The Expense of Spirit (A lesbian’s sperm donor is hoist with his own petard.)

City Journal ^ | 25 October 2005 | Theodore Dalrymple

[Albion Wilde]

Men in NJ have been found liable for support even for children that have been proven to not be their children.

There was a convention in the long development of family law that the man to whom the woman is married and with whom she is living at the time of the conception and birth is the legal father of the child. He has either been duped or he has accepted the child without suspicion, and the state ostensibly had a greater interest in the marriage remaining stable than in forcing the issue of biology. Those were the days, not so long ago, when scandal was also to be avoided.

[FOG724]

Her former lover was unwilling, because—after all—she was no relation of the children.

Neither are many men who are forced to support a child not their own. The other woman should have been the one forced by the courts to cough it up.

[Albion Wilde]

Actually, that's really an old principle from common law -- a child born to a married woman is the husband's responsibility. The State just wants to find the nearest 'scapegoat' so as to avoid any responsibility on its part.

It was a different shade of meaning -- not for the State to avoid responsibility per se, but for the State to foster the taking of personal responsibility by the free individual who performed the act that created the child. This was the standard before creeping socialism. The legal phrase often used was that the court wished to avoid "piercing the veil of the family."

[Albion Wilde]

ping

[VOA]

After a case lasting four years, he found himself obliged henceforth to support
the mother and children financially.

Surely our own socialist enclaves (Los Angeles, etc.) will be adding this sort
of nutty legalism to their current hair-trigger default assignment of paternity
to men who are NOT "donors".

[MarkL]

Oh, I know, I know!!!! Pick me!!!!

The one responsible is...

The company that made the turkey baster!

Mark

[MarkL]

I'm familiar with the idea of paternity fraud, and while I realize that there are no guarantees (particularly in states where any children of a marriage are legally assumed to be the offspring of the husband), a vasectomy and remaining faithful to any hypothetical Mrs Slings and Arrows should minimize (albeit not eliminate) my risk.

I was once threatened by just this sort of thing, and I had to remind the former girlfriend (and evil b***h from hell) that we had never had sex!

Mark

[MarkL]

Hoist by his own petard. What is a petard, anyway?

That would be Jean Luc Petard, the captain of the Enterprise on Star Trek, The Pepsi Generation.

Mark

[MarkL]

Thanks to both of you. Freepers know everything.

And if we don't, we just make things up! Or refer to a Monty Python sketch or movie credits, or some poorly worded gaming dialog. We may not really know everything, but we never forget!

Mark

[CindyDawg]

That's true but not by God's law. To say she should be held accountable for support would mean I acknowledge the relationship, which I don't.

[Northern Alliance]

Why shouldn't the other lesbian have to pay?

There is no mention of any kind of legal status of the lesbian couple. I don't know if in the case that were in some kind of civil union she would be required to pay, but one would think that would be a prerequisite.

[sine_nomine]

I do.

[ladyjane]

Actually I have waited for 10 years for somebody to ask that question!! Finally, you did. Thank you!

[expatpat]

not for the State to avoid responsibility per se, but for the State to foster the taking of personal responsibility by the free individual who performed the act that created the child

Hardly. We are talking about a married woman bearing a child fathered by a man who is not her husband -- it's the husband who was stuck with supporting the child, not the one with the 'personal responsibility'.

[BackInBlack]

'Marriage was not a contract, but a covenant'
'the "contract" view of sexual relations began to rise: the couple's agreement with one another, not with the rest of society.'

I agree that marriage is a covenant. But the covenant aspect is not the same as the legal aspect. The fact is that the Swedish government allowed the virtual marriage of the two lesbians. As much as we may disagree with that, we should understand that those two people then have to be held accountable for their actions. If the government wanted to say there's no such thing as a responsibility-free sperm donation, which I think would be a perfectly reasonable position, then that's something the man should have known from the outset.

[BackInBlack]

"To say she should be held accountable for support would mean I acknowledge the relationship, which I don't."

Out-of-wedlock sexual relationships aren't legitimate either, but that doesn't mean both parents don't have a responsibility to the child. I realize that the fleeing lesbian wasn't a biological parent, but she still took on the responsibility and should have to pay something.

[little jeremiah]

LOL!!

See, I DID know what a Petard was, after all!

[Nowhere Man]

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.

I'd say you have a slam dunk on this one. I do lay most of the blame of this on "The Pill" and The Warren (Supreme) Court. I lay a little of the blame on us, well not you and me and most here directly but "us" as a collective society by letting these fools do this to our society. If someone would have stood up to these fools and said "no" or "go fly a kite" and so on, sooner or later, they would stop and go back in the closet at least. As one Freeper put it, homosexuality "went from ther love that 'dared not speak its name' to the 'love that will not shut up.'" Already in small pockets, we are seeing the word "no" used such as one case here in Pittsburgh at Duquesne University where one student said on an online forum that "homosexuality is subhuman." The University wants him to take sensitivity training but he refuses. I'm glad, but he is only one person, maybe if we all started doing that but the key is to get someone in power to say "no" and that still seems to be lacking. I say when that happens, I hope soon, it will be a new day. As to the sexual liberation stuff, actually that has started in the backrooms before the 1960's but "the Pill" and The Warren Court gave them the tools to do their plans. As one Freeper said (RCA2000),"it is all part of the big plan."

[CindyDawg]

Anyone that makes a comitment to care for a child, sister, brother, grandparent whatever has a moral obligation to do so, somehow IMO. Out of wedlock involves a woman and a man. The parents should be the one's legally responsible.

[andie74]

The man has been condemned to be a father even though he did not take the decision to have the children.

I don't know, but it seems like when he donated sperm to make a life, he made a decision to make a child.