The Oregon statute is quite typical. It's the kind of statute written in the early 1970's when the only people using donor insemination (as far as anyone knew!) were heterosexual married couples. Making the husband the legal father of the child was really a no brainer, but it turns out some courts in earlier decades had ruled otherwise, so lots of states passed laws like these.

Rewriting such statutes to include lesbian couples has been the driving force behind my work for the last two years. (Stay tuned for a post on the new DC statute next week).

Then along comes the Oregon court, reasoning that since same-sex couples can't marry it's discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation to deny us access to this statute. Oregon ruled over a decade ago that sexual orientation was a "suspect classification" under its state constitution. It cited that case in ruling on the donor insemination statute.

The result is that the nonbiological mother of the two children involved in the case is a legal parent as long as she consented to her partner's insemination -- which it seems clear she did but there has to be a further hearing about it.

I've written a long post about the ruling here. It is so great to have such good news to share. Kudos to Portland lawyer Mark Johnson, who's been doing LGBT family law for many years.