— In the California Legislature, bill passage from committees and the floor requires a certain fixed number of votes: 41 on the Assembly floor, 21 in the Senate, and a majority of all members of a committee. So the best way to hurt a bill a member doesn’t like without going on record in opposition is to abstain from voting. Like a ‘no’ vote, an abstention doesn’t count toward the total needed for passage. Feminist Democrats opposed to AB 2240, the bill by Rod Wright that relieved men falsely charged with paternity from the obligation to support another man’s child, drew an extremely large number of abstentions in the Assembly, one by the bill’s most vocal critic, lesbian Jackie Goldberg. This article from
The Stockton Record explains:
Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, argued against the bill but withheld her vote rather than voting “no.”
She said a man whose only relationship with a child has been as sender of monthly court-ordered checks should be let off the hook if a DNA test shows he is not the biological father. But she doesn’t like the idea that someone learning the truth during a divorce might decide he no longer wants to support a child whom for years he has taken as his own.
“If you say that DNA is the only determinant of fatherhood, you narrow the whole scope of what fatherhood is,” Goldberg said. “You reduce the father to a sperm donor, and if we do that, then why do we need you at all?
“Fatherhood,” she said, “is a relationship.”
And, she said, letting judges sort out those finer points may not solve the problem, since “the bench is still predominately male.”
“I know how these things end,” said Goldberg, who represents urban Los Angeles. “They end with a woman and a child in poverty.”
She said she wasn’t surprised so many Democratic women “stayed off” the bill. And many other women around the Capitol also understood.
The sole determinant of “motherhood” in such cases is biology, of course, which creates problems for lesbians who’ve raised a sperm-donor child together. The mother has custody rights, but the partner doesn’t unless she formally adopts the child. This is a background issue for Goldberg, but not the only reason for her vote.
A list of the 21 abstainers can be found here. Some of the notables include:
Goldberg
Dion Aroner, Goldberg’s college roommate.
Manny Diaz, smeared by an opponent as a deadbeat dad.
Carole Migden, San Francisco lesbian
Tim Leslie, ultra-conservative
Joe Simitian, Santa Clara Assemblyman
San Diego lesbian Christine Kehoe voted for the bill, so it wasn’t so much a question of a lesbian position on paternity driving the opposition as a callous disregard for justice.
A friend of mine, who is also a blogger, has had to go through no small amount of legal hell (mostly donated, thankfully, by a lawyer pal of ours), trying to get out of being forced to pay child support for a 10-year-old of a woman he’s never met. Just because he shared the name of the suspected father (which was just about the only thing the two men had in common), and because he blithely disregarded the first couple of court orders, thinking, rightfully, that they were bunk. Seems part of Welfare Reform is to assign paternity of Welfare Moms RIGHT NOW, truth bedamned. He’s had to pay money, deal with legal crap for going on two years now …. I know nothing about the law in general, but wouldn’t it seem logical that you could sue the government for stealing your money & bumming you out over a child that DNA proves is not yours?
Logical, yes, but legal, no. Existing law provides a very narrow window of time in which a judgment of paternity has to be challenged, and wheh it shuts, that’s it. Some alleged fathers have been able to get around the paternity statutes with an “extrinsic fraud” argument, but it’s rough going because the court can lean either way. It would be great if your friend would give Mr. Wright’s office a call and see what he do to help get the bill through the Senate.