Utah Supreme Court Overturns Decision That Granted Parental Rights to Lesbian Non-parent
The February 16, 2007Â ruling of the Supreme Court of Utah in Jones v. Barlow can be accessed here.Â
Howard Bashman reports that the Utah Supreme Court today affirmed the parental rights of Cheryl Barlow, the mother of a 5-year-old child, granting Barlow’s request to reverse a lower court decision that had granted parental standing to her former partner, a lesbian political activist.
Barlow and Keri Jones, both Utah residents, entered into a civil union in Vermont five months after Barlow’s pregnancy by artificial insemination in 2001. Civil unions are not valid in Utah. In 2003, the relationship between Barlow and Jones ended, and Jones subsequently sued for parental rights to Barlow’s child. In 2004, a lower court had ruled in favor of Jones and granted her visitation rights. Barlow, who has resided in Texas for the past twenty months, appealed and the Utah Supreme Court agreed to hear the case .
I am not quite sure what these people are thinking. Gay marriages that are performed in Vermont are not legally binding in any other state. If they were, I would dare say that all the gays wishing to be married would go there and be married, and we wouldn’t be discussing this.
Said the court:
This temporary status is reinforced by the fact that the surrogate parent may arbitrarily cast the relationship aside at any time and thus terminate all parent-like obligations and rights. 67A C.J.S. Parent and Child § 348 (2002); Taylor v. Taylor, 364 P.2d 444, 445 (Wash. 1961). It would be a perverse doctrine of law that left a legal parent unable to enforce support obligations against a surrogate parent’s will because of the temporary status of the in loco parentis relationship but allowed a surrogate parent to extend her parent-like rights against the legal parent’s objections for as long as she saw fit. Under such a distorted legal regime, the parent like rights and responsibilities are permanent and abiding for as long as the surrogate parent wants them to be, yet transitory and fleeting when the legal parent seeks to enforce a parental obligation against the surrogate parent. Such an inequitable result, which would prioritize the rights of the surrogate parent over the needs of the child, demonstrates that the in loco parentis doctrine does not contemplate a perpetual grant of rights and is, in fact, ill-suited to convey such rights.
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Glib Fortuna, of Stop The ACLU, had this to say:
One of the arguments put forth in cases like this is that the non-parent “dressed the child, wiped his nose and took him to the zoo,” etc. This is for emotional impact only and has no legal meaning. By that argument, any day care worker, especially these days when many women are leaving their 12-week old babies in day care from 8-5 every day, to make parental claims.
I will be interested to see how the Janet Miller-Jenkins v. Lisa Miller-Jenkins case is decided.
February 19, 2007 - 10:48 PM on February 19th, 2007
Your “logic” is severely flawed on several levels. First, you fault the couple for getting married in Vermont. The two main problems with this approach are that there is no marriage equality in Vermont and that the other site your quote, Stop the ACLU actually faults them for NOT getting married in a state where they could.
Your second argument, comparing Keri Jones to a daycare worker, is a poor analogy. Not many daycare workers work with a biological mother to find a sperm donor that shares the characteristics of both the biomom and the daycare worker. Daycare workers usually receive pay for their nose wiping services. Instead of being paid, Jones spent thousands to bring that little girl into the world and thousands more to be able to visit the girl.
If Jones had been fighting for custody or guardianship, I might be more inclined to agree with you. But for a fit mother to be denied visitation because the other person who decided to bring the girl into the world was the biomom is not a success for any campaign. The voices of the right think that by denying marriage and limiting adoption to these families, that they will somehow cease to exist. Instead, they continue but are more vulnerable because strangers disapprove.
February 20, 2007 - 05:59 AM on February 20th, 2007
Ah, the we homosexuals, deviants though we may be, are jsut the same as everyone else, no matter how many children we render dysfunctional in our political fights.
February 20, 2007 - 08:50 AM on February 20th, 2007
Gays and lesbians can never be good parents like a streight person can:grin:
February 20, 2007 - 09:22 AM on February 20th, 2007
I don’t claim the deviant status, that’s something you throw on me without knowing me. As for rendering children dysfunctional and not being “good parents like a streight person,” if you took the time to actually follow this case you would see that every single guardien ad litem and social worker assigned to the case stated it would be in the best interests for the girl to have visitation with Jones. If court appointed guardians, social workers, and attorneys can all agree on what’s in the child’s best interests, how can a stranger like you claim superior knowledge?
February 20, 2007 - 09:57 AM on February 20th, 2007
1- Vermont is a state that allows gays to be married, but a gay couple from Utah, or any other state, can not go there and get married, return home and then expect the court to recognize a marriage performed in VT. Nothing flawed about it. Utah doesn’t recognize gay marriage.
Stop The ACLU never faulted them for not getting married in a state where they could.
In the eyes of the law, Barlow is the birth mother, period. It goes back to the Roe V Wade. A woman’s body, a womens right to choose, and the partner is not deemed a contributing factor unless money is the issue. If money is the issue, the partner will pay based on what the courts deem reasonable support for the child. How prevelant is it to see a father gain primary custody?
Joseph, I don’t put a lot of faith in social workers. Remember, these are the same people that don’t follow up on the child abuse cases and the kid ends up dead. (That is just my feeling on social workers). That aside, I wasn’t kidding about RvW. I am not talking about the abortion issue, but the ramifications of how the laws were written, with regards to the partner, after that decision.
February 20, 2007 - 10:30 AM on February 20th, 2007
4, how can a gay stranger like you, Joseph claim superior knowledge? Is is because a ruling for the non-biological gay is in your personal interest?
I went to a college that turns out Social Workers. On the whole I’m not impressed because the professors were biased bigots or were otherwise clinically speaking, nuts.
The only good social workers I’ve met have a good, stable heterosexual home life.
February 20, 2007 - 12:24 PM on February 20th, 2007
3.Gays and lesbians can never be good parents like a streight person can
Will Peejz attack snowy as a bigot? Or will her hypocrisy persist? Stay tuned…
February 20, 2007 - 02:58 PM on February 20th, 2007
Actually, we may have to stay tuned indefinitely. Peejz hasn’t been doing too well defending herself as of late (see the evolution/ID thread).
February 21, 2007 - 09:56 AM on February 21st, 2007
1. Vermont is a state that allows civil unions, not marriage.
2. I want to be clear that the opinion appears to be legally sound. However it is morally the wrong decision.
3. As for social workers being poor evaluators, at least they are more objective than Jones and Barlow were. And the uniformity of their opinions does add validity.
4. I am not a stranger to the situation. Without going into detail, it should be clear by my corrections to erroneous statements that I am not just depending on press releases to form my opinions.
February 21, 2007 - 10:54 AM on February 21st, 2007
9-However it is morally the wrong decision. Depending on ones morals.
Are social workers more objective in general? Nope, they tend to be agenda driven.
I agree with you that the judgement seems legally sound. My point on the VT civil unions, not marriage (my mistake), is that a couple can not go there, enter into a union, and expect another state to honor it. We have now seen the outcome of this case, and as soon as I see a ruling, I will post about Janet Miller-Jenkins v. Lisa Miller-Jenkins. Exact same circumstances, just a different state.