A two-woman couple has pushed Gibraltar to change its laws so they will both be recognized as parents of their child, due to be born next week. Another E.U. child with two moms, however, remains stateless after Bulgaria denied her citizenship, claiming that a child cannot have two mothers.
Natalie and Katie Perez-Muldoon, who have been in a civil partnership for five years, discovered last August that Gibraltar’s law would not recognize them both as parents of their child-to-be. Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory, but is self-governing, and its parenting laws had not kept pace with those of the U.K., which does recognize both same-sex parents. When the women contacted Gibraltar’s Equality Rights Group, reported the Gibraltar Chronicle, they learned that a proposed bill would allow nonbiological parents in a civil partnership or marriage to be recognized on their children’s birth certificates. The bill was not on the government’s list of priorities, however, which forced the women to take to social media to raise awareness of the issue and their story, according to the U.K.’s Daily Mail.
That did the trick, and the law passed late Friday night. “We’re really grateful to the government for listening to us and for taking action… We’re really just relieved and pleased and will now be able to focus our attention on the birth,” Katie Perez-Muldoon told GBC. You can watch her entire three-minute interview with them below.
Another European couple, however, is still in limbo over their child’s citizenship. Jane Jones, born in Gibraltar, and Kalina Ivanova, born in Bulgaria, had their child in Spain. (Both names have been changed to protect their privacy.) Spain would not grant the child Spanish citizenship, however, since neither of the parents are Spanish citizens. Jones has U.K. citizenship, but was told that since she was not born in the U.K. (instead acquiring her citizenship solely by descent from her parents), she could not pass U.K. citizenship to her child. Those are obstacles, to be sure (and one could argue whether those rules should be changed), but they at least apply equally to same- and different-sex couples.
Ivanova and Jones thought they had one more option, though, and tried to get Bulgaria to recognize the child. The Bulgarian government refused, however, on the grounds that a child cannot have two mothers, reported ILGA Europe. That’s clear homophobia. The child now has no citizenship of any kind, making it impossible for her to travel outside Spain—not to mention being able to access other social and educational benefits that require citizenship documentation.
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is hearing their case today. As lawyers from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP wrote at Lexology:
The CJEU must clarify whether parentage established in one Member State must be recognised across the EU. In particular, the CJEU must reach a decision on whether a Member State’s non-recognition of same-sex marriages may be claimed as constituting its “national identity” that justifies infringement of one of the four fundamental freedoms of the EU—the right to freedom of movement…. The answers to these questions should be clear under EU law—Member States cannot nullify the parentage established in one Member State, especially not to foster inequality on the basis of sexual orientation.
Let’s hope the court agrees. Hear more of the women’s story in this two-and-a-half-minute video below.