Landmark court ruling gives little boy two mommies and a dad
By GREGORY BONNELL The Canadian Press

TORONTO — Gay rights organizations applauded Wednesday while an evangelical group questioned just how many parents one child can have following a landmark Appeal Court decision that allows an Ontario boy to have three parents.
Legal recognition that the five-year-old has two mothers and one father — which some say opens the possibility of nightmare custody battle scenarios — was hailed by Egale Canada as the courts simply catching up to the reality of Canadian society.
"This isn’t the only couple that’s had a baby with another person and wanted the three people to be equally involved in the child’s upbringing," said Kaj Hasselriis, acting executive director of the Ottawa-based gay rights group.
The Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision Tuesday to recognize the child’s three parents simply shows that the "justice system is ahead of politicians on this issue," Hasselriis said.
"There is now legal recognition of relationships and families that already exist in Canada, and have existed across Canada for years."
The ruling, believed to be the first of its kind in Canada, revolves around a lesbian couple raising their son with the continued involvement of his biological father.
In 1999, the couple, one a university professor and the other a lawyer, asked the man, who is also a university professor, to help them start a family.
The female university professor became pregnant in 2000 and gave birth early the following year. The boy, who turns six next month, calls both women "Mama."
Court documents state that the biological father brings his three other children to the women’s home for weekly family dinners.
While the Appeal Court’s decision was specific to the boy and his three parents, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada — which had intervener status in the case under the umbrella organization Alliance for Marriage and the Family — said the ruling will have a "definite ripple effect" throughout society.
"We have great concern about the future serious implications of the decision," said Don Hutchinson, legal counsel for the group.
"It raises questions that are unanswered, such as how many legal parents may a child now have?"
If the relationship between three or more parents breaks down, it would complicate custody hearings, he said.
Those concerns were shared by the judge who first heard and dismissed the case in 2003.
"If this application is granted, it seems to me the door is wide open to step-parents, extended family and others to claim parental status in less harmonious circumstances," Superior Court Justice David Aston wrote in his decision.
"If a child can have three parents, why not four, or six or a dozen," Aston wrote, adding that "the potential to create, or exacerbate, custody and access litigation should not be ignored."
Ultimately, Aston ruled that while he was prepared to declare that the boy could have three parents, he said he didn’t have the legal authority to do so.
On Tuesday, the Appeal Court ruled it did have that authority, namely because it found a gap in the legislation due to new reproductive technologies and society’s understanding of relationships.
But at least one critic disagreed with that line of reasoning.
"It’s not the court’s role to fill legislative gaps," said Joseph Ben-Ami, executive director of the Institute for Canadian Values, a conservative Ottawa think-tank.
"The Ontario government must appeal this case regardless of whether they think the decision of the court was right.
"The whole notion that there is such a thing as three parents . . . has potential ramifications on public policy on a lot of levels."
An appeal would "defend the integrity of the legislative process," said Ben-Ami, who added a government study of marriage and family issues is long overdue.
Several so-called pro-marriage groups have called on the federal government to launch a royal commission on marriage and families.

The Chronicle Herald
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/550697.html extracted January 9, 2007