[Update: Governor Ned Lamont signed the Connecticut Parentage Act into law today, June 1, 2021.]
The Connecticut Parentage Act — a bill that would extend parenting rights to all couples regardless of their gender, sexual orientation or marital status — sailed through the state’s house and senate with almost unanimous bipartisan support. In fact, the state’s senate voted 35-0, with one member absent, to approve the legislation, and the house vote came in at 141-1.
As the Connecticut Examiner explains it:
When couples in Connecticut welcome a child into their family, the process often comes with legal complications and bureaucratic burdens for LGBTQ couples not faced by other couples. That unequal burden is the target of a bill in the legislature that would provide equal access to the security of a legal parent-child relationship, regardless of sexual orientation or marital status. …
The legislation would give unmarried same-sex couples access to the same system heterosexual couples use to acknowledge the legal rights of a non-birthing parent. The Acknowledgement of Parentage, a simple form often filled out in the hospital after the child’s birth, is “equivalent to an adjudication of the child’s parentage by the Superior Court and confers on the acknowledged parent all parental rights and duties.”
The law would eliminate the need for second-parent adoption, putting Connecticut on par with states like Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and California, which have already passed similar measures. …
“With this vote the Senate has recognized that every child in Connecticut deserves the security of a legal relationship to their parents, and that the full diversity of Connecticut families should be protected and celebrated,” said Polly Crozier, senior staff attorney at the Boston-based GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD). “We are hopeful that Governor Lamont will act quickly to sign this critical bill into law.”
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