A Portland judge has just decided a lawsuit in favor of two women, a gay couple who are raising two children. The facts of the case show why Oregon law has been behind the times and needs

to be updated with the domestic partnership bill passed this year.

The pair in Portland had a child four years ago after one of the women had been artificially inseminated. But even though they made that decision jointly, on the birth certificate the state would recognize only the mother, not her partner, as a legal parent.

A society that allows children to be created by artificial means cannot then refuse to acknowledge families formed in other than the traditional way. If society allows two people to bring children into the world in a nontraditional way, it must also provide for those children by allowing nontraditional parents.

The mother’s partner was eager to accept the heavy responsibility of a parent, and the state was wrong in refusing to certify her as such. (Contrast that with the recently reported story in Linn County, where a father asked the state to take his children away and put them in foster care when he discovered he was not the biological father. Who has a greater right to be called a parent, this guy or that Portland woman?)

Oregon voters have said, correctly, that unrelated adults of the same sex cannot marry. But that still left the need for formalizing other types of households where children are in need of stability in the form of adults legally responsible for them. The legislature answered that need with the domestic partnership bill.

Among opponents of homosexual unions, there’s resentment of the partnership law. But let these opponents consider the children, children who have been and will be born into new and unconventional circumstances whether anybody likes it or not. These children are better off if they can have two parents who are legally responsible for them rather than just one. (hh)