Waiting for Nat

Today is the end of something really important. Today is the official end of frog and toad's 11-year relationship. Frog asks if it was at least partly the odds being so against lesbian families that brought about the demise of hers, carefully and thoughtfully planned and constructed as it was.

That's a question I hold as I consider the article in yesterday's NY Times magazine (no link, as it will be inaccessable in a week, anyway) about the woman whose eggs were fertilized with donor sperm and implanted into her partner's uterus. At the time of egg retrieval, she was asked to sign an informed consent waiver describing the procedure and, in one clause, agreeing to relinquish all legal claims to her eggs, children born of her eggs; and to never try to find out the recipient's identity. That last bit was especially absurd, since her recipient spouse was at the clinic sitting next to her, having fed her and nursed her through the drug-induced egg stimulation process. But the clinic had a policy. She signed the form and the couple produced twin daughters together. What a beautiful scenario--two biological mothers, two beautiful daughters--every lesbian couple's dream.

But now, seven years and a nasty divorce later, the woman who carried and birthed the twins is using the obviously inapplicable clause on that form to erase her daughters' other parent from their lives forever. So far, the California courts have let her. While acknowledging that the decision results in the girls losing a loving parent, they must uphold the validity of the document the genetic mother signed in order to protect HETEROSEXUAL families produced through anonymous gamete donation.

If a man gave a vial of sperm to a fertility clinic and they used it to fertilize a donor's eggs and implant the resulting embryos into his wife's uterus, would he be asked to sign a form waiving his parental ties to the children produced from his sperm? Even if he did, would ANY court, ANYwhere believe the mother, seven years later, if she claimed that all along, she planned and considered herself to be a single parent, and her husband, just a helpful guy who lived in the house with her and the kids?

Yeah. That was a rhetorical question.

The problem here is not reproductive technologies. It's not multiple parents ("Egads!" read the headlines, "Baby has Five Parents!" and I say, "lucky baby"). It's not same-sex parents. It's not the need for donor anonymity. It's not the ugliness of divorce. It's not parents' desire to reproduce biologically rather than "just" adopting like the good lord obviously wanted them to. It's not even homophobia, or heteronormativity, or whatever.

The problem is little boxes.

Here, I remind you of Frog's musings about the odds being against queer families.

I would venture to estimate that the average lesbian has to check a box or sign a form misrepresenting herself a couple of times per month. It's perhaps most noticeable when, like my partner and me, you're "married" but not in the sense that allows you to say you're XMARRIED on most forms. But you're not really single either, yet you might have to be XSINGLE if the form is really official. The most accurate thing I can usually do, for legal purposes, ironically enough, is be XDIVORCED. That's right, my exhusband is less legally invisible than my current lesbian wife. But even when a lesbian is both single and XSINGLE, checking the box actually means, for the purpose of the people who wrote the form "unmarried heterosexual woman" which has a whole cartload of baggage that is inapplicable to single lesbian life, especially for medical purposes, for example, as so many of these forms are filled out in doctors' offices.

This is why I'm not actually so keen on the Andrew Sullivan-esque line of reasoning that posits gay marriage as the great equalizer. Though we'd do it tomorrow if we could (from this blog to God's ears), marriage is not the final answer. In my socialist utopia (which, married or not, I will never cease to pursue), the forms will be filled with open-ended questions followed by multiple empty lines; for example:

Who should we ask to make the really big decisions?
Who should we call to come hold your hand?
Who will be able to feed the cat?
Who needs to know, but should be kept at a distance while the important stuff is happening so as not to freak you out?

Or maybe just:

Describe your current family situation. Whom do you love? Who is closest to your heart? For whom would you drop everything and run to their side in times of crisis?

Use as much extra paper as needed.



*Apologies to Pete Seeger. But somehow, I don't think he'd mind.