society crumbles; news at 11

Yesterday Washington's Supreme Court recognized the right of de facto parents in a landmark ruling.

The decision, which significantly impacts parenting laws in the state, may also signal the direction the high court will take in deciding a gay-marriage lawsuit pending before it — a prospect that delights same-sex marriage advocates and horrifies opponents.

In the 7-2 decision hailed by gays as an acknowledgement of the complexity of families, the court recognized what it called a "de-facto or psychological parent" under the state's common law as one who "in all respect functions as the child's actual parent."

Woe, woe, woe! Or not.

Opponents pointed out a possible consequence of the law:

But Brian Krikorian, attorney for Britain, said the ruling undermines parents, particularly single parents, by taking away their authority to decide what's in the best interest of their own children.

"This decision puts every single parent on notice: Anytime you allow another adult to assist in raising your child, you could potentially be giving that person 50-percent authority over your child."

A tad overblown. The criteria for parentage of the appeal case in question:

(1) the natural or legal parent consented to and fostered the parent-like relationship; (2) the petitioner and the child lived together in the same household; (3) the petitioner assumed obligations of parenthood without expectation of financial compensation; and (4) the petitioner has been in a parental role for a length of time sufficient to have established with the child a bonded, dependent relationship parental in nature.

The ruling upheld this basic construct:

Critical to our constitutional analysis here, a threshold requirement for the status of the de facto parent is a showing that the legal parent 'consented to and fostered' the parent-child relationship. See supra p. 34. The State is not interfering on behalf of a third party in an insular family unit but is enforcing the rights and obligations of parenthood that attach to de facto parents; a status that can be achieved only through the active encouragement of the biological or adoptive parent by affirmatively establishing a family unit with the de facto parent and child or children that accompany the family.

You can't just waltz in on a family and declare yourself a de facto parent, or assume you have parental responsibility because you run a day care.

The opposition wasn't exactly rationally responding:

The Rev. Joseph Fuiten, pastor of Cedar Park Assembly of God Church in Bothell, decried Thursday's decision.

"There's no such thing as de-facto parent; you're either a parent or you aren't.... They've changed the definition of parents today; they'll change the definition of marriage tomorrow. Who do these people think they are?"

They're judges. They interpret the law. If he'd read the law, he'd know why they ruled this way. "You're either a parent or you aren't" has never been a matter of simple biology. (Ironically, this is the sort of reductionism traditionalists usually denounce.) It's about something much, much greater: love. Which, incidentally, is a verb.


[read the dissent here]