In a case that could legally redefine the Canadian family, a mother is asking a court to declare her same-sex partner a third parent.
Rather than replace a parent, which adoption does, a London, Ontario, boy’s biological mother and father are seeking to “add a parent” said Grace Kerr, lawyer for the woman seeking to be declared a mother.
“We’ve got a loving circle of family and they have done everything society could hope for in terms of providing for the child and would just like legal recognition,” said Kerr, according to the London Free Press newspaper.
“They are saying that in their family, there is room for three parents.”
The same-sex couple, who exchanged public vows in 1992, decided to ask a friend to be the father rather than using an anonymous sperm donor. The man does not live at the boy’s home but is considered a member of the household.
“I have two moms and a daddy,” said the boy, who turned 2 in February.
Family Court Justice David Aston has ordered that the names of the three adults and the child not be publicized.
He is expected to hear the case in about a month, but already has indicated he is favorable to the request, stating when the petition was made in February, “I can’t imagine a stronger case for seeking the order you are seeking.”
Canadian family advocate Brian Rushfeldt insists, however, that this small case could have “huge implications.”
“If we go to three parents, then there is no grounds to prevent it from going to four or five or whatever number,” said Rushfeldt, executive director of the Canada Family Action Coalition.
“Once you’ve destroyed the standard of one woman and one man, you’ve broken down the whole basis of the system,” he told WND.
Rushfeldt’s group has requested that it be an intervener in the case, similiar to “friend of the court” status in the United States.
Kerr argued that a legal declaration of motherhood would give the non-biological mother rights to make medical, educational and travel decisions.
But Rushfeldt sees the potential for fundamental legal changes, affecting not only family law but many other areas, including corporate life.
“I can foresee a situation where companies will have to provide spousal benefits for three or four or five spouses,” he said.
Kerr maintains that Canadian law does not prevent a child from having two mothers. Nearly every province, in fact, now allows homosexual couples to adopt children. The federal government is holding public hearings on whether to extend rights to same-sex couples after an Ontario court ruled last year that restricting marriage to a man and a woman is unconstitutional and discriminatory.
The lawyer said both women “did all the things parents do,” after the boy was born.” They “got up in the middle of the night with him, they fed him, changed him, they took him to the doctor’s, they play with him and they provide for him financially.”
“He has a mother and he has another mother,” she said.
The woman who is asking to be recognized as the boy’s mother said the declaration “is about having the resources to be a good parent.”
“I didn’t birth him, but I am also his mother,” she said. “It would be nice to hear in a court of law.”
Derek Rogusky, vice president for family policy with Focus on the Family Canada, contends, however, that the judiciary is not the place to handle such matters.
“The real problem is we’re doing this piecemeal, through the courts, and not thinking of the big picture,” he said. “If we are going to make changes, they have to be done in a thoughtful and thorough public-policy process, through Parliament, so that we can hear from experts and constituents.”
C. Gwendolyn Landolt, vice president of Real Women of Canada believes the three adults who seek the declaration are “attempting to restructure society to suit their own private interests.”
“This is not in the best interest of the child,” she said, citing studies that show the superiority of being raised by a mother and father. “It’s an adult-driven application which may be in the best interest of the adult.”
Stanley Kurtz, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, believes the case’s implications are monumental.
“Once we cross the border into legalized multiple parenthood, we have virtually arrived at the abolition of marriage and the family,” he said in a column for National Review Online.
“The logic of gay marriage leads inexorably to the end of marriage, and the creation in its place of an infinitely flexible series of contracts,” said Kurz. “Monogamous marriage cannot function if it is just one of many social arrangements.”
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