What if the woman who did not carry the child signed co-parenting and co-guardianship agreements near the time the baby was born.
What if after the baby was born, the two women had a fight which ended up in a court case where the one who did not carry the child wanted the other to abide by the agreements?
Would she win? Nope. Not in Utah.
Gena Evaldson just lost a case against her ex-partner Jana Dickson in this very scenario. The loss strips her of the right to even visit her child:
A 3rd District judge, citing a 2008 Utah law, upheld Dickson's "fundamental" right, as the biological parent, to refuse visitation.
"I never want him to think I gave him up voluntarily. I never abandoned him," Edvalson wrote on her blog. "I loved him, and I love him still."
The case highlights the predicament of same-sex parents in Utah, a state where gay and lesbian couples cannot marry, adopt children or even expect their own contracts for shared parenting and guardianship to stand in court.
Dickson, who has termed herself bisexual, has moved on and married a man. Evaldson is trying to pick up the pieces.
You want to know the ugly irony of the entire thing?:
As her lawyer, Dickson hired Frank Mylar. According to the Salt Lake Tribune:
Mylar, a former Utah attorney general candidate, belongs to a conservative alliance of "Christian attorneys," the Alliance Defense Fund, and regularly fights against the extension of rights for gay and lesbian couples. He did just that in pushing changes to the 2008 law that severely limited Edvalson's ability to press for visitation in court.
That's the same law which led to Evaldson losing the case.
Just something to remember the next time we slash each other to death in the blogs and in our individual little groups. While we are directing venom towards ourselves, the other side is creating intricate interlocking tunnels to quantify their bullshit.
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