Court Opinion

ID: 9723474
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:16:52.856267+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:48.928792
License: Public Domain

NEWSOM, J.
I concur in the majority’s decision that the challenged portion of the judgment in issue ought to be stricken. I so conclude, *1000however, on the single ground that insufficient evidence supported the trial court’s conclusion that appellant’s relationship with Mr. Silver adversely affected the children.
If the evidence were otherwise, I would, of course, be glad to leap with my colleagues into the murky waters of parental sexual morality and its impact upon minor children. There are other rights dimly discernible in those depths: the rights, for example, of noncustodial parents, to have their children raised in circumstances consonant with still widely shared notions of decent behavior; the rights of children to be protected from the effects of “depravity,” to which the majority forthrightly alludes; and the right of government to insist that certain traditional notions of morality be maintained within families, for the benefit of the state.
These waters are dark and deep, and on the record before us I see no reason to enter them.