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Someone needs to explain civic equality to Curtis Hill—and to the recent, retrograde appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court.
As a number of media outlets have reported, Hill, Indiana’s lame-duck attorney general, is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strip same-sex couples of equal parenting rights—evidently at the request of the newly conservative court. Hill wants states to be able to deny married same-sex couples the right to be recognized as parents of their children.
The case, Box v. Henderson, poses a question the Supreme Court has already answered—correctly—twice.
Plaintiffs are eight married lesbian couples in Indiana who used a sperm donor to conceive. In Indiana, when a married opposite-sex couple conceives using a sperm donor, the state recognizes the birth mother’s husband as the child’s parent. When a lesbian couple does the same thing, however, Indiana refuses to list the birth mother’s wife as the child’s parent.
Other states have read the court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges to require such recognition. Obergefell held that the Constitution requires extending marriage to same-sex couples “on the same terms and conditions as opposite-sex couples.”
When the Arkansas Supreme Court kept a birth mother’s wife off the child’s birth certificate, the court didn’t even bother to hear oral arguments, ruling unequivocally that states must issue birth certificates on equal terms to same-sex and opposite-sex couples. The rule: If a state lists a birth mother’s husband as a parent despite his lack of biological connection, it must list a birth mother’s wife as a parent, too.
An Indiana district court and a unanimous 7th Circuit panel confirmed that precedent. However, there was an unexplained delay in issuing the 7th Circuit’s decision. The usual lag between argument and decision is around three months; this case took 32 months. Had the panel issued its decision within a typical time frame, Indiana would likely have given up. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy—with an admirable record on same-sex issues—hadn’t retired, and Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg was alive.
But the court has been changed. Justice Brett Kavanaugh has not previously supported LGBTQ rights, and Ginsburg has been replaced by Amy Coney Barrett, reportedly a religious zealot. The new court is rumored to have its knives out for Obergefell.
Which brings us to Curtis Hill, Indiana’s outgoing AG with few fans even in the state’s GOP. Hill has tried to distinguish Box v. Henderson from the applicable precedents by misrepresenting state law and claiming that the case is about a state’s right to acknowledge “biological distinctions between males and females.”
According to Hill, Indiana law only presumes that a birth mother’s husband is the father of her child. A birth mother’s wife, by contrast, “is never the biological father,” so she doesn’t deserve the presumption of parentage.
If the Supreme Court sides with our departing attorney general, states will be able to resume discriminating against same-sex parents and, in effect, marking same-sex marriages as second-class.
I don’t know what version of “religious liberty” makes homophobic people into the petty and vindictive creatures they so clearly are. I probably will never understand what sort of satisfaction they get by making life difficult and unfair for people they don’t even know. But I do know that most Americans today—including most religious Americans—recognize both the equal humanity of those in the LGBTQ community and their claim to equal civil rights.
Don’t like gay people? Don’t invite them to dinner. But condemning them to second-class citizenship shouldn’t be an option.•
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Kennedy is a professor of law and public policy at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IUPUI.
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Hill is so vile. He can’t leave quickly enough.
Amy Coney Barret, “reportedly a religious zealot”. This is from a IUPUI professor? Funny, who “reported” this? How about you actually back up your accusations instead of expressing the typical attitude of so many liberal professor’s in today’s rapidly declining colleges. One more college my kids won’t be attending.
Typical Sheila Suess Kennedy leftist blather. What an obnoxious writer; so tragic she is anywhere near a university…but all too typical of those who are, and a dunderhead when it comes to biology. You don’t need a PHd in physiology to understand that a female cannot be a “husband” and “father.”
“If the Supreme Court sides with our departing attorney general, states will be able to resume discriminating against same-sex parents and, in effect, marking same-sex marriages as second-class.”
The US Constitution is based on natural law, therefor there would be no discrimination since homosexuality is not natural. The sperm donor would be the biological father. What ever role the partner wants to take on is entirely up to them.
The SSK’s of the world want to control the narrative based on an atheist society of no moral’s, but we are a Judeo Christian based society of natural law. This is were the Bill of Rights come from.
Wait. Do you actually believe that’s the argument?
Most if not all agree Hill is vile. Good thing he is headed out.
Typical liberal cheap shot (right in there with the standard lib playbook chapter on “character assassination”) to put the Supreme Court in the same breath with Curtiss Hill. When the libs have the court leaning their way all is well with their world. When it tilts toward conservatism all of a sudden the sky is falling. Professor Kennedy immediately falls back on assassinating the character of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barret as a religious zealot. Professor Kennedy betrays her cowardice when she inserts the word “reportedly” in front of the character slur “religious zealot”. She doesn’t have the courage to come out and say “in my opinion”, “a religious zealot”. That way she can walk it back when the criticism she knows is coming arrives.
If you know anything about Amy Covid Barrett then you would understand that she is a Handmaid’s Tail style religious zealot. Jesus taught first and foremost to love thy neighbor, not to ostracize them because they’re different from you.
It’s amazing that those who disagree are first to generalize ad point fingers, insult and ridicule. Obnoxious and repugnant are subjective. OK, skip husband and father, and simply assume wife and mother; semantics notwithstanding the point at hand regarding rights of parents was missed. The lesbian married couple, she and she, wife and wife, have the rights be BOTH be named parents as same sex couples deserve according to law. Yes, some do not like the law; some did not like the voting rights acts, and some did not like Loving vs. Virginia. However, a personal dislike or even a majority dislike is not justification for denying rights to any citizen. A dictionary definition of zealot: a person who is fanatical and uncompromising in pursuit of their religious, political, or other ideals. This is not pejorative. And if SC justices focused on law in a secular country where separation of church and state is in fact the law and religious freedom is the law, then this should not be an issue. Abortion should not be an issue. If according to one’s religion the belief is that marriage is between a man and woman only, so be it. The law is that marriage is between two individuals. One’s religious beliefs do not and must not overrule the law of the land. Say your religious belief upholds a hand for a hand and eye for an eye in light of injustice; this does not give one the right to act accordingly. Neither liberal nor conservative should be necessary adjective for SC justices IF the law were followed and interpretations were indeed free of personal biases as should be the case. Why force a religious belief on others who do not share said belief. Religious freedom, yes, but individual freedom as well and laws that do not force religion or maintain one religion over another or require religion.