Well, here’s a new one.

According to the New York Times, (in an op-ed piece by Elizabeth Marquardt, a vice president of the Institute for American Values, and only available via TimeSelect) we need to brace ourselves for the coming debate about group-marriage:

On April 30, a state Superior Court panel ruled that a child can have three legal parents. The case, Jacob v. Shultz-Jacob, involved two lesbians who were the legal co-parents of two children conceived with sperm donated by a friend. The panel held that the sperm donor and both women were all liable for child support. Arthur S. Leonard, a professor at New York Law School, observed, “I’m unaware of any other state appellate court that has found that a child has, simultaneously, three adults who are financially obligated to the child’s support and are also entitled to visitation.”
[snip]
A few years ago, along with Norval Glenn, a sociologist at the University of Texas, I compiled the first nationwide study of children who grow up in so-called “good” divorces — that is, families in which both divorced parents stay involved in the child’s life and control their own conflict. We found that even these children must grow up traveling between two worlds, having to make sense on their own of the different values, beliefs and ways of living they find in each home. They have to grow up too soon. When a court assigns a child several parents, some of whom never intend to share a home, they consign that child, at best, to a “good” divorce situation.

Of course, sometimes the three adults might want to live together, which leads to a different set of concerns. As one advocate of polygamy argued in Newsweek, “If Heather can have two mommies, she should also be able to have two mommies and a daddy.” If more children are granted three legal parents, what is our rationale for denying these families the rights and protections of marriage? America, get ready for the group-marriage debate.

The mind boggles, doesn’t it?

Photo: from the TV series “Big Love,” courtesy Dayton Daily News