Every judge in the land is activist, you see, what with the way they read the law and stuff:

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court has declined to step into a lesbian custody dispute between a woman who has renounced her homosexuality and her onetime partner.

The justices on Monday turned down an appeal from Lisa Miller, the biological mother of an 8-year-old girl. Miller wanted the court to undo a Virginia court decision allowing Janet Jenkins visitation rights with the girl.

Lisa Miller is still on the lam, of course.

This comes on the heels of the Vermont Supreme Court granting full custody of the kidnapping victim, Isabella, to her mother Janet Jenkins.

[h/t Joe]

It’s too bad Isabella Miller-Jenkins’ other mother, Lisa Miller, is apparently a kidnapper. The Vermont Supreme Court has weighed in on the court order which gave Janet Jenkins sole custody of her daughter:

The Vermont supreme court has unanimously granted custody to a lesbian who has been battling to become the guardian of the young girl she and her former partner raised together.

The ruling is in favor of Vermont resident Janet Jenkins, affirming a 2009 court order giving her sole physical and legal custody of Isabella Miller-Jenkins. Lisa Miller, Jenkins’ former partner, is still missing with their 8-year-old daughter, according to Gay and Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, which argued on Jenkins’ behalf before the supreme court.

This story is just so sad, and shows the childish lengths fundamentalist Christians will go to to defend their fantasy-based worldview.

Traditional values!

The Lisa Miller/Janet Jenkins saga continues, as the case was argued before the Vermont Supreme Court, with Lisa Miller and Isabella, of course, still likely out of the country:

(Dillon) This is the second time that the Supreme Court has heard arguments in a bitter child custody battle between two women who were former partners.
But the case took a new turn in January, when Lisa Miller – who now lives in Virginia – failed to appear to hand over the child in a court-ordered custody swap.
Miller’s lawyer is Rena Lindevaldsen. She says she hasn’t heard from her client in months and doesn’t know where she is. And she told the state Supreme Court that a Vermont trial judge was wrong to award custody to Miller’s former partner.
(Lindevaldsen) You’re switching from the first time anywhere in this nation from a fit biological parent that individual’s child and switching to somebody who has been declared to be a parent who is not that child’s biological or adoptive parent.
(Dillon) But associate Justice John Dooley challenged the lawyer on a number of points. First, Dooley asked: what about men whose children were conceived through reproductive technologies.”
(Dooley) “So I take it your position would be the same to a father, to a husband, for whose spouse was impregnated by artificial insemination – he could not ask for custody in a proceeding if they went through a divorce? Is that right?”
(Lindevaldsen) “Unless of course he adopted the child in the meantime.”
(Dillon) But Dooley said because the couple had been joined in a Vermont civil union the child did not have to be adopted in order for Jenkins to be considered a legal parent.
Then Chief Justice Paul Reiber weighed in. Reiber brought up the issue of Lisa Miller’s contempt of court citations. The Virginia woman faces arrest because she defied a court order and disappeared with the child.
(Reiber) “You said a few moments ago that your client, your referred to her as a “fit parent.” Hasn’t she had seven or eight contempt orders issued against her?”

That’s the trouble with anti-gay fundamentalists trying to be heard in courts of law. Since everything they believe is preposterous nonsense, it doesn’t tend to go well for them.

(h/t Kyle)