The Editorial Board | The New York Times
It took 25 years, but on Tuesday New York State’s highest court finally admitted the damage it did in 1991 with a ruling that denied parental rights to many people in nontraditional families — including unmarried opposite-sex couples, stepparents, and gays and lesbians — who are raising children.
In an opinion that recognizes the rapidly expanding rights of same-sex couples in particular, the Court of Appeals overturned what it called a “needlessly narrow” ruling, which held that a person in an unmarried relationship could be considered a parent to a child in that relationship — and thus be able to seek custody or visitation rights — only if he or she was the biological parent or had adopted the child.
“Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Windsor, many states had various outdated, discriminatory restrictions on marriage, state benefits, adoption, and the like. Since the Windsor decision in June of 2013, we almost immediately began to see a steady chipping away of those archaic limitations imposed upon same-sex couples and other non-traditional family dynamics. The wheels of government can oftentimes grind slowly, but this case, some three years later, is just another example of the trickle-down effect resulting from that very important ruling.”
~Kaine Fisher
