Michigan Court Says Lesbian Woman Has No Right to Her Children

Even though Michigan is the best state in the U.S. (I know this because I'm from there), it seems to have ethically dysfunctional elements in its appellate court system — namely, Judges Karen Fort Hood, Christopher Murray, and Michael Talbot. They recently ruled that lesbian Renee Harmon, who for almost a decade had acted as half of a parenting couple to three children, does not have the right to joint custody of those children. Harmon has been denied access to her daughter and sons in an acrimonious breakup with her partner of nineteen years, Tammy Davis, whom the couple jointly chose to be the children's biological mother because she was younger than Harmon.

It's Harmon's own fault, really. Because she wasn't the children's biological mother, she should have at least adopted them officially in order to protect her access, right? After all, according to the Appeals Court judges, the infallible Child Custody Act tells us that only proper way to be a parent is "through procreation, or through adoption or the presumption ... arising from a child born in a legal marriage."  What's that? Oh, right, Harmon and Davis weren't allowed to get married — that whole "gay couple" thing. And Michigan only allows adoptions to married couples — or single parents. Because apparently it's better for a child to have one mom than two.

So Harmon's nineteen years together with Davis, her ten years with her daughter, and seven years with her twin boys, don't count because the Appeals Court has bought into the federally sanctioned obsession with marriage certificates.

If only they were as forward-thinking as Wayne County Circuit Judge Kathleen McCarthy, who initially heard the couple's case in April. She decided that Harmon did in fact have a right to pursue joint custody of her daughter and sons. McCarthy, says renowned marriage scholar and gay rights advocate Nancy Polikoff, determined that when a woman "marries a man that both she and he know is not the biological father of the child she will give birth to," she is exercising her "constitutional right to make childrearing decisions, including the decision that another individual will become the parent of her child." McCarthy ruled that Davis had been exercising that same right for at least ten years and cannot "unilaterally dissolve" it now.

Except yes she could, according to the nutty Appeals court. Harmon and her lawyers intend to appeal, presumably to the next step up, the Supreme Court. Whether the Supreme Court supports the District's or Appellate Court's point of view has repercussions for not just gays, but unmarried people across Michigan; an ill-considered judgment denying Harmon access to her children could easily and tragically affect Michigan's standing as the Most Awesome State.

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