“This was a game handed in for family law, for 40% of the mark. The question the students were asked to respond to was “How does law regulate your understanding of the family?” with the option given to answer the question in whatever format was best. This student wanted to write about obstacles that exist to gay men adopting in Canada notwithstanding that there are no formal barriers, in law, to same-sex partners, or single gay folk adopting. So he created that game that demonstrates that even though law is inclusive, there remain many barriers.
So you play the game and the goal is for you and your partner to get to the end where you adopt a baby. But you have to cross identity barriers and financial barriers and other kinds of barriers to get there. When you play the game you feel it in your body. You understand obstacles by playing the game that you would not understand in the same sense by just reading about them. It is fun to engage with the game but you never lose sight of the fact that this is a real struggle; the project makes the argument that homophobia exists in many of our practices around how we create families in Canada, even with the shifts in Family Law.
It was a stunning project and often when I am encouraging students to think about doing projects, I bring out this game for them to play to give them a sense of what some possibilities might be for them. It is one of the best ways that an essay question has ever been answered in Family Law.”
