State law discriminates against LGBTQ parents

The first time any parent sees their child is a life-changing and joyous experience: Their dream comes true. Yet for thousands of LGBTQ parents in Connecticut, their dreams of parenthood may also bring a nightmare of bureaucratic red tape and insurmountable legal obstacles.

Connecticut has made enormous strides in protecting the rights of LGBTQ families, including becoming one of the first states to guarantee marriage equality in 2008. But Connecticut’s parentage laws do not extend legal protections to different-sex and same-sex couples equally. As a result, our family law is outdated, discriminatory and likely unconstitutional.

Under existing state law, for example, unmarried men in different-sex couples enjoy the benefit of access to legal parentage at birth, but unmarried women in same-sex couples do not. This means that Connecticut’s nonbiological mothers in same-sex relationships are forced to go through the lengthy and costly process of adopting their own children, putting unnecessary financial and dignity strain on their families. More alarming still, many parents do not realize they lack a legal relationship with their child, which leaves our state’s youngest citizens vulnerable.

As one of only a small number of openly gay legislators to have served in the Connecticut General Assembly, I know intimately the devastating impact of these laws on Connecticut’s parents and children. In Connecticut, a nonbiological mother may be treated as a legal stranger to her own child, even if she raised the baby from birth. She may be barred from something as simple as picking up her child from school or adding her child to her health insurance plan. Even more important, she may be unable to gain custody in the event of a separation or death of a legal parent and may be unable to make critical decisions regarding her child’s health in a crisis — any parent’s worst nightmare. I’ve listened to constituents talk about how they lie awake at night agonizing over what will happen to their children if the legal parent passes away.

Luckily, recently introduced legislation — the Connecticut Parentage Act

— is a common-sense solution to these problems. The bill would ensure that all children have equal access to the security of a legal parent-child relationship, regardless of their parents’ sexual orientation or gender. The act also recognizes that all children are deserving of the same protection that legal parentage provides, regardless of whether they are born to married parents. Indeed, over a third of all babies in Connecticut are born to unmarried parents. To that end, the act makes it easier for unmarried parents to establish parentage at birth. Finally, the act provides important protections for intended parents of children born through assisted reproduction, which is key in a state like Connecticut, which has the second-highest rate of births through assisted reproduction in the country.

The bill is adapted from model legislation by the nonpartisan Uniform Law Commission, and it includes the input of national experts in parentage law, child support and medical ethics. It is the result of thorough and thoughtful drafting, crafted to ensure that our state’s laws are updated in an efficient, consistent and cost-effective manner. States from Vermont to California and Rhode Island to Washington have already passed similar measures, recognizing that state parentage laws need modernization to reflect the constitutional principles of liberty and equality affirmed by both the U.S. and Connecticut Supreme Courts in decisions on LGBTQ families.

Connecticut must reaffirm its legacy as a national leader on LGBTQ rights and modernize our family law. Indeed, the pandemic has only highlighted the need to give parents the ability to make critical decisions about their children’s health, care and education. Because Connecticut’s outdated parentage laws do not extend equitable legal protections to LGBTQ and other nonbiological parents, thousands of Connecticut families have been left particularly vulnerable during the pandemic.

Passing the Connecticut Parentage Act would signal that all of our state’s families are deserving of equal dignity and respect under the law.