Children
in California will soon recognise three ‘parents’ for the one child under a proposed new law.
The
new legislation is designed to cover situations in which same-sex couples have
a child with an opposite-sex biological parent, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Jennifer
Roback Morse, founder of The Ruth Institute which seeks to promote traditional
marriage, said, “once we started trying to normalize parenting by same-sex
couples and redefine marriage to remove the dual gender requirement, we had to
end up with triple parenting”.
The
legislation, signed by the state’s governor Jerry Brown, will come into effect
at the beginning of next year, making California the fifth state in America to
pass such a law.
The
Bill was sponsored by the National Center for Lesbian Rights and by the
Children’s Advocacy Institute at San Diego School of Law.
Brad
Dacus, President of the Pacific Justice Institute, said: “This is in the long
run going to be a mistake”.
He
added: “The ones who are going to pay the price are not the activists, but it’s
going to be children, who will see greater conflict and indecision over matters
involving their well-being.”
Mr
Dacus said having more than two legal parents will create the potential for
greater conflict over what is best for a child and result in more complicated
court fights.
In
2010 a lesbian mother in the UK lost a bitter custody battle with the
homosexual man who fathered her two children through artificial insemination.
Norman
Wells, director of the Family Education Trust, previously warned: “It’s always
a recipe for disaster to try and create children to order by artificial means
to satisfy the desires of natural parents who are unrelated and lack a shared
commitment to parenting.”
The Bill was partly prompted by a complicated custody battle
in 2011 involving a child of lesbian parents who was placed in foster care
after one parent ended up in jail and the other in hospital.
The child’s biological father was initially granted parental
responsibilities by a court but the decision was later reversed after an
appeals court concluded a child could not have more than two parents.
