HoodaThunk?

Here we go again. Last time this happened it was a lesbian couple in NJ. Now, a New Orleans judge has ruled in favor of a gay (male) couple in requiring that the LA Office of Vital Records list the names of the 2 men who adopted a boy on the boy’s birth certificate as his legal parents.

I understand completely what they’re trying to do, here, but this is a stupid move on the part of the Court. Our species requires 2 genders to reproduce. As I said back in 2006, there are medical procedures that allow for a sexless conception, but there is absolutely a male parent and a female parent and those are the people who should be listed on a birth certificate. I explained the rationale in my last post on this topic:

Birth certificates are part of a set of documents called “vital records” and that’s no misnomer. Such a certificate provides a wealth of data, including the names of both parents. To purposely misidentify or omit a parent from that document will literally chop off an entire half of the child’s family tree.

And lest anyone jump up and say that the biological father’s family isn’t really family in this case or that knowledge of who he is is immaterial, allow me to remind that someone that medical history is a tricky thing to compute when you don’t have half the data. The father’s family might have a history of stroke or heart disease, specific cancers, or some kind of birth defect. Even if this child doesn’t suffer some defect personally, the risk will be carried by him or her into their own married life. The line of children to come (we assume) will deserve to be able to judge the risks based on the full picture. That’s a picture that’s being purposely cut in half on the altar of political correctness and expediency.

There are children all over the country whose loving parents aren’t the couple that produced them. They have a name on their birth certificate of someone who’s not relevant in their lives in any manner except genetically and they’re just fine. This action on the part of these 2 women isn’t being done with the child’s future in mind. There are ways to accommodate their legal needs without the vanity of seeing their own names on this child’s birth certificate. And vanity is all this is.

That was true then and it’s true now. There are all manner of methods to provide official documentation of the status of a given person, place, or thing. That it’s somehow “necessary” that the birth certificate of an American citizen be altered or issued with information on it that’s patently incorrect is pure bunk. It’s a play to the ego of the adoptive parents and a bending of the rules just to make things easier on them to make the system work like they want it to. I hope someone’s actually thinking about the kid in this case and is making an archive ofthe real information so it’ll be available down the road when he needs it.