'Children of no one'

It's the 1968 revolution you never heard of. Forty years ago today, tucked in between the assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling repudiated centuries of settled law by granting constitutional recognition and protection to a previously outcast group: children born outside of marriage and their parents.

The cases arose out of two private tragedies in Louisiana. Minnie Glona's 19-year-old son was killed in a car accident. Louise Levy, a mother of five who worked as a domestic, died after a doctor failed to diagnose her hypertension uremia. Glona sued for wrongful death; so did Levy's children.

But lower courts threw out their cases. Why? Because Louisiana law specifically blocked a parent's recovery for the death of a child, or a child's recovery for the death of a parent, if the child was born outside marriage. Both Glona and Levy were unmarried.

This article offers an interesting perspective on the sexual revolution and how it helped bring about change for children born out of wedlock; I disagree with the larger point the author makes at the end, however, saying that affording certain rights based on marital status -- to make medical or financial decisions, for example -- is in itself wrong, whether pertaining to straight or gay couples. There is a difference between being married or not, whether or not children are involved, and I don't think society stands to benefit from changing that.