In the spring of 2003, Series came to Toronto to meet Cooper and Roberts, vowing to keep an open mind. It didn’t take much convincing. Within hours of encountering the women, Series wanted in. 'That first evening, we were sitting on a patio in the Beach,' Cooper remembers, and Mark said, ‘Would it be all right if I taught our child to play football?’ I said, ‘Sure—I’m not going to do it!’
Three months later, the men attended Cooper and Robert’s wedding on the patio of their beaches home. Cooper had planned their wedding before the Ontario government’s recognition of same-sex unions, and the officiant they’d booked wasn’t certified to perform legal marriages.
When the new government’s marriage ruling came down two weeks before their wedding, Cooper had to scramble to turn it into legal ceremony: in a sitcom twist, one of the bridesmaids was authorized to perform legal ceremonies, so she married the couple, then returned to her bridesmaids duties.
At the reception, Series and Mathews were scrutinized by the woman’s friends and family members. Some still questioned how they’d make the tangled arrangement work. It didn’t matter. The four had made up their minds. They would have a baby together. They’d work out the logistics later.
Many types of gay parenting in Toronto are slowly winning equal treatment under the law. Since 1995, non-biological gay dads and lesbian moms have been able to adopt a partner’s biological child, allowing them hospital visitation rights, legal guardianship and access in the event of a breakup.
In 2006, the Ontario Superior Court struck down the law preventing two mothers from being listed on a child’s birth certificate—provided their donor is unknown and the baby is conceived through artificial insemination. Two men can be listed on a birth certificate by obtaining a special court order, a process that happens less frequently.
The most dramatic change to the definition of a parent came in January 2007, when the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled in favor of two women and a man to all be listed on their child’s birth certificate. (The court proceedings protected their privacy by referring to the parents as AA, BB and CC.)
During the hearings, a coalition of Christian organizations known as the Alliance for Marriage and Family argued that the change to the child’s birth certificate undermined the norm of two-parent heterosexual families. Despite the coalition’s protest, same-sex couples were already experimenting with co-parenting without the formality of a birth certificate.
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