By Elena Hight

When I first read Stopgap, I remembering thinking how refreshing it was to read a play about same-sex marriage that wasn’t just about equality. Instead, it attempts to track how love constantly binds people together in strange and unconventional ways. Not only that, but it recognizes the need to do this when the traditional idea of family—a group of people inextricably linked to each other through genetics and fate—is quickly eroding. And in its place, we are left to parcel through the myriad of other ways in which we can be bound to others—through proximity, through attraction, through love.

One court case around same-sex marriage sheds light on how this shifting ideal is being played out in legal battles around children and same-sex partnerships. Last year, a Santa Cruz woman filed a civil lawsuit for custody of her twins from her former partner, Maggie Quale. Quale, the biological mother of the two twins, had left Smith earlier for none other than the sperm donor of their two children. While the couple had never registered as domestic partners in the state, they were listed as partners on Smith’s insurance policy, and the babies had both been given the hyphenated last name, Smith-Quayle.

Because of the strange complications this case presented, it was in many ways a perfect test for how family could be defined by California law. Kim argued that not only had she contributed financially to the pregnancy and birth of her children, but she had continued to love and support them after their birth. In defense, Quale’s lawyer, Darlene Kemp, later stated, “It’s being turned into something political, when it’s not at all. It doesn’t have anything to do with sexual orientation. She doesn’t meet the criteria of a presumed parent.”

I won’t leave you hanging: it worked out in Kim Smith’s favor. But before it did that, it left a nasty residue over the debate on same-sex parenting and how we should ethically respond to these shifting connections. Despite Kemp’s assurance that the case was not political, you would have to be pretty obtuse to ignore the wide shadow it cast over how California law favored biological parents over a parental figure that had devoted time and energy into a relationship with their children. We have no idea how great a parent Smith was compared to Quayle and Wallace, but one cannot ignore the weight of the plans that she made about having them in her life and raising them and of the pain in being forcibly separated from the object/s of her love.

These are the questions that Stopgap brings its actors and audience. What constitutes parenthood? What is the cost of unfulfilled plans? How do we shape new definitions of family in a way that is not exclusionary but ethical?

In the play, Robert, a high school math teacher, donates his sperm to his best friend without telling his partner. Robert’s partner, David, tries to complete his image of the perfect family, a picture Robert never saw or wanted, and we are asked to examine the ethicality of Robert’s momentary decision to destroy part of the plans he made with the man he loves. In many ways, Robert, whose decisions often seem impulsive and selfish, is simply trying to grapple with familial conventions that do not apply to his friends or his life. He wants to feel connected without actively connecting himself to anyone (at least emotionally), without being vulnerable.

This is not just the case with Robert though. Many of the characters cope with how can we be connected in a responsible manner when those duties and responsibilities are constantly shifting in the modern world. The rigid structures of law and obligation no longer apply to our lives just as they no longer applied to Kim Smith’s predicament, and we must all adapt or lose love. And god, that is terrifying.

Sources:

“2011 Was A Good Year For Causes of Gays” by Aaron Glantz

“Santa Cruz court to hear former lesbian partners’ custody dispute over twins” by J.M. Brown