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Melissa Ann Jarrell and Julia Catherine Boseman were domestic partners who decided to parent a child together. In 2002, Jarrell gave birth to a baby she conceived through artificial insemination. Three years later, Jarrell initiated legal proceedings in Durham County District Court with the effective outcome of making Boseman an adoptive co-mother.

Later the couple split and Jarrell undertook new legal action -- this time seeking to declare Boseman's adoption of the child void from the beginning because, get this, North Carolina law doesn't recognize adoption by same-sex couples.

Whatever your view of that question, you should agree that Jarrell's turnaround is hypcritical in the extreme. She wanted one thing when she and Boseman were together and the opposite thing when they were apart.

Not a very positive character portrait.

This story is notable for a number of reasons.

One is that Julia Boseman is a state senator from Wilmington, and her bitter battles with former partner Jarrell have been in the news a lot.

Another, of course, is the question raised about same-sex adoptions.

Today the N.C. Court of Appeals weighed in with a ruling that denies Jarrell's attempt to nullify Boseman's status as an adoptive parent.

Very carefully written by Judge Wanda Bryant, the opinion doesn't refute Jarrell's contention that state law doesn't permit "same-sex adoptions." "Indeed, that phrase appears nowhere" in the law, Bryant notes.

But that's not the key legal issue here, Bryant added.

In prompting the adoption, Jarrell wanted her baby to have two legal parents. It was in the child's best interest, and nothing subsequently suggested that Boseman wasn't fit for the role.

The gender of the parents wasn't germane. Bryant wrote:

"We note that both parties have made extensive arguments related to the same-sex nature of their former relationship and whether our State and its agencies sanction adoptions by same-sex couples. While acknowledging that such issues are matters of great public interest and of personal significance to Boseman and Jarrell, we emphasize that the specific nature of the parties’ relationship or marital status was not relevant to resolution of  the instant appeal. The same result would have been reached had the parties been an unmarried heterosexual couple. While Chapter 48 does not specifically address same-sex adoptions, these statutes do make clear that a wide range of adoptions are contemplated and  ermitted, so long as they protect the minor’s 'needs, interests, and rights.' ”

The ruling seems right to me. Whatever anyone might think about same-sex relationships or adoptions, the fact is that Jarrell sought to bind her child to Boseman in an enduring, legally sanctioned parent-child relationship. Whether it proved to be wise or foolish, It was her choice. As a result, although her "partnership" with Boseman dissolved into an apparently adversarial relationship, Boseman retains certain rights regarding the child.

These things happen in other kinds of families, too. The same-sex issue really has nothing to do with this case.