Corporations Committee Considers Gender References

Rep. Daniel Zwonitzer testifies before the House Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions Committee, of which he is the chairman, on Jan. 26. (Andrew Graham/WyoFile)

The Joint Interim Corporations Committee met in Sundance on Nov. 20. Their unusually full hearing room was abuzz with nearly 70 people who wanted to weigh in on the draft bill called “Statutory Gender References.”

This is a rehash of HB 212, which failed in last February’s General Session despite the last-minute flurry of effort by Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, co-sponsor of the bill and chair of the committee that sent it to the house.

The summary of the bill says that it is to “amend archaic language; [and] codify rights of parties legally authorized to marry in Wyoming…” In plain English, “Statutory Gender References” (SGR) changes more than 60 Wyoming laws in one fell swoop. The bulk of these changes are in Title 14 regarding child custody.

The “archaic language” that it targets is virtually every reference to husband or wife, male or female, his or her, mother or father, man or woman, paternity, widow – anything that might specify a legal distinction between the sexes.

But it’s more than an exercise in search and replace. It alters the very definition of “parent” at its core. The net effect of its drastic re-orienting of child custody law is to change fundamentally Wyoming family law.

For this reason, some objected that SGR violates Article 3, Section 24 of Wyoming’s Constitution, “No bill, except general appropriation bills and bills for the codification and general revision of the laws, shall be passed containing more than one subject…” SGR’s sponsors generally painted it as a mere “general revision of the laws.” But when Zwonitzer said, “I do believe this is a fundamental bill,” he seemed to agree with the objectors’ point.

Certainly, there are sections which merely clarify existing laws. For instance, it amends various property and civil laws by replacing the words “husband and wife” with “spouses,” and in Title 15 it replaces “policeman” with “police officer.” But these relatively innocuous changes are the smallest part of the bill.

The bulk of it (27 out of the bill’s 43 pages) is concerned with changing either child custody laws (Title 14), marriage laws (Title 20) or birth certificates (Title 35). 

Current law defines “parent” as either the “legal guardian,” “natural parent” or “adoptive parent.” The SGR law would add a fourth definition of parent: “a person adjudged as parent...in judicial proceedings.” This creates a new category of parent and, along with it, a new power for the courts.

Natural parents are created by God when conception takes place. At that moment, a new child has a natural father and a mother. Governments recognize these relationships but don’t make them. Courts get involved only if natural parents give their parental rights to others. This is called adoption. Courts oversee it to make sure nobody is exploited. But, again, they only recognize what others have done.

In some circumstances, a court may assign that legal guardianship for the welfare of the child. But, even here, it cannot deny the reality of natural parentage. Courts have never held the authority to make or unmake natural parents. SGR would change that.

This new  category, “person adjudged as parent,” draws on language already present in Wyoming statute but falls into the error of equivocation. It uses the same term with a different meaning than before.

The current term, “adjudicated father,” is not a different kind of father. It is the natural father as determined by the evidence presented in a court of law. When we see a child, nobody asks if it has a father, only who the father is. We also know that our pool of candidates is immediately narrowed to the Y-chromosome crowd.

What is new in SGR is that adjudication is no longer about discovering the truth but denying it. Adjudicated parentage, under SGR, disregards the fact that a child already has both a natural mother and a natural father. In their place, and quite apart from adoption laws or legal guardianship protocols, the court simply declares a person (male or female) to be “a father” of the child, but not necessarily “the father.”

Yes, you read that right. Under Title 35-1-411 SGR explicitly adds the word “she,” to the section where “the person to be named as the father sign[s] an affidavit of paternity.” This deliberately creates the possibility that a woman could be named as “a father” simply by signing an affidavit.

Until now, Wyoming family law has steered a neutral path in debates over assisted reproduction. 14-2-403 (d) explicitly declines to authorize surrogacy in the state of Wyoming. But, without coming clean in its summary statement, SGR inserts paragraphs into Title 14-2-904 and 905 that would create a new legal framework for surrogacy!

Under this proposed framework, fatherhood can be made by judicial fiat. Not only that, but a claim to paternity can also be denied on the mere ground that two people have previously been assigned parental rights, and it makes no difference whether either of them is the natural father, or even an “adjudicated father.”

Finally, there is another curious consequence of these changes. Thirty-eight times, SGR replaces the word “father” with “parent,” and an additional 14 times, it replaces “paternity” with “parentage.” The net result of this neutering frenzy is not to keep things neuter. On the contrary, it opens the door for courts to meddle in matters of maternity where the natural maternity is not in the slightest doubt.

For 5,000 years of recorded history, motherhood has been the easiest of all relationships to establish. The blood, sweat and tears of labor are the irrevocable badge of motherhood. Witnessed by doctors, nurses and midwives there is never any question about who the mother of a child might be.

Under SGR, a bloodless piece of legal parchment would trump even the fact of a child issuing forth from a woman in labor. Any person -- male or female, single or married -- could sign a legal document that claims motherhood and strips the pregnant woman of any maternal rights to care for the child that she is bearing.

This doesn’t fill gaps in Wyoming family law, it creates them. Current laws safeguard the parent-child relationship established either by conception or by adoption. The creation of a new “adjudicated parent” category and surrogacy laws that enable the purchase of a woman’s maternal rights undermine those protections.

This fundamental overhaul of Wyoming family law is being presented as a mere update of “archaic language.” That is both disingenuous and dangerous.

Children should not be pawns in an ideological game. Laws should not be written that establish obvious falsehoods as legal truth. The government has no legitimate power to break and remake the natural bonds of mother and father.

Thankfully, when SGR finally came to a vote, Senators Agar and Nethercott, together with Representatives Blackburn, Edwards, Eyre, Furphy, Lindholm and Lone, opposed the measure. Senators Case, Pappas, Scott and Sweeny joined Representatives Byrd and Zwonitzer approving the bill.

Even though the nays prevailed last Monday by an 8-6 margin, don’t think that this is the last you will hear of it. Already at the meeting co-sponsors Zwonitzer and Connolly indicated that it would be brought up again during the budget session.

Further Reading:
WyoFile: Perspectives: the Sundance Fallout from Two Sides
Daily Signal: "GOP Congressman, Trent Franks to Resign for having discussion of surrogacy with female staffers"