[This column appears in the March/April 2021 issue of Boston Spirit magazine.]
This April marks 20 years since we first filed Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, the landmark case that resulted in Massachusetts becoming the first state in the US where same-gender couples could legally marry.
We’ve come a long way in the two decades since those seven courageous couples went to court to win legal recognition for their families and families across the Commonwealth. LGBTQ people are now free to marry anywhere in the country. Our marriages are fully recognized by the federal government and benefit from the many rights and benefits of federal recognition. And, perhaps most importantly, marriage equality has overwhelming public support. Despite fervent efforts to roll back the full equality of our marriages, the Supreme Court has already twice reaffirmed that there are no “skim milk marriages” (to quote the late Justice Ginsburg), but that marriage means all the rights and responsibilities of marriage. In the 2017 case of Pavan v. Smith and again just a few months ago in declining to hear a case out of Indiana, Box v. Henderson, the Court clarified that the Obergefell ruling means that when children are born into the marriage of a same-gender couple, that couple must be recognized as the child’s parents the same as in any marriage. GLAD will continue to remain vigilant against any efforts to erode the full promise of marriage equality for our families.
GLAD and our community’s efforts to protect our children and our families didn’t start with the fight for marriage equality of course, and it won’t end with it either. As LGBTQ parents we want what all parents want for their families—security, safety and peace-of-mind. Not every family chooses to marry, and even with the protections provided by marriage, there are still gaps in our laws that leave some children and families vulnerable. A priority for GLAD’s work throughout its 40-year history and into the future is protecting our most cherished relationships, particularly our relationships with our children, regardless of marital status, gender or how our children came into our lives.
In many states, not every child has equal access to establishing their parentage – the legal parent-child relationship that is core to children’s wellbeing – and LGBTQ parents still too often go unprotected or have to go through an expensive and intrusive adoption process to protect their family. Throughout New England, GLAD works to update parentage laws so that they are constitutional and protect all children, regardless of the circumstances of their birth or the marital status or gender of their parents.
Among other important protections, legislation based on the Uniform Parentage Act of 2017 provides clarity on how to establish parentage for children born through assisted reproduction, surrogacy and to unmarried same-gender parents, provides guidance for courts on how to resolve competing claims of parentage, and provides paths for recognition of more than two parents. These reforms center children and aim to protect their relationships with the people they know as parents. These parentage reforms are urgently needed for all families, and particularly for LGBTQ families, and fortunately we secured more than one important victory in New England this past summer. The Rhode Islanders for Parentage Equality coalition (GLAD.org/RIPE) successfully worked to pass the Rhode Island Uniform Parentage Act, updating the state’s 40-year-old laws to comprehensively protect all children born in Rhode Island. New Hampshire also passed a new law expanding access to adoption, ensuring that unmarried parents can adopt, providing a more streamlined adoption process for children of LGBTQ parents and ensuring that children born through assisted reproduction can access a court decree of parentage.
These 2020 advances built on substantial progress being made across New England. Maine enacted comprehensive parentage reform in 2015, and Vermont acted in 2018 (see glad.org/families). In this current legislative session, we are working to pass critical protections in Connecticut, as part of the We Care Coalition, and in Massachusetts, as part of the MA Parentage Act Coalition. You can learn more about the important reforms in the Connecticut Parentage Act at law.yale.edu/cpa and the Massachusetts Parentage Act at massparentage.com. And if you have directly experienced the vulnerabilities of outdated parentage laws, you can help be a part of the work to protect children and families across New England by sharing your family’s story at GLAD.org/UPA.
As we mark 20 years since our families started on the path to equal legal recognition through marriage, and continue to defend those important gains, we are also working towards a world where all families—however they are formed—can be equally secure, protected and celebrated. [x]
Join us in April for a free online forum to hear more about efforts to protect all our families: glad.org/events.
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