First Indiana and Texas, and now Utah. There must be something in the air to produce nearly identical rulings from three dedicatedly conservative states.
After considering Utah law and the best interests of a 3-year-old girl, 3rd District Judge Timothy Hanson has decided the child is better off with two mothers. One is her birth mother, who conceived her through artificial insemination while in a lesbian relationship. The other is the birth mother's former partner, joined to her in a Vermont civil union before the girl's birth.
Hanson ruled state laws allow the former partner to maintain a parent-child relationship with the girl through visitation. The case is now before the Utah Court of Appeals, which will examine how much protection Utah law provides to gay or unmarried couples raising children related to only one partner.
The conservative Alliance Defense Fund, which litigates cases involving religion, publicized its role in the case Tuesday by describing it as a battle for parents' rights waged by a churchgoing woman who has abandoned her lesbian past.
But Hanson has said the case does not turn on the debate over gay marriage or gay adoption. "What this case is about, is whether or not a child is better off in this rather uncertain world, with as many people as possible taking an interest in the child, both financially and emotionally," the judge said in an October court hearing. "I do not believe that any clear-thinking person could rationally say that a child is not better off with as many people who care about that child as part of her life," he said.
One wonders what the various conservative groups and attorneys general litigating all this think of judges in these far-flung places all coming out with rulings that say that more parents are better than fewer when it comes to childrearing, even when those parents are the same sex. Especially since those rulings are coming only about a month after several states -- including Utah -- passed laws saying that no, gays aren't people entitled to all the rights and privileges of everyone else living in that state.
According to a wire service version of the article at the Casper Star Tribune site -- the later part of the Salt Lake Tribune's version appears to be badly edited -- Barlow applied for a stay of the district court judge's order, and was refused:
A state judge has ruled that two mothers were better than one, but the state appeals court is considering how much protection Utah law provides to gay or unrelated partners raising children related to only one partner. Third District Judge Timothy Hanson awarded visitation rights to the former gay partner of a Utah woman who turned straight and said she got religion. [...] Barlow had asked the appeals court to halt visitation until the case is decided, arguing Jones has had no significant contact with the child in over a year; the court denied the request Friday.
from the Salt Lake Tribune article in reference to the application for a stay: ...But in issuing a one-page ruling Friday, Court of Appeals Judge Gregory K. Orme declined. He cited the "careful, measured way the trial court has crafted the visitation order," and said "any creation of harm is itself speculative."
(The Salt Lake Tribune article lacks any mention of the actual request for a stay, but talks about the results of the request, which makes the last few paragraphs of the article very confusing.)
Purely a side note: The wire service article at the Casper Star Tribune takes a peculiarly sardonic tone where it mentions that Barlow "turned straight and said she got religion". One might think that the writer of the wire article suspects that Barlow might be saying these things about herself purely to make her case stronger.
In any event: according to various parts of Utah, it seems we're good enough to raise children, but not good enough for marriage.
A puzzlement.
Posted by iain at December 08, 2004 12:10 PM
