Rep. Sarah Peake thought that when Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage 20 years ago, the reforms would also assign equal parentage rights.
“That wasn’t the case,” the Provincetown Democrat, who is herself married to a woman, said.
Peake and her colleagues hope a bill the House unanimously approved on June 12 will fix “archaic” sections of state law that can make it difficult for LGBTQ families and those who use alternative methods of reproduction, like in vitro fertilization, to establish legal parenthood.
The bill (H. 4672), long a priority for civil rights and LGBTQ activists, would create new pathways and clearer standards for Bay Staters to establish parentage over a child through birth as well as other means such as adoption, surrogacy and marriage.
Supporters warned that gaps in existing law could force, for example, one parent in a same-sex couple to formally adopt their child to gain the same status as a birth parent.
“For many children in the commonwealth, the person they call mom or dad is shunned legally,” said Rep. Michael Day, who co-chairs the Judiciary Committee. “The person that child calls mom or dad has no standing and scant legal rights or recourse. They are shut out with the full force of our laws.”
House Speaker Ron Mariano pledged the previous week to bring the bill forward, linking it to the June celebration of Pride Month.
“We have couples where one parent is the birth parent, the other is no [biological] relation, and if something is to happen to the birth parent, the other parent has no status, so they would have to go through an adoption process,” he said.
“Marriage looks different today than it did 10 years ago, so we’re trying to keep pace with the changes that are occurring in society and not burden people for doing the right thing,” Mariano added.
Peake, who was one of eight reps to speak in favor of the bill before the final vote, suggested that the legislation is not aimed only at LGBTQ families.
“There are ways that people become parents today that couldn’t have been, all pun intended, conceived of when some of these statutes were written,” she said.
“We may be taking up this bill during Pride Month, but I would respectfully submit to my colleagues: this isn’t a bill that is just benefiting the LGBTQ community. This is a bill that is good for everybody in the commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Peake added.
The Christian faith-based advocacy organization Massachusetts Family Institute opposed the legislation, saying it could deprive children of the ability to know their biological mother and/or father, and reduce children to a commodity.
“These bills would prioritize the desires of adults over the needs of children in the Commonwealth. They would make it easier for people to purchase children through surrogacy arrangements and sperm or egg donorship. In doing so, they would harm both children and parents,” the organization said in an alert to its supporters.
The bill sailed through the House by a 156-0 vote after emotional speeches of support delivered by both Democrats and Republicans.
Republican Rep. Hannah Kane of Shrewsbury at one point choked up while describing the three children she has with her husband.
“Our parentage was easily established as the laws that exist made it clear and easy to do so. Our beautiful, smart, sweet, tough Endicott College graduate and national collegiate rugby champion, Caitlin, our daughter, is lesbian. If she chooses to, I want her to experience the joy of being a parent some day with the same rights to establish her parentage and the same legal protections as her dad and I did,” Kane told her colleagues. “I want our future grandchildren to have the security of legal parentage, regardless of the circumstances of our birth, and I want that for all LGBTQ+ families. For our daughter and countless others like her, legal parentage is not just a matter of paperwork or bureaucracy. It is a matter of identity, belonging and affirmation.”
The bill’s breezy passage was a sharp contrast from the tense legislative debate around same-sex marriage 20 years ago. Years after the Supreme Judicial Court’s 2003 decision in Goodridge, et al. v. Dept. Public Health declared it unconstitutional to deny same-sex couples the ability to marry, the House and Senate together derailed a proposed Constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
“Today, we continue on that worthy pathway, recognizing the love and commitment of parents and meeting them as they are,” Day said. “Today, we say no to those oracles of misery who would deprive a parent of the full rights and privileges of parenthood because that person is different from their image of what a parent should look like.”
https://masslawyersweekly.com/2024/06/13/house-unanimously-approves-parentage-equality-bill/
