If a same sex couple who is married in another state has a child together, only one parent’s name can be listed on an Ohio birth certificate. Now a lawsuit has been filed that would change that.
Cincinnati Attorney Al Gerhardstein says it is unfair that two heterosexual married parents of a child can have both of their names listed on a birth certificate yet two married homosexual parents have to choose just one name to put on that document.
"If you’ve got your names on the birth certificate, you are going to have a much easier time, admitting the children to school, getting medical care, getting a passport, accomplishing permissions to various activities throughout the life of a child and that’s what we are experiencing," says Gerhardstein. "There are lawyers whose whole practice is creating documents that allow the parent whose name is not on a birth certificate to be accepted by all of these different providers of services for these children and sometimes it screws up."
Gerhardstein is using some of the same arguments he used in a federal court case that recently allowed both names of a married same sex couple to be reflected on a death certificate.