These days, our culture has a weird relationship with the concept of fatherhood. The Sexual Revolution has enabled millions of men to procreate and promptly skip town, leaving their offspring in the care of single mothers. The abortion industry has enabled millions more to demand that the women they sleep with violently evict any children that might turn up as the result of nocturnal activities. The gay rights movement insists mothers are unnecessary if the couple wishing to adopt is two men, or that fathers are unnecessary if the couple happens to be two women. The trans movement says that fathers can get pregnant.
And of course, the explosion of the sperm donor industry has resulted in fathers with dozens of biological children—if not more—and many of those children are demanding to know who their fathers are and decrying the market in children as commodities (a topic I covered in my 2016 book The Culture War). But every once in a while, in the strangest places, our society affirms that even in our gender-bending Brave New World, men have a responsibility to the children that they father. From the Telegraph:
An American man who donated sperm to a lesbian couple is the legal father of their daughter and must pay child support, a court has ruled. A judge in the US state of Kansas decided that William Marotta, 47, was financially responsible for the girl who is now aged four.
The couple, Jennifer Schreiner and Angela Bauer, had found Mr Marotta by advertising on the Internet and did not use a doctor in the donation process. They signed a contract agreeing that Mr Marotta would have no financial responsibility for the child. But when the couple encountered financial difficulties, and one of them applied for state benefits, the state of Kansas applied to a court to have Mr Marotta declared the child’s father and made responsible for her.
The ruling suggests that in Kansas a man can only legally be considered a sperm donor if he goes through a doctor. Shawnee County District Court Judge Mary Mattivi said: “A parent may not terminate parental rights by contract even when the parties have consented.
Now there’s a sentence that’s controversial in 2st Century North America: “A parent may not terminate parental rights.” A parent can, of course, terminate the child herself, but that’s a different matter. There are men that demand the women they sleep with sign “abortion contracts,” there are men who sue women who won’t abort their kids, and there are men who whine about “forced fatherhood” because their partner won’t abort the son or daughter they conceived together.
But at the end of the day, one truth is irrepressible: Children have a father and a mother. Children need a father and a mother. That might be controversial, but it’s also incontrovertible.
________________________________
For anyone interested, my book on The Culture War, which analyzes the journey our culture has taken from the way it was to the way it is and examines the Sexual Revolution, hook-up culture, the rise of the porn plague, abortion, commodity culture, euthanasia, and the gay rights movement, is available for sale here.
