# Gay couple receives citizenship benefit for son that a straight couple would not get

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-couple-receives-citizenship-benefit-for-son-that-a-straight-couple-would-not-get/830165>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [February 25, 2019, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-couple-receives-citizenship-benefit-for-son-that-a-straight-couple-would-not-get/830165 "2019-02-25T05:12:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\
**Post date:** [February 27, 2019, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-couple-receives-citizenship-benefit-for-son-that-a-straight-couple-would-not-get/830165/21 "2019-02-27T01:00:34Z")

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One of the incidents of marriage is that it creates a legal presumption of paternity. That presumption operates independently of the genetic facts. We have no idea how many children of opposite-sex married couples are in fact not the biological children of both parents, but I’m going to hazard a guess that the absolute number who are not is likely to be as high or higher than the absolute number of children of same-sex married couples.

It’s discriminatory to allow that presumption to operate for an opposite-sex married couple, but not for an opposite-sex same couple. This would unfairly privilege the children of opposite-sex couples who are not, in fact, the biological offspring of both parents, as compared with the children of same-sex couples.

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