LGBTQ Families and Advocates Celebrate Signing of Massachusetts Parentage Act

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) has signed legislation updating the state’s parentage laws to be more equitable for LGBTQ parents and their children, families formed via assisted reproduction, and those with de facto or functional parents. “It’s a great, great day as we celebrate full parental equality,” she said at the signing ceremony Monday.

Gov. Healey signed the Massachusetts Parentage Act (MPA) on August 8, after the legislature passed the bill August 1 in a unanimous show of bipartisan support. (See my post on the legislative passage for more details.) In the public signing yesterday at the State House in Boston, she said that Massachusetts is “the place that 20 years ago declared that love is love, and that we should be able to marry the people we love. But we’ve known that there is more work to do.” She continued:

Today we take another decisive step forward, because we’re able to say with one voice, ‘What defines a family is love and commitment.’ That’s what defines a family, not outdated notions of who should be a parent or how a child should come into the world. This is a victory indeed for all families in Massachusetts, because as we strengthen the definition, we elevate and honor the parent-child bond.

She later noted that “as somebody who’s proud to be the first gay woman elected governor in the country,” she appreciated the effort put into the legislation. At the same time, she stressed, “When we defend freedoms, when we ensure and fight for greater rights and protections, it benefits not just those directly impacted, but it benefits everyone. It makes us a stronger community, state, country.”

Healey thanked the many people involved in supporting the bill and seeing it through the legislative process, including Rep. Sarah Peake (D), Sen. Julian Cyr (D), Rep. Hannah Kane (R), Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr (R), Rep. Kay Khan (D), and Rep. Adam Scanlon (D), Speaker Pro Tempore Kate Hogan (D), Rep. Michael Day (D), Sen. Will Brownsberger (D), Sen. Jamie Eldridge (D), and Rep. Sally Kerans (D), along with advocates from the MPA Coalition led by GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD; not to be confused with media advocacy organization GLAAD), and AllPaths Family Building.

“Most of all,” she said, she was grateful for the parents, children, and families in attendance who had experienced exclusion and obstacles in creating and growing their families, but were “incredible role models and representatives and today helped us get to where we need to be as a state.” She told them, “Your courage has ensured that future families will not have to endure some of the same experiences that some of you may have had to endure.”

One of those was Karen Partanen, a nongestational mother who had fought a long battle for legal parentage. Partanen told the audience her harrowing story of being cut off from her young children after she and her partner separated. “As devastating as it was for me, just imagine how that was for a 2- and a 5-year-old, who didn’t understand ‘Where did Mommy go?'” she said. She drained her bank account and was eating out of food pantries as she fought a years-long legal battle that ended in 2016 with a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling in her favor. After that, she said, “My family was protected,” but “there was still so much work to be done.” The signing of the MPA means that “No other family has to go through what my family went through.”

Following Partanen, recent high school graduate Darmany Jimenez shared his story of being raised since birth by his mom Caeli, a close friend of his biological mother, because his biological mother “faced mental health challenges and needed help raising me and my siblings.” Even though Caeli “went through the long, expensive process of being established as our de facto parent in court,” he said, “that didn’t give her the recognition as our full legal parent.” The MPA will change that.

Sen. Cyr, a lead sponsor of the bill, also spoke at the signing, explaining, “LGBTQ+ families like mine face excessive and expensive hoops just to ensure our children have the security of legal parentage.” The MPA’s passage, he said, “marks a critical step to guarantee that all children can benefit from the stability of a legal parent-child relationship no matter how they came to be in this world.”

While she didn’t speak at the event, Rep. Kane, another lead sponsor, said in a press statement that the legislation was personal for her, too. She and her husband easily established parentage of their three children, she explained, but one of their daughters is lesbian, “and if she chooses, I want her to experience the joy of being a parent someday with the same rights to establish her parentage, and to have the same legal protections, as my husband Jim and I had.”

Polly Crozier, director of family advocacy at GLAD, reminded the audience that the legislation was first filed seven years ago, “but we have been able to witness incredible grit, incredible spirit, as we never, ever gave up on a vision of Massachusetts that included and protected and loved every child.” She added, “This has never been a political issue in Massachusetts, this has been a moral imperative, to protect our children and families both in Massachusetts and wherever they go.”

The MPA will go into effect on January 1, 2025.

For more details and resources on parentage in Massachusetts and elsewhere, please read “LGBTQ Paths to Parentage Security,” a short guide from myself and GLAD, or contact GLAD for free and confidential legal information, assistance, and referrals.