This probably isn’t news to anyone up on LGBT issues, and it really should be a given to everyone but it took so long to get to court: the Ontario Court of Appeals has ruled that a boy whose custodial parents are a lesbian couple, but whose sperm donor father has been playing a significant role in his upbringing, has, in fact, three parents.

*fist in air, yelling right on*

It’s not up to the government or the courts how we as citizens and family members define a family. How painful is the memory of the time I applied for co-op housing, listing my cousin (and roommate) as “family” only to be told, ad nauseum, that we were not actually family at all. The couples said, “Family is, you know, couples.” The marrieds with kid said, “Family is married couples with kids. ” The marrieds without kids said it was married couples. The co-habiting ones said it was couples having sex. Actually, even the menage a trois said it was a circle of adults connected by sexual relationships.

You just can’t win.

But in Ontario, maybe you can.

The case is believed to be the first in Canada in which a child has more than two legal parents, said Peter Jervis, a lawyer for the partner. He said while there have been birth-registry cases in which lesbian couples sought parentage of their children, the fathers in those cases were not active or were unknown due to sperm donations.

In this case, the biological father, a friend of the lesbian couple, remains involved in the 5-year-old boy’s life at the request of the two women. The father would have lost his parental rights if the lesbian partner had been able to adopt the boy under Ontario law.