"You're the one who wanted to talk!" ;)
Posted on 01/01/2010 2:04:35 PM PST by Skooz
A woman at the center of a complex dispute with her former lesbian partner defied a court order to give up custody of her 7-year-old daughter, an attorney said Friday.
A Vermont judge had ordered Lisa Miller to turn over daughter Isabella to Janet Jenkins at 1 p.m. Friday at the Falls Church, Va., home of Jenkins' parents.
Miller did not show up with the girl, said Sarah Star, Jenkins' Vermont-based attorney. Jenkins has notified Fairfax County, Va., police that Isabella is missing, Star said.
"She's very disappointed, obviously," Star said. "She's very concerned about Isabella and asks that if anybody sees Isabella, that they please contact the authorities."
Quantcast 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.
When Vermont Family Court Judge William Cohen dissolved the couple's civil union, he awarded custody to Miller but granted liberal visitation rights to Jenkins.
The supreme courts of Virginia and Vermont ruled in favor of Jenkins, saying the case was the same as a custody dispute between a heterosexual couple. The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear arguments on it.
Cohen awarded custody 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.
But Cohen also noted that it appeared Miller had stopped speaking to her attorneys and "disappeared" with the child.
Miller's last known address is in Forest, Va. A telephone number listed for her at that address rang unanswered Friday.
Her attorney, Mathew D. Staver, the law school dean at Liberty University, did not respond to a request through an assistant for comment.
It defies common sense for the child-bearer to not get the child
What you have here is some lunatic judge trying to make a political point of some kind
I'll bet 99% of lesbians would say the real mother is the one who had the child.
That means real mother with all the rights a mother usually gets...
And with all the preferences and considerations courts gives mothers when it comes to a normal man-woman divorce
Lisa Miller only cut off visitation when her child Isabella went to Vermont and reported that Jenkins had molested her and bathed with her.
and no, Jenkins never filed for adoption. This is just gay rights activists pushing family courts to recognise the original civil union which is not and never was recognised in Virginia, where Isabella was born.
There is someone to root for in this case, and that’s Lisa Miller. I’d be proud to help her out, and if the government wanted to toss me in jail, it would be the easiest time ever.
I hope she doesen’t get cold feet and makes a clean break.
She realized the laws were twisted AFTER they stopped serving her agenda. She had no problem with them when she was living la vida dyka though.
I’m rooting for the bio-mom. Pretty easy decision for me.
Is homosexual marriage in VT the result of a vote by the people, the legislature, or judicially imposed? Which is it?
The child should go to the mother if she is of acceptable moral charecter or to adoption if otherwise. It was done this way in America up untill the 70’s. Doubtless though the “judge” in this case would regard this idea as “judgmental” (there's an irony!). But this “judge's” remedy is as morally specific and judgmental as anything done by anyone else any where else.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/07/AR2009040701663.html
Voted on by the legislature, vetoed by the governor then overridden.
Uh...both parties willingly entered into a Civil Union and both parties previously came to an agreement regarding custody and visitation.
As adults in America, we must be held responsible for the contracts we sign and claiming to change our sexuality and religion does not void those contracts.
Your logic is what's twisted, and your argument is so untenable I find it difficult to accept that you're putting it forward sincerely.
But let's give it the blunt end of a Hitler analogy. The Jews didn't leave after reading Mein Kampf. They stuck around after all the Nuremberg laws and the speeches and the broken glass. They want to marry a gentile? operate a business? suck air? They didn't walk out earlier, TFB! Now they got to take their medicine.
Or how about Betty who foolishly fell in love with a muslim, married him, went to visit his folks in Arabia to show off their baby daughter...and now Betty's eyes are open. Her husband wants to have the baby betrothed to his uncle, and by the way the little girl will need to undergo FGM.
Them's the rules. TFB.
So. What exactly is it about Ms. Miller that irritates you so much, you would rather see her suffer than spare her child?
Were the people denied an opportunity to vote on it?
You decided to expand the discussion with meaningless anecdotes. Miller was happy to partake in the laws of Vermont when they suited her. She chose the gay lifestyle. Now she doesn’t want to deal with the hardships that accompany her choices. I have no pity for her. What, she finds God and that means she gets a pass on being accountable for her past decisions? Gay people demand that they get treated the same as straight people. Same health benefits, same life/death decisions, same property and yes, same custody standards. She decides that she’s done with being gay and all of that equal rights and treatment she expected before doesn’t apply any longer?
No deal.
Oh, and her kid was screwed over the moment she was born with having a winner like Miller as her mother.
Not a referendum state.
Not really, many of the left women of the Weather underground in its various permutation spent decades living in the US despite being wanted for very serious crimes.
This is a minor issue and I suspect she can live a good while incognito if she is lucky. This is particularly true if she does not want or need to work.
No, from what I’ve read Jenkins never adopted the child.
This is not a normal contract case. It would be morally wrong for this mother to allow her daughter to be molested by her former lesbian partner. Would you subject the child to sexual abuse just to punish the biological mother for the bad decisions she made in the past - for which she has since repented?
You seem to want to subject Ms. Miller’s daughter to sexual abuse in order to satisfy your desire to see Ms. Miller properly punished for her past actions. That is a morally wrong. The judges actions and the laws of VT are morally wrong and thus should not be followed.
“She had no problem with them when she was living la vida dyka though.”
This is sort of what happens to anyone who comes to realize they’ve been engaged in bad behavior and now wants to change their life. For example, I’ll bet there have been many people who benefited from unjust, abusive, or oppressive laws, but then realized the problem and engaged in some sort of disobedience against those laws.
I think some men take lesbianism in general as an almost personal insult, at least when they’re not enjoying a spectacle; and the desire to punish these women overrides any other consideration. But certainly all present company is excluded.
"You're the one who wanted to talk!" ;)
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