Same-Sex Marriage Update

[MsTinkerbelly]

Parenting getting a little more equal
By Adam Bink

This got buried a few days ago with all the news around the Tucson shooting, but there was an important court decision in Connecticut. The state Supreme Court ruled in Raftopol v. Ramey that the names of two men can be entered on the birth certificate of their child who was conceived with the help of a surrogate. According to ProudParenting.org, this is the first time in the history of the country that a state high court has acknowledged the legality of the parentage of two men. More:

Anthony Raftopol and Shawn Hargon, an American couple residing in Hungary, had a daughter through surrogacy, and were both recognized as her child’s legal father on the birth certificate. They then had twins in April 2008 through the same gestational surrogate and egg donor. When the couple petitioned the court to be named as the children’s legal parents, the court granted their petition. However, this time the Attorney General, acting on behalf of the Connecticut Department of Health, attempted to block the creation of the birth certificate, stating that parentage could only be established through conception, adoption or artificial insemination.

The Supreme Court rejected this claim, noting that according to the Department of Health’s argument, a child born to an infertile couple who had entered into a gestational agreement with egg and sperm donors and a gestational carrier would be born parentless.

It’s often said that the states are the test tubes, incubators, etc. of good public policy, and even more importantly, that having many states all come around on the same topic (adoption, marriage, etc) moves national opinion and national courts. Hopefully this ruling can set a precedent.

Concurrently, over the weekend, the State Department announced that passport forms for registering children in the future will contain gender-neutral questions about parents “Mother or Parent 1″ and “Father or Parent 2″