Last week, New York’s highest court effectively redefined what it means to be a parent. The New York State Court of Appeals determined Tuesday that non-biological, non-adoptive parents can claim custody or visitation rights, marking the unprecedented expansion of the understanding of parenthood.

The Ruling

Tuesday’s ruling overturned a 1991 decision that limited the legal definition of parenthood to biological or adoptive relatives, granting only these two groups the ability to seek custody or visitation rights. In this case, Alison D. v. Virginia M., the petitioner (Alison D.) sought visitation rights to see the son of the respondent (Virginia M.) whom Alison D. had helped raise before the lesbian couple split up. Since the respondent was the only biological “parent,” and the two were not married, it was determined that Alison D. had no standing under the New York Domestic Relations Law to seek visitation.

That all changed this week, when 25 years after Alison D. v. Virginia M., the court ruled in Brooke S.B. v. Elizabeth A. C.C that non-biological, non-adoptive parents can seek custody or visitation if “a partner shows by clear and convincing evidence that the parties agreed to conceive a child and to raise the child together.”

“This is a major step forward for same-sex couples and especially for the children of those parents,” said attorney Eric Wrubel, who argued on behalf of the winning appeal. “Tying the definition of parenthood to biology or adoption was no longer viable. This new ruling will help to protect children, regardless of the marital or financial status of their parents.”

Wrubel represented the child in Brooke S.B. v. Elizabeth A. C.C, who was seeking time with both of his mothers after his lesbian parents split up.

Tuesday’s decision comes five years after the New York State Senate voted to legalize gay marriage, and just more than a year after the nationwide legalization of gay marriage.

“In light of more recently delineated legal principles, the definition of ‘parent’ established by this Court 25 years ago… has become unworkable when applied to increasingly varied familial relationships,” wrote Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam.

The Implications

On the one hand, New York’s decision speaks to society’s acceptance of what some call “spiritual” motherhood or fatherhood — the idea that women and men can demonstrate real maternal or paternal qualities without having a biological connection to the child(ren) under their care. This is why adoption is accepted and even viewed admirably in most American circles.

But there’s a case to be made for why the definition of parenthood should be limited to biology and legal adoption: Parenthood is a monumental responsibility that requires demonstrable dedication to a vulnerable class of human beings. A biological mother who neglects her child is not a parent; nor is a caretaker who has not gone through the legal process of obtaining custody.

Parenthood is a form of stewardship that involves contributing to the formation of another human being. Treating the term “parenthood” as dispensable opens up the potential for ill-fit guardians, such as the state, to usurp a position that up until now has been protected under the law.

Writing for The Federalist last year, author Paul Kengor, who has written a collection of books on communist ideology, outlined several Marxist ideas that have gained popularity and taken form in American policy during the last few years.

In the June 29 piece, Kengor first details portions of “The Origin of the Family,” which scholars consider to be the first joint work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels:

There, and elsewhere, we see, among other things, a fanatical push to abolish all right of inheritance, to end home and religious education, to dissolve monogamy in marriage, to pursue pre- and extra-marital sex, to foster and “tolerate” (as Engels put it) the “gradual growth of unconstrained sexual intercourse” by unmarried women, to nationalize all housework, to shift mothers into factories, to move children into daycare nurseries, to separate children into community collectives apart from their natural parents, and, most of all, for society and the state to rear and educate children.

As Engels envisioned, “the single family ceases to be the economic unit of society. Private housekeeping is transformed into a social industry. The care and education of the children becomes a public affair; society looks after all children alike, whether they are legitimate or not.”

Kengor then moves on to the pair’s magnum opus, “The Communist Manifesto,” in which Marx and Engels voice similar goals for what they enthusiastically call the “abolition of the family.” In the work’s famous 10-point plan for bringing about a communist utopia, Kengor notes, one will find that half of these points depend on familial dissolution:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of all property of emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal obligation of all to work….

8. … gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools…

More from Kengor:

Overall, stated Marx and Engels, “The communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.” Yes, no wonder.

Among those ideas, at the epicenter, was natural, traditional, biblical family and marriage. It had to be targeted. Alas, only now, two centuries later, is it finally being redefined. In perhaps the most radical rapture of all, those pushing the redefinition are not crackpot German atheistic philosophers in European cafes but everyday mainstream Americans … .

Do we really want to redefine parenthood and open up a can of communist worms? Do we want to uproot the foundational social pillar that is the family? Are we ready to cede custody of our children to the state?

We already have. (For more from the author of “Progressives Just Warped the Word ‘Parent.’ Here’s What That Means for You” please click HERE)

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