Christian Attorney: 'De Facto' Parent Ruling Perfect Example of Judicial Activism
by Allie Martin and Jody Brown
November 11, 2005
(AgapePress) - - The Supreme Court of Washington state is being accused of disregarding the law after justices ruled that a same-sex partner -- identified as a "de facto" parent by the court -- can claim the same rights as a biological parent.
The case involved two women who lived together for 12 years. In 1994 the women decided they wanted a child. A male friend fathered a child with one of the women. The child was born in 1995, and both women raised the child until the relationship ended in 2001.
The biological mother sought to legally terminate her ex-partner's contact with the child. But the Washington Supreme Court ruled that an individual who has had a relationship with a child's biological parent can have the same legal rights to a child as the parent.
No matter how you twist it, says attorney Brian Fahling, the "de facto" parent -- a being created by the waving of a "magic wand," said the lone dissenting judge -- does not fit the definition of a parent as defined by the state of Washington.
"The Uniform Parentage Act is very clear. There are five circumstances, I believe, where the state legislature has said someone can be granted parental status -- you know, the normal ones, with biological and adoption and that type of thing," says Fahling, senior trial attorney with the Center for Law & Policy in Mississippi. "The same-sex partner who was attempting to get legal status as a parent did not meet any one of those five criteria."
Pro-family analysts have warned for some time now about the legal ramifications of the ongoing attempts by homosexual activists and liberal judges to redefine marriage and family. Fahling says the Washington ruling is a prime example of judicial activism.
"We see what happens when one court in one state, even if it's just a state court, makes an outrageous decision," the attorney observes. "We saw what happened in Massachusetts; we see what's happening in California with certain governmental acts by public officials and courts. And it seems to sweep across the country."
And that movement, notes Fahling, is "not among the people but among the judges and those in positions of power who can disregard the law and impose upon the rest of us their own sense of how they think society ought to look. So the danger is very real."
In Fahling's opinion, the court simply disregarded Washington law and imposed its own definition of what constitutes a law by relying on what the court described as "advancing technologies and evolving notions of what comprises a family unit." That, Fahling asserts, is evidence that society is not on a slippery slope but, in fact, is "already at the bottom of that slope."
The decision on November 3 by the Washington Supreme Court had only one dissent.
