Among the other proposals found in the new document of the
Law Reform Commission called ‘Report on Legal 
Aspects of Family Relationships’,
is one that would pave the way for the one child having three or more legal
parents.
In addition, several other adults could have access rights
to that same child.
As mentioned in a previous blog, the LRC is really just one
more left-wing quango and therefore it is not at all surprising that when it
turns its attention to family law it embraces family diversity ideology
wholeheartedly and uncritically.
The LRC appears to find no special value in marriage
whatsoever. It appears to attach no special value to biological parenthood or
to the one child having two parents and no more (or less).
For the LRC a family is any group of people who get together
and love each other. Therefore it has a completely relativistic view of the
family.
It believes that as people fall in out and of love, people should be allowed
to drift in and out of different families and have the law facilitate them
every inch of the way.
Far be it from the LRC to recommend anything that might actually
encourage people to stick with the one family or to encourage parents to raise
their own biological offspring. Personal autonomy is the name of the game for the LRC.
Adults seek self-fulfilment and must be helped in this quest by the law.
However, the LRC does recognise that children are affected
by this adult pursuit of self-fulfilment and therefore it recognises that to an
increasing extent children are being raised by a shifting cast of adults as
they go through childhood.
Today, it is mum and her boyfriend. Yesterday it may have
been mum on her own, or mum with her husband (the child’s actual dad). Tomorrow
it could be mum and another boyfriend, or a new husband, or a civil partner of
the same sex. Who knows?
The thing is, each of these ‘significant others’ in mum’s
life could have formed a bond with mum’s son or daughter. The LRC believes a
new set of legal entitlements should be created around this fact. Therefore it proposes that mum’s ex-boyfriend will be able
to apply for access to her child if he can convince a court that this would be
in the child’s ‘best interests’.
Her new husband or civil partner will be able to go further.
He or she will be able to apply to become a full legal guardian of her child
(effectively a new legal parent) even if the other natural parent of the child
objects, so long as a court, once again, finds such a move to be in the child’s
‘best interests’.
In this Brave New World of family law, therefore, the
unfortunate children who find themselves being moved from one ‘reconstituted
family’ into another as mum or dad pursue self-fulfilment, will have themselves
being pulled and dragged between three or more legal guardians plus any other
adults who have access to them.
Need it be spelled out that this is exactly why every effort
must be made to promote and encourage marriage? Marriage gives a child
stability. It gives a child the one mother and the one father, and if the
mother and the father take their vows seriously, and when needs arise put their
own happiness in second place, it will give a child the same mum and dad right
through their childhood.
Unfortunately this is an insight completely lost on our
dogmatic friends in the LRC. Will it also be lost on the next Government, and
our next Taoiseach, Enda Kenny?