Strollerderby : queer family

Making More Marriages Versus "Making Marriage Matter Less"

Shannon LC Cate — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:00:00 GMT

A recent report tells us that half of all new babies born in Scotland last year were born to unmarried parents. And those statistics are indicative of a growing trend in many places of families that do not meet the imaginary norm of two opposite-sex married parents and their biological children.

Oddly enough, this lesbian mom thought first of all those Scottish babies when I heard all the good news about legal marriage expanding in the past two weeks. My partner and I can now have our Canadian marriage recognized in Sweden, Iowa and Vermont and depending on the U.S. Congress's response to the city's decision, the District of Columbia. Add these to a growing list that includes Spain, Belgium, Massachusetts, New York and of course, Canada.

Marriage is indeed a handy thing for us to have. It protects us in the event of death or accident, making sure we can care for each other in extremity and inherit from each other easily. It protects the children that come into our family while we are married, making sure we are both recognized as their parents, and thus responsible for them. But marriage isn't the only way to obtain those kinds of benefits. And same-sex marriage does nothing at all for children born to unmarried parents, whatever their gender configuration.

There are many reasons families other than the Leave it to Beaver model need recognition, care and protection from the government, but even exclusively focusing on children's needs quickly alerts us to the many ways in which marriage is not the answer to these needs.

No, a child with a de facto, but nonlegal parent can't be covered by that parent's employer-based health insurance. But even when that de facto parent becomes a legal one by caveat of a marriage to the first parent or through second-parent adoption (when available) the child will remain uninsured if that parent has no coverage herself, as many don't.

Marriage allows its members to visit each other in the hospital in emergencies, but same-sex marriage doesn't help the mother and father, unmarried to each other in such emergencies.

Marriage means any child born into the family of a married couple is automatically the legal child of both. This doesn't help live-in, unmarried partners of any sex who raise each other's children.

Marriage offers special rights to an ever decreasing percentage of the population and the children born to that group. But rather than expanding who can obtain these special rights, the government should be designing family law to protect all families in their ever-increasing variety.

Some great suggestions for doing that, based on models from countries that do it better, as well as her own brilliant legal thinking, can be found in Nancy Polikoff's book, Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage. Polikoff's central idea is that we should strive to make marriage "matter less" to the well being of families, allowing it without discrimination, but only as a personal, spiritual and symbolic ritual that is not required to protect and defend families and their dependents (whether those dependents are children or dependent adults).

Universal health coverage, court arbitration for non-martial family break ups, parenting rights for all of a child's acting parents, and other reforms would go much further and protect many more people than merely extending marriage rights and privileges. Furthermore, same-sex marriage, under Polikoff's plans would cease to be a cultural or political dividing force. Why? Because families could get what they needed without "marriage" leaving marriage itself to be defined in whatever way legally toothless groups wanted to define it. If a certain church wanted to restrict marriage to women and men, it could (as all churches can now, by the way) and if another wanted to marry groups of more than two people in a spiritually meaningful ritual, it could do that as well. But access or lack of it to any of these ceremonies would have no impact on the rights of any given family.

Polikoff's ideas are simple, common sense ones and I am glad to see them in print. I hope I'll see them in law someday. I hope it more than I hope for gay marriage, however convenient that would be for my particular family.

Mother and Daughter Parted by Court after Lesbian Break Up

Shannon LC Cate — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 23:15:00 GMT

In a sad story that's been back-and-forth in the Maryland courts for three years, a lesbian mom has been denied visitation with her child after the girl's other mother changed her mind about their post-break up arrangements. A brief summary of the story here misleadingly describes the second mom as someone who "helped raise" the child.

And here's where I go into my standard lecture about marriage really being all about divorce. Because when things go well in a same-sex headed family, folks may miss tax breaks, opportunities to insure each other and experience many other headaches, but it's when things fall apart through death or break up that tragedies happen. And most often, these tragedies happen to children.

"Helped raise" is a real misnomer in this case, because the child was adopted from India. As with pretty much all countries that "send" adoptive children to the United States, India forbids same-sex parents to adopt. Therefore when a same-sex couple adopts internationally, one partner must do the adopting as a single parent while the other sits in the closet, appearing on the homestudy paperwork--if at all--as a roommate; going to visit or collect the child as a "sister" or "friend."

If the child is not--or more often cannot be--second-parent adopted by the silent partner back in the States, the child is stuck forever with one legal parent and one "de facto" parent, whom a court may or may not choose to recognize in an emergency.

Thus it is that same-sex parents lose their children to the legal parent's parents after a death; to the legal parent after a break up.

The fact is that most same-sex parents in the United States do not have access to means to both become legal parents. The law is inconsistent, most often depending on the kindness of any given judge on any given day in court, and same-sex parenting is, at times, outright forbidden by law.

Currently Maryland, in which this sad case has been unfolding offers second-parent adoption to a same-sex partner somewhat commonly in some jurisdictions, but not so commonly in others. (It is a case of each judge's discretion.) I am unclear on whether these women had access to second-parent adoption when they got their daughter ten years ago. But regardless, 10 years of parenting makes a parent, not the luck of the draw regarding who had the best profile to try a single-parent adoption when the couple decided to become moms.

And the one who really loses here, is, of course, their daughter. Somewhere there's a ten-year old girl who's just been told by a judge that her mom is not her mom, and that her relationship to her mom will not be protected by responsible, unbiased adults.

Put yourself in that child's shoes and tell me same-sex marriage is a bad idea.

McCain Talks to the Gays: Part Two, Adoption

Shannon LC Cate — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:46:00 GMT

First of all, let's review what John McCain told the New York Times when first asked about the question of gay adoption in July:

Q: President Bush believes that gay couples should not be permitted to adopt children. Do you agree with that?

Mr. McCain: I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no I don’t believe in gay adoption.

Q: Even if the alternative is the kid staying in an orphanage, or not having parents.

Mr. McCain: I encourage adoption and I encourage the opportunities for people to adopt children I encourage the process being less complicated so they can adopt as quickly as possible. And Cindy and I are proud of being adoptive parents.

Q: But your concern would be that the couple should a traditional couple.

Mr. McCain: Yes.

McCain tried to backpeddle a bit later when he found out how very uncool was his assertion that a kid would be better off in an orphange than with gay adoptive parents. But last week, he told the Washington Blade:

"I hope my comments are not misinterpreted. I respect the hundreds of thousands of gay and lesbian people who are doing their best to raise the children they have adopted. As someone who adopted a child, Cindy and I know better than most couples the amazing satisfaction that comes from providing love to an unwanted child. I believe a child is best raised by a mother and father because of the unique contributions that they make together to the development of a child."

It sounds pretty much the same to me, except to add that he respects us for doing our "best" in spite of being second-class parents (unlike him and Cindy). I guess that probably means he's not in favor of actually taking our existing kids out of our homes. How very reasurring.

But my real problem with McCain's words is his characterization of adopted children as "unwanted." My two adopted children were not unwanted. They were not unwanted by their first mothers who were forced by circumstances into placing them for adoption, and who still very much love and want them in their lives. They were not unwanted by us or the long list of waiting prospective parents at our adoption agency. Assuming that children placed for adoption--even abandoned--are "unwanted" is a leap to claiming to know the minds and hearts of any number of people with very little to go on. It is to paint a child--in McCain's case, his own child-as somehow less deserving of love, or as "lucky" to have a family.

This attitude, common though it is (and, as adoptive parents reading this know, it is all too common), hurts adoptees. How do you think McCain's daughter feels when she hears her father call her "unwanted?"

Does he mean it the way I've written about it here? He'd probably insist that he certainly doesn't. But he clearly intends to portray himself as heroic--loving above and beyond the call of biological duty--for being an adoptive parent. Adoptive parents are not heroic. They are just parents, like any others. Their children are not lucky (in fact, adoptive children have experienced unfortunate losses by definition), they deserve a loving family as much as anyone else. If after all these years of adoptive parenting, McCain still doesn't get this, it's not surprising he doesn't get same-sex adoption either.

Two Moms is Not Enough

Shannon LC Cate — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:28:00 GMT

Quick! How many children's pop-culture products can you think of that features same-sex parents? Two? Four? Six?

I can count maybe a dozen, mostly books. Of those, I like maybe two or three. We have And Tango Makes Three and like it. We have a couple of other books that quietly portray same-sex parents without it being the central issue, but when it comes to kids' culture that reflects the family configuration our kids know first-hand, our options are woefully limited.

Newish to the scene in this small pool of options is Buddy G: My Two Moms and Me a cartoon featuring a kid with two moms as the title declares in no uncertain terms. The first thing I thought when I looked at the trailer was "that kid is more annoying than Caillou!" Further investigation led me to discover that this was just what the show's creators had in mind. They thought it would be neat if Caillou had two moms and set out to make it so.

I think it would be neat if Caillou was hit by a flaming meteor, but that's a post for another day. To get to the cringeworthy point, I'm not a Buddy G fan.

I realize that our family is very much a minority, what with two white moms and two African American daughters, and I don't expect to find hundreds of choices at the library that reflect that minority. But it would be nice if there were more to choose from if only because in any category of cultural production, 90% is dross. In such a small pool of options, we're left with very little if we're picky enough to aim for the best stuff. Maybe other folks can handle bad culture for children or adults, but I have studied great literature for too long. I am an absolute snob about it. I only want the good stuff for my family.

Sadly, when it comes to cartoons featuring two moms, it's Buddy G or nothing. Commendable as the idea behind the project is, and disloyal as I feel for saying so, at this point, we choose nothing.