I am a professor of law at Seattle University School of Law. You can read my faculty profile. I teach family law and law and sexuality as well as civil procedure. I’ve worked on some of the recent innovative cases about family law in Washington State. Most of my scholarship is in the area of family law, some of it covering the same topics that are in this blog. You can get copies/read it at the SU site or here (registration required, but free).
If you want to, you can follow me on twitter. Look for “relatedtopics”. There’s also a widget on the front page of the blog that should allow you to follow me.
Related Topics 
very interesting blog. also, i like the fossil header.
I am so excited to find out about a ” Holding Out A Child–De Facto Parenthood for Men? ” If I knew sooner I could used this in court. I hope its not too late yet. I have a case that is very crucial to help my children be with their sibling and me as defacto parent. My children should have rights but they held against their sibling together from the father of the 2nd child.I got a big story and If i can get some help. I needed to go media. This is a big story…
Here is bit of a ruling from a California case that utilizes the ‘holding out’ statute and applies it as gender neutral because both parents are women, and children can have two parents of the same sex. Interesting.
“The Court of Appeal reversed on a different ground, ruling that the stipulated judgment is void because “[t]he family court could not accept the parties’ stipulation as a basis for entering the judgment of parentage.” The court further ruled, however, that Lisa “may be able to establish parentage *162 under the [Uniform Parentage] Act” as a presumed parent under a gender-neutral application of Family Code section 7611, subdivision (d), which provides that a man is presumed to be a father if “[h]e receives the child into his home and openly holds out the child as his natural child.” Holding that a child could have two parents of the same sex, the court remanded the matter to the superior court “to conduct, in accordance with the views expressed herein, such further proceedings and amendment of pleadings as are appropriate in order to resolve the issues of Lisa’s parentage and her rights, if any, to visitation and/or custody.” Kristine Renee H. v. Lisa Ann R., 16 Cal.Rptr. 3d 123 (Ct. App. 2004), review granted and opinion superseded by 18 Cal.Rptr. 3d 668 (2004).
Feel free to drop by for our “chaste” single mother discussion. We talk about some of the same issues you do.
http://osolomama.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/why-arent-these-single-mothers-dating/
I appreciate the quality of writing here. The crisp simple style makes everything easy to find as well. Thanks for taking the time to write about some important GLBTQ parenting issues.
Julie,
Congrats on your website!
I came across this blog through a Google search on surrogacy (or maybe it was through Nan Hunter’s site or by Google a surrogacy case she mentioned).
So many fascinating questions and interesting commenters!
My friend was on oprah a couple of years ago she found her brother on the donor sibling registry and actually met him for the first time on Oprah’s show. I’ve been reuniting kids and parents separated for other reasons for about ten years and I told her I would find her dad for her. She ultimately found him on her own and I just confirmed everything for her thru background checks. I’ve become very passionate about the whole twisted family building industry because of spending so much time helping her find him. She remains a humble non-radical and I’m hell bent on finding a way to stop what happend to her from happening to anyone else. She does not think anything wrong happened to her. She is the model of gratitude for life and circumstance that people who adopt or use ART want. She only wants to find him for medical reasons. Her grandfather was a male role model etc. This pisses me off. She has to downplay the fact that her dad is important to her to make her mom feel ok about her choice to conceive with an anonymous guy. Newsflash ladies, it hurts them and they will pretend it doesnt because they don’t want you to feel bad. She’s afraid to call her dad now because she’s afraid he’ll be embarrassed of her, that he won’t want to know her. She does not want to blow her one and only chance at convincing him she’s worthy of being cared about. He may be waiting to here from her but she’ll never know because she can’t bring herself to dial his number.
If he had to sign adoption papers on each kid when they were born he might not have taken his genetic contribution so lightly. I care a whole lot about the people I help, I do it for free and I will make time to help anyone that asks me. I just want to see my friend feel like she is a daughter and not offspring.
Julie I have been participating on your blog for a year now if not longer and I am so impressed by the way you handle it most of all by your ability to maintain a respectful debate climate, to appreciate points of view other than your own, to respond graciously to obnoxious comments and general humility.
Thanks for your kind words. I believe in the importance of listening respectfully, most especially to people you disagree with. The way discourse degrades (perhaps especially on the internet, where people aren’t face-to-face) is so disheartening. I try to do my best to keep it civil. And I think it’s much more interesting that way.
Yes visiting your blog has educated me so much. It has not changed my core beliefs but I did not know anything about the laws that were frustrating me when I first visited. I knew I wanted to learn. I’ve also tried to be better about the way I say things so thanxk
why the closed comments? is this a new blogofad?