First, two comments in response to Bricker:
I fully grant that living wills and a variety of other documents will accomplish for a gay couple most of the mutual rights granted married couples by law. However, is it your wish to assert that permitting one individual to accomplish by complex legal processes what another individual may invoke by law by taking a single simple and inexpensive step constitutes “equal justice”?
Second, while Lawrence v. Texas sets a precedent which courts and legislatures ought to follow, there’s another thread here in which, sixty years after West Virginia School Board v. Barnette, the great state of Texas statutorily mandates the recital of the Pledge of Allegiance of its public schoolchildren. To envision a state and its courts prosecuting for sodomy and that case being upheld by “good Christian judges” like Roy Moore until state appeals have been exhausted (recalling that under present rules, only then can an appeal to the Federal system be taken), does not strike me as beyond the realm of reasonable possibility today.
The hypothetical case of the OP says that William was (presumably) begotten by Janet’s abusive husband, and makes no presuppositions about whether that man was involved with the child whatsoever, but does indicate that Janet and Alice raise William as their own, so my assumption is that he did not.
My wife’s sole child, given up for adoption before we re-met and married, was fathered by a man who beat her while she was pregnant. I will undoubtedly never meet the girl who would have been my only stepdaughter and the only child of either of our bodies (thanks to that beating causing polycystic ovaries). That he has any claim on that child thanks to his sperm having induced a pregnancy is something I vehemently refute.
On the other hand, I can refute your comment with the wisdom of a (then) five-year-old whom I’m proud to claim honorary grandparent status of. I’ve told this story before, but it bears repeating here. My boy Michael met and fell in love with a girl named Tami, who was then pregnant by a kid named Casey. In due course, she gave birth to Kyle, and Michael married her and they had three additional children. Michael was there for Kyle’s birth, and has always treated him as his own son. Kyle has always known that Casey was his father by blood but Michael was the man who has filled the father role for him. One day I was visiting them and sat down for coffee with Tami. Michael was tinkering with some gadget nearby, in eye- and earshot but not part of the conversation. Kyle was having a “sammich for 'unch” at the table with us. Since Tami and I both were concerned about Casey’s running wild, doing drugs, etc., the conversation turned to what she’d heard about his latest stupid exploit. And in responding to her, I said something like, “So, Casey – that’s your daddy, Kyle…” He interrupted me with an adult that said
without words “grownups can be so dumb,” and patiently explained to me, “No, he’s my father.” Pointing to Michael with a smile of pride, “That’s my daddy.”
Wisdom from the mouths of babes. Casey’s testes may have produced the gametes that gave Kyle half his genes, but the man who raised Kyle from birth was the person he acknowledged as his daddy, regardless of genetics.
Alice is William’s other mother. Kyle might have a minute’s problem wrapping his mind around the idea of two ladies getting married to each other – that family happens not to know any gay couples – but once he caught that idea, he’d explain that to me as patiently as he did about his daddy.
And he’d be right.