Lisa Miller and Janet Jenkins were united in a Vermont civil union in 2000. But in subsequent interviews, it became apparent that Miller was not sexually attracted to Jenkins; she may have entered the relationship as a coping mechanism in her struggle with childhood abuse and codependency.

In 2003, Miller became an “ex-gay” activist and absconded to Virginia with Isabella, the couple’s daughter. Utilizing support from Christian Right groups, Miller launched a seven-year campaign in which she violated a series of family-court rulings and appellate decisions in favor of Jenkins’ visitation rights. Due to the repeat violations and failures to appear in court, Miller’s custody rights were revoked in late 2009. At that time, Lisa allegedly abducted Isabella and became a fugitive.

Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders announced today:

As just reported in the Rutland Herald (pay site), there has been an arrest in the custody case involving former civil-union partners Janet Jenkins and Lisa Miller, and their daughter, Isabella Miller-Jenkins. Lisa did not comply with a court order to transfer custody of Isabella to Janet on January 1, 2010.

The person arrested is one Timothy David Miller (link to criminal complaint). Little more is known at this point.

Janet Jenkins issued the following statement from her home in Vermont:

“I’m grateful to everyone in law enforcement for working so hard on finding my daughter, as well as to my attorney, Sarah Star. I know very little at this point, but I really hope that this means that Isabella is safe and well. I am looking forward to having my daughter home safe with me very soon.”

Attorney Sarah Star of Middlebury, who has been representing Janet, said, “It is clear that the government has been working hard on this. Janet is very pleased and we are both hopeful that this will be a step in the right direction of bringing Isabella home. At this point we need to let law enforcement do their work, and recognize that there are still steps to go.”

Mr. Miller will make an initial appearance in U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont in Burlington on Monday, April 25, at 9 a.m.

Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders has represented Janet at the appellate level in Vermont; Lambda Legal has represented Janet at the appellate level in Virginia.

The Rutland Herald identifies Timothy as “a Tennessee man and Central American missionary” who arranged passage to Nicaragua for Lisa Miller and her non-custodial daughter. Prosecutors say Timothy, who is not related to Lisa, is one of several individuals who aided Lisa as a fugitive from justice. Timothy was arrested in Virginia.

According to the Herald:

In emails and social media messages obtained through federal search warrants, investigators say they tracked Miller’s departure from the U.S. through a border crossing near Buffalo, N.Y., on Sept. 22, 2009.

On that same day, Miller reportedly boarded a plane in Ontario that took her and her daughter to Mexico City. From there, the pair passed through El Salvador before arriving in Nicaragua where investigators say Miller is associated with the Christian Aid Ministries organization in Managua, Nicaragua.

The Herald adds that the Christian Right’s Liberty Counsel — which has filed frivolous lawsuits on behalf of Exodus International and other antigay groups against watchdogs and tolerant school districts — may have aided the abduction.

Investigators say they found an email conversation between Tim Miller and Philip Zodhiates, who Kaegel described as a “leader” within Liberty Counsel — the Virginia-based group whose lawyers defended Miller.

The email messages, sent in November, 2009, are referenced under the subject lines as “bag for Nicaragua” and discuss the sending of packages from Virginia to Nicaragua.

“They are just personal belongings of someone who recently moved to Managua doing missions work and a few things they can’t buy there readily like peanut butter. So it is nothing you need to declare on the customs form,” Zodhiates wrote in an email to a man in Virginia.

Lisa Miller’s lawyers said in court at the beginning of 2010 that they did not know the whereabouts of their client.

Zodhiates is a Christian Right mailing-list vendor who allegedly asked his daughter, a Liberty School of Law employee, to disseminate requests for aid to Lisa.

As Truth Wins Out has previously observed, Liberty Counsel attorney Rena Lindevaldsen affirmed the abduction of Isabella and covered for Lisa during missed court appearances around the time of the abduction. Other watchdog groups such as People for the American Way have noted the extremes to which Liberty Counsel has gone, to place Isabella in the hands of an apparently unfit “ex-gay” parent.

Last night on Facebook, I gave Jan Brewer a hair of credit for vetoing a birther bill that would require candidates to prove their US citizenship, either through a birth certificate or perhaps, a circumcision record [really], to Arizona’s Secretary of State before being allowed on the ballot.  Apparently even Jan Brewer is weirded out by the idea of a candidate bringing his ritual penis cutting certificate to the State House. 

But let us not get too excited, please?  Jan Brewer is still one of the world’s worst wingnuts, and the goalposts of “too crazy” have been moved so far to the right in the past several years that she really deserves no credit for doing one sane thing.  Moreover, on the same day she vetoed that birther bill, she signed this one:

Yesterday, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) signed Senate Bill 1188, requiring state-funded and private adoption agencies “to give primary consideration to adoptive placement with a married man and woman, with all other criteria being equal.” This doesn’t mean that gay couples wouldn’t be able to adopt in the state, but they would have to fall to the back of the line simply because of their sexual orientation.

Absent any evidence that straight adoptive parents are better than gay adoptive parents [religious dogma is not evidence, fools], and flat against the needs of her state’s children, she decided to go ahead and sign this bigoted bill which simply seeks to make gay and lesbian couples’ lives more difficult.

Tom Mann of Equality Arizona had this to say:

“The governor’s action today is harmful to children in foster care and group homes who are seeking a permanent home and the support of a loving, caring family,” Mann said. “SB 1188 takes the focus off of what’s in the best interest of a child when adoption decisions should be made on a case-by-case basis, according to what’s in a child’s best interest. Each case is unique. For example, adoption authorities may have the choice between placing a child with a beloved single aunt — or complete strangers. The only consideration should be determining what’s in the best interest of the child.”

Duh.

Interesting report on CNN in light of the study that found that gay couples in the South are more likely to be raising children than their counterparts elsewhere:

[h/t Joe]

Something a little lighter.

All together now: Awwwwwww.

As Andy Towle said about this clip, things like this are why the bigots are losing. Watch this moving speech from 19-year-old Zach Wahls about his gay moms, which he gave during the public hearings on an amendment to ban gay marriage in Iowa.

Priorities!

A Harps supermarket in Mountain View, Arkansas has placed a “family shield” over the Us Weekly cover of Elton John with his partner David Furnish and their new baby, to protect innocent children.

Like so:

BUT! Here is the thing! They put the shield up after a few wingnuts complained, but took it back down after normal people called them outraged. Victory! The following statement now appears on their website:

This is why it’s always worth it, when these things happen, to follow up and communicate with the people involved in the situation.  There, you have the COO of Harps Food Stores agreeing with the good guys and saying, “Y’all are right.  That was a stupid decision.  Fixed now!”

Good for them.

Yay!

[h/t Towleroad]

So, the new Republican governor of Florida, Rick Scott, thinks that court rulings don’t apply to him, because of His Beliefs probably, so he’s got a new plan to make sure that kids in foster care stay there as long as possible:

Despite a state appellate panel’s ruling last year striking down the Florida ban on adoption by “homosexual” people and the decision by the then-governor and attorney general — Republican-turned-Independent Charlie Crist and Republican Bill McCullom, respectively — that they would not pursue State Supreme Court review of the decision, the new governor, Republican Rick Scott, is stoking the fire that most had considered extinguished for good.

According to the Associated Press, when Scott appeared before reporters in Tallahassee on January 19 to discussed his newly appointed director of Children and Families, David Wilkins, he said, “Adoption should be by a married couple.”

In response to Scott’s statement, Florida Together, an LGBT equality group, said, “Obviously, this is an end-run around the courts on gay and lesbian-inclusive adoption. It could remove millions of Floridians from the adoption process and leave tens of thousands of children in state foster care who could otherwise be adopted by loving families.”

The article goes on to point out that David Wilkins is the finance chair of Florida Baptist Children’s Homes, which is just like it sounds. How many times does it have to be said: no one cares about your Deeply Held Personal Beliefs, but if you can’t check them at the door when it’s time to go to grown-up work, especially if you are in government, then maybe it’s time to find a new job.

This is good news for all gay couples who choose to have children via surrogates:

During a two-year legal battle, Anthony and Shawn Raftopol, Americans who live in Holland, worried that only one of the men was the legal parent of their young twin boys.

The gay couple married legally in Massachusetts in 2008. Their twins, Sebastiann and Lukas, now 2, were born in Connecticut through in-vitro fertilization with a donor egg and a surrogate mother.

Anthony Raftopol was the biological father and, under family law, had full parental rights. But when the couple tried to obtain a birth certificate, also naming Shawn, they were told he had no legal claim to the children.

[...]

But the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled this week that Shawn Raftopol, 40, has parenting rights, even thought he is not the biological father, because the couple had a valid surrogacy agreement.

The court rejected the state’s argument that the co-parent would have to go through a second-parent adoption proceeding in order to be listed on the birth certificates.

The decision will have far-reaching ramifications for other couples — gay and straight — who choose to have their children through surrogacy.

It seems like such a no-brainer, but it’s good news that the courts are slowly starting to catch up.

What a freakshow Rick Santorum continues to be:

In an interview with CNS News on Thursday, former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum invoked race in unleashing a questionable attack on President Barack Obama over the issue of abortion.

“The question is, and this is what Barack Obama didn’t want to answer — is that human life a person under the constitution?” he said. “And Barack Obama says no. Well if that human life is not a person then I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say ‘now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people.’”

He also said that “no biologist in the world” would disagree that an embryo is “human life,” which is a really cute way to word that. Of course that is a potential human life. That is not the point, and it does not mean it deserves the same rights as a living, breathing human being.

That being said, I just love it when conservative white men start man-splaining how minorities should feel. They damn themselves with their own pig ignorant words.

Oh, how I hope this clown runs for president.

But we ain’t done yet!  Oh, no no no.  In the very same interview, he said that keeping gay people from marrying/adopting children is “common sense” and added:

This is nature. And what we’re trying to do is defy nature because a certain group of people want to be affirmed by society.

What does it remind you of?  If you said “Southern racists all the way up to yesterday, whether talking about miscegenation or upholding slavery or whatever the hell else,” you win the prize, because his language is the exact same as the language they used.  Same poorly educated hick bigotry, different minority, different day.

[h/t Towleroad]

Again:  Please run for president, you rube.