Oh please, this is pure scare-mongering.

You will all find this a very interesting read. This is the extent of the madness we are creating. Also, I do not see it as fair that men who are discovered not to be the biological father of their wife/girlfriend’s child are legally forced to take on the obligations as if they were.

The lawyer Anna Galizia Danovi who is the President of the Centre for the Reform of Family Law even has the cheek to state that the man ‘knows’ or had reason to suspect that he was not the real father, so he can’t possibly complain. How retrogade. So next time our wives go out for half an hour we should immediately suspect that she has been impregnated by another man. The folly of it all.

[Daphne – The law, like almost all others which balance the rights/needs of the child with the rights/needs of the parents, is designed to protect the rights/needs of the child and puts those first. Children should not suddenly end up abandoned just because X has found out he is not the father after all. Our law is exactly the same. I believe it should be interpreted more sensibly, but in the main the thinking is sound. Imagine a situation in which Julia and Jesmond, who are married, have a son, John. John grows up happy and provided for and then, when he is 10, Jesmond on a whim carries out a DNA test and discovers that John is not his. He wishes to abandon and disown John, to stop providing him and to sue Julia for the all the money he spent raising him. The law does not allow him to do it. Why? Because of the child.]

The logic of it all. How advanced we’ve become. Modern, liberal, what have you.

It is all about nature. Even weeds will out, no matter the effort to suppress them.

[Daphne – It was the BBC that used ‘twins’ in the headline, Chris, because twins is exactly what they are. The word ‘marry’ tells you immediately they are not identical – Britain doesn’t have same-sex marriage but only civil unions. Also, it would be rather strange if identical twins who met in adulthood for the first time failed to realize they were related, wouldn’t it. But as an identical twin yourself, you jest, surely.]

Are you mad? Adopted children aren’t really your own children? So what are they, just children you happen to be taking care of? A charity case? No, you are their parents and they are your children. There is a missing genetic link but nothing more, they still are your parents in the truest sense.

[Daphne – I find dealing with illogical people really tiresome. Adopted children acquire the legal status of legitimate children of the adopters, and the adopters acquire the legal status of their parents, but there are rare and isolated instances in which things come down to the crunch, and this is one such. The test of whether adopted children are the ‘real’ children of their adoptive parents is in whether marriage between biological siblings adopted by different families is possible/valid/permissible/desirable. That was the point. Marriage between siblings is banned not because they grew up in the same family but because they are biological siblings.]