Posted on 12/30/2009 7:39:32 AM PST by walford
...Miller and Jenkins were joined in a Vermont civil union in 2000. Isabella was born to Miller through artificial insemination in 2002. The couple broke up in 2003, and Miller moved to Virginia, renounced homosexuality and became an evangelical Christian.
Cohen awarded custody of the girl to Jenkins on Nov. 20 after finding Miller in contempt of court for denying Jenkins access to the girl.
The judge said the only way to ensure equal access to the child was to switch custody. He also said the benefits to the child of having access to both parents would be worth the difficulties of the change...
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
You know, that perfectly sums up exactly what I feel about the matter.
Although I am married (I got married back in 1985 and am still married) it did seem a bit strange to me to have to go through the process of getting a marriage "license" and then go through the church ceremony of getting married. I figured that the marriage should be done in a church and the government should record and enforce the legal contract between the two parties, but just call it a contract between two persons.
Apparently back a long time ago people thought it was a good idea for the government to issue marriage licenses and approve marriages. I am sure that it seemed like a good idea at the time, collecting a fee for the marriage license and joining the two persons together for legal purposes in one easy step.
But as with all laws when society changes (or when a vocal and determined and activist minority gets into power) the law gets stretched and winds up being used in ways that it was not originally intended.
So not only do actions have consequences, laws have consequences down the road too.
THis is a complex case, one that isn’t suited to the sound-bite treatment it is given in our forums.
Obviously, we know that the homosexual lifestyle is harmful, so the child would be best placed with her mother, and not forced to see the other woman and her lesbian partner.
However, society has not deemed that the homosexual lifestyle is harmful to the child, so no judge is going to deny access to the homosexual partner based on “interest of the child”, any more than they would cut off a man’s visitation rights if the man left his wife because he announced he was homosexual.
And of course, the other woman has no biological attachment to the child, while the mother in Virginia does. But they were in a legal civil partnership when they decided to have the child, and the other woman adopted the child. Suppose it was reversed, would we argue that the virginia mother could be denied access to the child she had adopted, simply because the other woman gave birth?
Well, of course, because we know that biological attachment is critically important (sometimes I get yelled at for saying that, by freepers who had to adopt children, but it’s just a fact of life, that is borne out when adopted children go out of their way to discover who their biological parents are). But again, the law does not give absolute deference to biological imperative, especially when legal adoption has taken place, as in this case.
So really, it comes down to this: The couple’s “divorce” from their civil union included giving the natural mother custody, with full visitation rights to the other woman.
But the natural mother, because she realised that her homosexuality was wrong, chose to disobey the legal order for visitation. And how could she not? She couldn’t get the court to change the visitation rules, since the court would never rule to ignore a legal adoption, or to find that homosexuality was something the child had to be protected from.
But the courts have their hands tied. The other mother has legal visitation rights, which the birth mother who has custody has “illegally” cut off. So the court is switching custody, on the promise of the Vt. woman that she will maintain the same visitation rules as were previously in force.
Which could mean that in the end, the child spends exactly the same amount of time with each mother now as she was supposed to before.
Of course, this is all a travesty, but it was caused by the birth mother when she entered into a homosexual union, and decided to have a child with the other woman.
Under the “biological imperative”, we would ignore the other woman, but then the sperm donor would have equal claim to the child, something that people who use sperm donors would be opposed to.
Virginia has strict rules — we don’t support civil unions, we don’t allow homosexual adoptions. But we do have to abide by the laws of other states when citizens freely enter into contracts. We certainly don’t want other states to abrogate custody orders from our courts.
I feel sorry for the Child.
The two Dykes made their own beds, now thay have to sleep in them.
Yes, the other woman is the legal guardian of the child, with a legally enforceable adoption, fully separate from the issue of the legal civil union (which Virginia does not recognise).
The legal adoption lead to the other woman being granted court-ordered visitation, and the refusal of the birth mother to honor that court order that lead to this new ruling.
Virginia courts are not prone to agreeing to illegal acts.
Children never get to “consent” to being raised in an alternative sexual relationship household.
This is judicial activism at its worst.
Was the non-birth woman paying child support?
Government has a compelling interest in encouraging heterosexual marriage commitments, as this aids procreation and therefore the propetuation of the citizenry, as well as providing a stable societal unit to raise the next generation, free from burdens on other citizens.
Homosexual unions do not provide this societal benefit, and should therefore not be encouraged. And since biological bonding is the best way to ensure a stable family unit and nurture for the next generation, there is no need to encourage other forms of union where you cannot have biological parents raising the children.
Where do you have a link showing any adoption? I’ve provided several on various threads showing there was NOT.
Certainly not to a non-birth male parent.
Out of her own mouth:
***************
Until that point, Miller says, she begged Jenkins to file adoption papers, because she didn’t want Isabella to end up as a ward of the state if something happened to her. “I was told we didn’t need to because we had the civil union,” says Jenkins. “God, if I had only known.”
http://www.newsweek.com/id/172554/page/1
****************
Miller has a different interpretation, of course, but the fact is there WAS no adoption. It’s also interesting that the two met in AA. I wonder which (if either) of them is still sober?
The family court system has been a complete joke for forty years (remember the 60’s?). The “interests of the children” has been their last priority. The transfer of wealth has been their first.
In slack-jawed lockstep with the progressive (oxymoron) movement, the family court system has rewarded every fringe element of society at the expense of normalcy and common sense.
Now, in a reach too far, they have perhaps set the precedent for their own undoing. The linchpin of their approach to arbitration was that the mothers rights were superior to any other. In awarding the child to a third party for no justifiable reason (child welfare, substance abuse, neglect, etc) the court has broken its only “sacred” bond.
I hope this breaks the family court or forces them to start over. Nothing is better than the crap sandwich they’ve been serving.
I’m sorry, this seems to be a semantic argument, but you are correct that there is no explicit adoption.
In Vermont, a child born through artificial insemination to a couple in a civil union is explicitly recognized as being adopted by the non-birth parent. So there was no more need for an “adoption” by the non-birth mother than there would be for a husband and wife if you later found out that the child was not the husband’s.
Now, Virginia does not recognize the parental rights of a non-birth parent from a civil union. However, Virginia does recognize the court custody decisions of other states, and since the couple lived in Vermont when the child was born, the woman was out of luck when she tried to use the Virginia law to circumvent Vermont law.
Not that this was a cut-and-dry case, and I would have been pleased if the Virginia courts had ruled differently, but the ruling is understandable and legally defensible.
Freedom is a gift of G-d. If you twist the law to honor that which G-d outlaws, you lose freedom and pervert the law. That has happened here.
Did she adopt the baby? ...... It is my understanding that she did not... and that the birth mother was allowing visitation until the little girl was forced to bathe with the other mother and came home with screaming nightmares and betwetting (at 7).
I would disappear as well.
The Perverts Run The Asylum...
BUMP!!!
So later, the argument was whether Virginia law or Vermont law should apply. Virginia courts eventually ruled that Vermont won out. After all, they went to vermont to get their civil union, and they moved to vermont to get legal protections.
It's hard to sort out the story listening to the two women, because they tell very different stories, and each has a tilt that helps them in their legal arguments. So Miller, who wanted Virginia to rule that Jenkins had no legal rights to the child, would obviously want to emphasize the pleading for adoption, because Miller wanted Virginia to rule that there was no adoption and that Vermont's parental rules regarding civil unions were inapplicable.
But the courts ruled otherwise.
Another Vermont judge did what? Wait till BOR get’s a hold of this.
Whether you or I like it or not, there was a civil ceremony. In cases like this where there are a man and a woman involved, the husband does not have to adopt to be recognized as the parent of the child, even if the mother delivers under the precise conditions Miller did in this situation.
Adoption just doesn’t apply here. The non-custodial parent is a legal parent. And if they exercised their rights and were granted visitation, it’s not out of the ordinary, other than that this is two female parents we’re talking about here.
This is only one of the problems a homosexual marriage can lead to. When these two women joined together in that civil ceremony, they did so against the vast majority of the public’s better judgment. “They deserved equal treatment.” That was their mindset. Well, now they have that equal treatment to fall back on.
I’m actually sorry the child is exposed to this. I am sorry it was brought into such a relationship in the first place. Miller’s judgment has been woefully inadequate prior to ‘getting religion.’ That is indeed unfortunate.
Perhaps now she understands why the public was right all along. Sadly that knowledge isn’t going to spare the child.
At one point the child being in the midst of a homosexual family was just peachy for Miller. Now she doesn’t want that for the child. Admirable, just years too late.
This is an old saying that has a familiar punch line at the end. In this case, only the first half fits.
Oh what a tangled web we weave.
I totally believe that. I've seen ex-wives do all kinds of things to manipulate these situations. The most common tactic is screw up dad's visitation plans, and it's usually timed to maximize cost, hassle, and time wasted. It's also really common to tell kids all kinds of horrible things about the other spouse to turn them against the other spouse. It's really rotten and petty to use kids as pawns like this.
Just FYI: Jenkins, the other woman (the lesbian) never adopted Isabella (the girl).
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