A while back, when we were still Waiting For Nat, I wrote about the sad case of a lesbian couple I read about in the NYT magazine in which one mom's egg was used to create an embryo transferred to the second mom's uterus and the resulting twin girls, after seven years, were being legally torn away from the first mom in a bitter divorce. The second mom could do this easily, because the couple had been made to sign a document at their fertility clinic declaring the carrying mom to be the only legal parent and asking the "egg donor" to swear never to claim the resulting children or to seek out the "recipient" of her eggs (the partner with whom she had planned and consequently went on to raise the children).
At the time, I hoped such cases were a sad thing of the (if recent) past, as the article explained that the clinic had since changed their paperwork to accommodate situations like these women's.
But no. It seems that in states less enlightened than California (where the case I read about happened), lesbian moms are still forced to pick one legal parent even when undergoing a complex reproductive procedure that obviously involves them both and involves them both biologically.
Katie and her partner recently had to face that decision and sign papers giving one of them all rights to their future child and the other no rights whatever.
I want each and every one of my heterosexual allies out there to understand something loud and clear: your moral support is not enough to keep our families safe. Don't get me wrong, your moral support keeps us smiling day-to-day and reminds us that not everyone in the U.S. would like to return to biblically mandated stoning of queers in the public square. And some days, that's hard to remember. But being reminded of your good feelings towards us is not enough.
Cole and Nat and I are exceptionally lucky. We didn't plan it this way, but it just so happens that when we met and moved in and decided to have kids, we were living in a state that not only allows us to do this openly and supportively, but allows us both to be legal parents. Furthermore, there's a county in this state—and lucky us, our adoption agency is located in it—that allows families like ours to appear before a judge together and be pronounced parents together in the same legal action.
This is very, very rare. Even in places where two people of the same sex can legally parent the same child (and there are fewer of these places in the U.S. than there are places where they can't), it is almost unheard of that those two people can adopt that child together, openly, as a couple, just like any straight, married couple would be able to do as a matter of course. Most of the time, the child must first be the legal child of one parent (by adoption or by birth) and then be "second-parent" adopted (or "step-parent" adopted, as the laws that allow this were put in place for straight couples in second marriages to adopt each other’s children). Jurisdictions in which a same-sex couple can adopt together the way we did can be counted on one hand with fingers left over to spare.
If you know a real-life same-sex couple with kids, think about where you live and think about whether or not there is probably second-parent adoption available to same-sex couples there. If you think maybe not, it might well be that only one member of the couple you know is a legal parent to the child. You might already know all about this. Maybe you've talked with them about it. Maybe you've asked about it because you are interested in these issues and want to help make things better for our families. I don't want to be condescending here, because I know many of you are very savvy people. But just in case someone out there doesn't know this stuff, I want to make it really, really clear. (No more double negatives.)
Time was, when same-sex couples didn't always reveal who the legal (or even birth in the case of bio babies) parent in a couple was, because of the fear that advantage could be taken of the family with that knowledge or that the kid/s could be upset by people mentioning it or talking about who the "real" parent is. It's not unlike the adoption scenario that upsets so many people, in which first mothers get called "real" mothers right in front of small children and their adoptive parents.
But aside from the obvious legal unfairness of policies that create this kind of scary situation in which one parent has no legal rights as a parent but at best has some kind of emergency guardianship provision or power (granted by the legal parent) to make medical decisions etc., I think an overlooked issue here is basic marriage and family stability.
Our detractors accuse queer families (partnerships with or without kids) of being inherently unstable. Well, I'd just like to say, inherently? No. Unstable? Quite possibly. But entirely by nefarious design.
If you are in a straight relationship and you have kids—oh heck, let's throw infertility stress into the mix, since Katie and her partner had to do this at the RE's office—just imagine someone handing you a piece of paper and a pen before the embryo transfer and telling you that if you don't put into writing right now which of you will have 100% legal parentage of your future child and which of you will have 0% of same, there can and will be no transfer.
What does this do to your marriage? Feminist scholars have been documenting for decades the damage economic dependency does to the psyches of women in traditional—yea, even quite economically well-off—family relationships. What would the kind of dependency that gives you access to your child only through your partner do to a psyche? How would it change the day-to-day power struggles of every normal marriage? How would it affect confidence in parenting to never be able to sign forms at school or the doctor's office for your own child (in Katie's case, the child you bore in your own body) without the written permission of your partner? How would living that way day-in, day-out exacerbate the niggly trust issues every normal relationship carries like intestinal bacteria?
Let's say you're straight, let's say you lived with your significant other for a while (maybe even a really long time) before marriage, but married, finally. Why'd you bother to do that? Why did you—while having a happy relationship and day-to-day togetherness and common decision-making and shared responsibilities and goals—desire to add that legal document to your relationship? I'm not so much interested in the legal reasons. What about the relational ones? How did that paper change the quality of your relationship and why? What felt different about it when you woke up the morning after the wedding? Share your reasons with us. They are probably the same kinds of reasons—legal, political and economic issues aside—queers have for feeling the need for that piece of paper.
When I say your moral support isn't enough, I am really, really not trying to be an ungrateful jerk. It's just that playground taunts about having two mommies isn't really the problem our children face. Our children do sometimes face that problem, but all children face playground taunts about something. The real problem our children face is laying awake at night after a disturbing piece on the news about a state trying to de-legalize same-sex parenting and worrying that someone might come take them away from their families. Our children face not just individual "homophobia" that leads their great-grandmothers to refuse to acknowledge their existence (um, yeah…) but systemic heterosexism which leads to dangers not only of the legal variety but of the personal, psychological sort.
And this is ticking me off today in a big way. Because I have fought long and hard and spent money out the whazoo for my (glowing, thank you) mental health, and these policies, put in place by people who claim to have families' best interests at heart, tear away at and threaten that health—and with it, my daughter's growing psyche—every day in small and large ways. Every day our families face not just curious stares or silly remarks; not just legal frustrations and economic unfairness, but internal threats to our loyal ranks, simmering mistrust in our kitchens and creeping anxieties in our living rooms.
And it's because we have to answer these kinds of questions regularly:
Who is the applicant? Who pretends to be the roommate? Who is the "real" parent? Who pretends to be the nanny?
Whose name goes on which line?
UPDATE:
Please read all of the comments on this post. There are more stories, suggestions and truly vital information for those who are concerned about these issues. I will also post more soon about good organizations folks can have their wedding guests support in lieu of gifts as suggested by jlp below.
