And so what is it about having an affair with a married person that is supposed to inspire public confidence in your parenting abilities?

Well the bill I have called the "Adulterer's Rights Act of 2009," HB 28, which would allow a man who, while having an affair, impregnates a married woman who subsequently goes back to her husband to assert paternity rights and in the process disrupts the repaired marriage is creating quite a stir.

After reading the posts on my blog about this issue and answering the emotional phone calls I have received from angry men who have had affairs with women who are married to someone else, and who, in some cases see nothing wrong with their behavior, I am becoming convinced that the decline of Western civilization is more advanced than I had first thought.

I have heard stories from my legal friends involved in family law about how people who are not married or who have acted in some way outside the bounds of wedlock who, when asserting rights that the law has always and only given to married partners, are simply nonplussed by the fact that they don't have the same rights as married people. Some of the stories are hard to believe. But now I believe them.

The advocates of HB 28 say that the bill would simply "allow biological fathers the same right to know their child as the mother." Right, and in the process disrupt a valid marriage (which would be the man's second experience in doing this, the first being the act of having sex with the married woman in the first place), getting in the face of the husband of the marriage who is an innocent party in the whole thing, as well as potentially disrupting the childhood of the baby.

In one of my previous posts on this issue, a commenter said:

What if a married woman gets pregnant by a married man to break up his marriage, and then dangle that child like a pawn, and then to say you can only see that child if you leave your wife and be with me.

Now let me get this straight: now we're talking about a man who not only acted in a way that would disrupt another marriage, but committed adultery against his own wife as well? And society is supposed to reward his completely irresponsible behavior by awarding him paternity rights? Are people so morally jaded that they think an example like this is anything but a further moral indictment of the biological father?

Maybe the non-adulterous husband of the adulterous wife and non-adulterous wife of the adulterous husband in the previous example ought to divorce and marry each other so they would each at least have a spouse who understands how to act like a responsible adult.

I guess I'm just having trouble understanding why the rest of us should be impressed with the parental skills of men who have sex with the wives of other people, and why we should think it is reasonable in such a situation to violate the rights of the married husbands of these women who not only have taken the trouble of remaining faithful in their marriages, but have agreed to forgive the transgression and raise the child as their own.

Pop Quiz: Who would make the better parent:

a. A man who has sex with someone else's wife .
b. A man who doesn't have sex with other people's wives, and despite the fact that his wife has committed adultery and gotten pregnant from it, takes her back and agrees to act as the father of the child.

The really sad thing is that some people would really answer, "a."