Same-sex couples
who raise children are lawful parents and must mutually
provide for their children if the relationship ends,
the California supreme court ruled Monday. The
precedent-setting decision puts former gay and lesbian
couples on equal ground with unmarried heterosexual
couples who break up and marks the latest decision by the
court recognizing rights of same-sex couples.
The justices,
ruling in three cases, announced for the first time that
custody and child support laws that hold absent fathers
accountable and protect children from the stigma of
illegitimacy also apply to estranged gay and lesbian
couples who used reproductive science to conceive. In
doing so, a Marin County woman was granted legal status
as the second mother of twins after the birth
mother moved out of state.
The court also
ruled that a lesbian cannot avoid paying child support for
her former partner's biological children, and that another
woman could not go to court to terminate the parental
rights of her former lover, years after obtaining a
court order stipulating they were both
parents. "The court is now protecting the children of
same-sex parents in gay families in the same way
children are protected with heterosexual couples in
heterosexual families," said Jill Hersh, who argued
the unnamed Marin County woman's case before the justices.
Courtney Joslin,
an attorney with the National Center for Lesbian Rights,
said, "This is the first time any state supreme court in the
country has made this ruling." (AP)
