Is that really a problem?

I think I'm missing something. One of the news items we have recently had here in Japan concerns a young couple and their child. They apparently went to the government, trying to get the child added to their family record, as is customary here. That's where the trouble started. Apparently the government so far is arguing that they cannot register this child as theirs.

The problem, of course, is that one of the two is a surgically altered woman, not a natural man. The sperm for the child was either donated or something, and no one is arguing that the child should be registered to someone else. Nor are people complaining that they can't be married, apparently. But... The idea that a child who is not actually a direct genetic offspring should be listed in their family record apparently is too much.

I keep asking what happens when someone adopts a child, or whether anyone really believes that every child in the history of Japan has definitely been the genetic offspring of the couple who claimed him. So far, all my friends agree that sometimes the genetic father of a child and the father listed in the family records may not be the same, but...

For some reason, the idea of letting this couple claim a child as theirs if the sperm came from somewhere else seems to really bother people. Even though it seems to fit either the adoption scenario or the other man scenario.

Maybe they shouldn't have been so honest about what they were doing? I mean, I'll bet the people filing the forms wouldn't have noticed if they had just filled them in and handed them over without mentioning the little difference in this couple from any other couple wandering into city hall.

Is DNA really thicker than ink?