Posted on 10/28/2005 6:07:22 PM PDT by neverdem
We can usually sympathize with one or another party to a dispute: one is usually more in the right—or less in the wrong—than the other. But with the breakdown of accepted conventions, it increasingly happens that neither side arouses our sympathies.
Take a recent case in Sweden, where a lesbian couple wished to have children. An understanding and liberal-minded male friend agreed to donate his sperm, and three children were born to one of the two women between 1992 and 1996. But then relations between the two women deteriorated, and they split up.
The mother of the children found herself alone and in difficult straits. Who would support her, in her—and her children’s—time of need? Her former lover was unwilling, because—after all—she was no relation of the children. The sperm donor had made it clear from the first that he had no wish to be a father in any but the most literal biological sense; he thought he was merely doing the couple a favor. He therefore felt no moral obligation to support the children, and his conscience was clear.
Nevertheless, the government’s department of social security—the potential surrogate parent of every child—sued to force the sperm donor to pay. After a case lasting four years, he found himself obliged henceforth to support the mother and children financially.
The president of the Swedish Federation for Sexual Equality declared the legal decision an outrage. “It is scandalous,” he said. “The man has been condemned to be a father even though he did not take the decision to have the children. Above all, one of the women who took part in that decision has been absolved of all responsibility. If one desires equality of rights for lesbians, it is anomalous that it should not be she who was obliged to support the children financially.”
It would take considerable space to elucidate all the errors in the president’s statement. But I think that the language of rights, and above all of equal rights, is what leads us into this sordid legal and moral swamp. If women have a “right” to children, in the sense that not having them if they want them is an infringement of their rights, then of course lesbian women can no longer accept childlessness as the natural consequence of their condition. Let it not be said that new medical technology is responsible for this change in attitude, incidentally: the kind of artificial insemination offered in a domestic setting by the sperm donor has been possible for a very long time. No, the culprit here is the idea that the fulfilment of our desires, no matter what our condition, is a right. As for the well-being of the children in this case—beyond the provision of sufficient financial support for them—that seems to have entered into no one’s thnking.
A plague on all their houses, then: the idea that one “condemns” a man to support children is in itself both revealing and chilling.
Yes, it is. They should abort them now, since they're not wanted. Simply put a plastic bag over their heads, or suck out their brains.
i had a feeling it might be.
"The expense of spirit" indeed. The spirits in Sweden are taxed heavily, and the donor must have been quite drunk to get into such a mess...
You're right, but our present law is based on the old common law so it's still there, in places.
Yeah, the possibility of the donor being gay did cross my mind.
In any case, those kids are probably going to end up being totally F'ed in the head.
That's one area where I kinda lucked out. My ex-wife married into a wealthy family. Gold-diggers will do what gold-diggers do, I guess.
Yea, those Europeans call this civilization and being civilized.
In America we call this STUPIDITY!
By this logic, BJ Clinton owes $52.38 to a sink in the Oval Office.
You have struck on the answer. Sue for custody. Of course he is a man suing the natural mother --what chance has he got--- slim and none. Males always get the crappy end of this stick. If he pays ,this girl will move in with another dyke and be assured an income. Aint life great?
Actually the petard is not the gunpowder bomb. The petard is the large metal device that is used press up against the gates of a walled city or castle to knock them down. When the gunpowder blast went off it insured that the door (or wall) would fall into the city rather than fall back onto those trying to gain entry.
Sometimes the gunpower went off prematurely and the bomber was blown into the air and 'hoist on his own petard' - in other words, he would land on and be hanging from the large metal device.
By the way, the word petard is derived from the old French term - petou - which means to break wind.
I am humbled by Freeper knowledge.
"No argument - the other lesbian does indeed share moral repsonsiblity. Practically though, the view of the govenment is "Your genes, your cash." (Or worse, in numerous paternity fraud cases.) This example pretty much epitomizes the situation."
I just read the article to which you linked...wow. That's what happens when judges read briefs all day and lose all semblance of common sense. They're no better than the Pharisees.
" That thought crossed my mind but to do so would mean that they had a legitimate relationship. They were playing house."
Fine, but it's a relationship that's allowed by law. Straight couples can play house, too. I don't like it, but that doesn't change her moral and, I'd think, legal obligation.
'This "other lesbian" has no connection to the children.'
That's not the impression left by the article. It seems they were trying to "have children" together but obviously couldn't so they had this liberal douche give a helping hand.
He wasn't "liberal" enough to "be supportive of" his own children. He believed they were an abstraction of some sort that he could deconstruct.
Pity the child.
Sweden was ahead of us with socialism, which eroded the marriage institution long ago before ours went down the tube, and it was ahead of us with allowing civil unions for the same-sex delusionists, but it forbade gay/lesbian parenting until very recently; where in the U.S., lefty social workers were pushing adoption by single gays back in the 70s, which led to our present state of affairs.
This point has been long debated in U.S. Constitutional law. Marriage was originally considered an institution of God's design, and U.S. law until very recently tended to deny the rights of couples to design their own variations. Great legal wars were fought to suppress polygamy and incest, for instance, or plural marriage. Until the 60s, there was a general legal expectation that the man was the breadwinner because of the woman's role as the childbearer. Marriage was not a contract, but a covenant (the couple's promise to God to follow his rules for marriage, for the good of the entire society).
The invention of the so-called "fool-proof" pharmaceutical birth control in the 60s, coupled with Roe v. Wade, changed all that. And California began the tidal wave of judicial activism on the family in the 60s by approving the "palimony" claims against Lee Marvin and initiating the "no-fault" divorce revolution in the early 70s. During this decade, invitro fertilization techniques and lesbian activism also came on board, along with leftist social workers insisting on affirming out-of-wedlock mothers and of placing abandoned children for adoption with single gays and lesbians. Thus the "contract" view of sexual relations began to rise: the couple's agreement with one another, not with the rest of society.
5,000 years of Judeo-Christianity, dismantled in a single decade.
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