Call him Daddy.
A Long Island town politician is pushing a local law to permanently lock the words “mother” and “father” into the town code — a response to a proposed gender-neutral rewriting of parenting terms by lefty state lawmakers.
Hempstead town Supervisor John Ferretti said his resolution, which is due to be voted on by the town board on Tuesday, was sparked after his 9-year-old daughter overheard him and his wife discussing the state bill to replace mom and dad with “gestating” and “non-gestating” parents.
“She came into our bedroom, very, very upset, saying, ‘Can I still call you daddy?’” Ferretti, a Republican, told reporters.
“Nobody will ever change the fact that my children’s mother is their mother,” he said. “Nobody will ever change the fact that I am their father. Just words on a piece of paper won’t change someone being a mother, someone being a father.”
Ferretti’s proposal comes after state Assemblywoman Amy Paulin (D-Westchester]) and state Sen. Luis Sepulveda (D-Bronx) introduced a bill that would change parenting terms in state parenting, child custody, family court and education law to make them gender neutral.
In addition, “paternity” cases would be rewritten as “parentage” proceedings, and deadbeat dads, currently identified as “putative fathers” on the books, would become “an alleged parent.”
Ferretti said that’s not gonna fly in his town if he can help it.
“In the town of Hempstead, we will have moms, we will have dads, we will have parents, we will have mothers — and there’s no option,” he said Monday. “That’s life.
“Some have two mothers. Some have two fathers,” he added. “But they have two mothers. They have two fathers — not two gestating parents or non-gestating parents.”
His proposal, if approved, would keep mother and father as the acceptable terms in the code.
Meanwhile, the state bill, which passed in the Assembly in March and in the state Senate last week, is on Gov. Kathy Hochul‘s desk waiting for final approval.
Gordon Tepper, the governor’s rep for Long Island, fired back at the criticism of the state bill.
“The governor believes mothers are mothers and fathers are fathers, and no legislation changes that,” he said. “The legislation, which we will review, appears to address technical legal issues related to surrogacy and parentage.
“Anyone making bad-faith arguments is deliberately misleading New Yorkers for political gain.”
