TORONTO - A woman in London, Ont., wants the Ontario Court of Appeal to recognize her as the third parent of a boy she's raising with her lesbian partner.

The original application made three years ago, requesting a declaration of parenthood, would give the mother's same-sex partner the same rights as if she were a biological parent. It failed because the family court ruled that it did not have the authority to make the decision.

"It's discriminatory, because one of them gets legally recognized -- the biological mother -- but the non-biological mother, who is equally part of the process except for the biological bits, can't be legally recognized even though they both decided to have a child, planned for the child, arranged for the procreation and the birth, and they both jointly parent the child," said the woman's lawyer, Peter Jervis.

Final submissions were made yesterday at the Ontario Court of Appeal before Chief Justice Roy McMurtry, Mr. Justice Marc Rosenberg and Mr. Justice Jean-Marc Labrosse. A decision is expected within six months.

The lesbian couple, who have been together since 1992, haven't told their five-year-old son about the legal proceedings but are worried he is coming to realize what is going on. He lives with them in London and sees his father twice a week.

But the family has faced an uphill battle, both legally and socially. The case has raised the ire of several religious groups, including the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, the Catholic Civil Rights League, the Christian Legal Fellowship and Focus on the Family. On behalf of these groups, the Alliance for Marriage and Family has filed a factum in the case.

"To completely misapprehend what it is to be in a conjugal lesbian relationship and to compare that to being somebody's grandmother or to being somebody's step-parent -- it was completely out of line," she said.

This is cache, read story here