Same-sex couples say bills are aimed at them
If you’re a man living in Tennessee, state law says you can claim paternity by performing what reads like a line from a famous Disney movie about a lion cub.
A man is presumed the father of a child if “while the child is under the age of majority, the man receives the child into the man’s home and openly holds the child out as the man’s natural child,” a state statute reads.
Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver, R-Lancaster, cited that statute in defending legislation she introduced that would repeal a law that grants legitimacy to children conceived through artificial insemination in married heterosexual couples.
Weaver said repealing the law means “the state will no longer intrude into how a woman conceives her child,” while other state rules about marriage and children would remain in effect.
But critics say the bill is aimed at same-sex couples and is one of a host filed this year that target the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision legalizing gay marriage. Other proposed legislation includes measures to define a husband and wife by gender and biology and another that would strictly define marriage in Tennessee as being between one man and one woman.
Charitey Mackenzie and her wife, Heather, are worried because the Legislature, and particularly Weaver’s bill, could dramatically change their family. Charitey Mackenzie is pregnant with the couple’s second child, conceived through artificial insemination.
She is due in September, after Weaver’s proposed repeal of the state law would take effect.
“You feel like we finally made it,” Charitey Mackenzie said, referring to measures that have given her and her wife the ability to have a family.
“And you see [Weaver’s bill] and you think what year is it, are we stepping back in time?”
The Family Action Council of Tennessee, which supports marriage between one man and one woman, is pushing the legislation. David Fowler, the group’s president, said the bill “is related to vital records, not what takes place between a physician and their patient.”
The debate has generated accusations that lawmakers are grandstanding and trying to undermine the rights of mostly same-sex couples through pieces of legislation that would make it almost impossible for them to marry and become parents in Tennessee.
“That is scary in a way, and even though it might not have legs to stand on, these people really think this should happen,” Charitey Mackenzie said.