If children were generated and raised in some other fashion, marriage would not exist. Other contractual relationships might have come into existence; but they would not be marriage as we have come to understand it down through the ages.
But that is what has gotten lost in the marriage debate, certainly by advocates of gay marriage (just like with no-fault divorce advocates before them): the good of the children. What prevails instead is a great deal of rank selfishness. And disordered morality.
September 3rd, 2012 | 10:27 pm
Polygamous and arranged marriage may be “Marriage” under the natural law and even – at one point – the divine law.
Richard M,
Thank you for acknowledging this. Whether speaking in terms of philosophy, anthropology, or the Judeo-Christian tradition, it simply makes no sense to define marriage in such a way as to exclude polygamy. Whatever one may think of same-sex marriage, to claim it is a stepping stone to polygamy is nonsense.
Talk of infertile or aged couples is really beside the point. Marriage was not made for them.
The question in my mind is, “Was marriage made?” What kind of “thing” is marriage?
September 5th, 2012 | 1:35 pm
“The essence of marriage (what it is) has always and without exception been this: man and woman in a loving, committed relationship. The endpoint or purpose of marriage has always and without exception been this: mutual loving support of each other and — and — the creation and support of children. ”
I don’t understand how polygamy violates any of this definition per se. (Not that I’m a fan of polygamy, but what is so obvious to David is far from obvious to me in this case.)
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