What could possibly go wrong...

...with an arrangement like this?

M'learned friend's remarks constitute the most hilarious exercise in special pleading I expect to come across in 2012:-

He added: "Notwithstanding their sexuality and that they acknowledge to that extent that they are an 'alternative family', the mother and her partner hold very traditional views of family life and would not have chosen to bring a child into anything other than an intact, two-parent, family.

Yes, indeed, time-hallowed tradition awards the prerogatives of parenthood to the hand that wielded the cake-icer and withholds them from the one which manipulated the membrum virile. I can't exactly recall reading this in the Book of Common Prayer but no doubt it's in there somewhere, perhaps tucked away between the Churching of Women and the Service of Commination.

The only thing spoiling the joke is the fact that the football being kicked around by three people used to having their own way is actually a child. My advice to the judges would be to adopt the creatively traditionalist approach in their turn and propose to satisfy all the parties by dividing the infant into three equal portions.