It’s difficult not to get the sense, sometimes, when going up against Religious Right activists, that their beef is less with the gay community, but much more about their own personal demons. Such may be the case with Linda Wall, a candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates. If the name “Linda Wall” sounds familiar, it’s because she has shown up in pieces we’ve written in the past on the escaped child kidnapper Lisa Miller, a close friend of Linda’s. While we don’t know whether or not Wall was involved in Miller’s escape — the time she compared herself to Harriet Tubman in her “fight for the children” raised my eyebrows a bit — it’s safe to say that she’s extremely anti-gay and has little understanding of or respect for the law. So of course, we are not surprised to find out that back in the 1970′s, when she was a physical education teacher, she carried on a relationship with one of her junior high students:
A conservative independent seeking a House of Delegates seat from Appomattox says when she was a junior high teacher 40 years ago she had an affair with a female student but that she was a “different person” back then.
In an Associated Press interview on Wednesday, Linda Wall confirmed her sworn 2006 testimony in a lawsuit in which she admitted to “sexual relations with a minor” in the early 1970s when she taught physical education in Prince George County. The 61-year-old Wall said the affair was a long-ago, youthful mistake, not who she is now.
“I’ve never tried to hide that I was in homosexuality. If anybody Googles me, they would find that out there,” Wall said.
OH, Linda, back the hell up. This has nothing to do with you being “in homosexuality,” as it is a known fact that gays are no more likely to molest children than straight people are. So please do not think readers are so ignorant as to let you say, “oh well, I was gay then, but now I’m redeemed!”
The woman admits that she molested a female junior high student. At some point on her alleged path to healing and redemption, she was fed and adopted wholeheartedly the lie that her lesbianism was to blame for her molesting a female junior high student. I am quite sorry, but in the real world, that is not the excuse. Neither is this:
“Forty years ago I was a different person. I was a heavy pot smoker with … impaired judgment and made some bad choices,” she said. “You do that out of college sometimes. Some people do, some people don’t.”
“Oh, I was a stoner back then! Sometimes people get out of college and diddle little girls. Some people do, some people don’t.”
No.
Far from seeking elected office, Linda Wall needs to be seeking professional help, from REAL professionals, rather than the fundamentalist charlatan types who have convinced her that lesbianism and the demon weed are to blame for her molestation of a junior high student.
The politician who released the deposition where Linda admitted all of this, Paul Jost, had this to say:
“I did it because it shows Linda Wall is not fit to hold public office,” said Jost, who moved to Florida several years ago but retains business interests in Hampton Roads.
“To me, this isn’t about her sexuality. People have different feelings about that. To me, this is about a criminal act and that’s why I felt that it needed to be disclosed,” he said, denying that he acted to settle an old score.
Indeed. And I will say again what I said above, a little more strongly: it seems that, when dealing with staunchly anti-gay activists, it might be wise to assume from the outset that their public bigotry is somehow related to battles with their own private demons.
A federal grand jury in Vermont has indicted Timothy Miller, a Mennonite missionary who is accused of aiding Lisa Miller (no relation) in abducting 9-year-old Isabella Miller-Jenkins and taking her to Nicaragua.
According to the Associated Press, the indictment was dated May 12. According to an AP update, Timothy Miller remains free on bond.
Lisa Miller entered a Vermont civil union in 2000 with her then-partner, Janet Jenkins. After conceiving Isabella, Miller declared herself to be an “ex-lesbian” evangelical Christian and absconded to Virginia with Isabella in violation of family-court rulings granting visitation rights to Jenkins. In an interview with Christian media, Miller acknowledged a past of emotional instability and abuse, and indicated that she had not been sexually attracted to Jenkins despite her claim to be ex-lesbian. In late 2009, after years of adverse court rulings, Miller fled the country with Isabella, and full legal custody of Isabella was granted to Jenkins in Miller’s absence.
CBN News says Timothy Miller could face up to three years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.
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.
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.
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.
Following this weekend’s vote by the Senate to allow gays to openly serve in the military, Del. Bob Marshall (R-Prince WIlliam) said he is drafting a bill for the 2011 legislative session that would ban them from serving in the Virginia National Guard.
“This policy will weaken military recruitment and retention, and will increase pressure for a military draft,” Marshall said. “After 232 years of prohibiting active, open homosexuals from enlisting in our military, President Obama and a majority in Congress are conducting a social experiment with our troops and our national security…In countries where religions and cultures find homosexual acts immoral, the Obama administration’s repeal policy will work to the detriment of all American troops in securing local cooperation with our nation’s foreign policy goals.”
You never know when Virginia’s going to have to lose the Civil War again, so it’s important to keep The Gays out of the National Guard in the slave states, you see.
The experts said, “Awww, Bob Marshall, that is adorable”:
Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, general and legislative counsel for Equality Virginia, which advocates for gay rights, said the National Guard is is subject to the same rules as other federal military units.
“Any state statute seeking to set different standards for the Virginia National Guard would be a nullity with no effect,” she said. “It is a shame that Delegate Marshall would dishonor the brave men and women serving in our National Guard by seeking to make political points at their expense and waste the time of his colleagues in the Virginia General Assembly who have pressing matters to attend to like balancing the budget and finding solutions to the traffic problems that are the real and present concern of his constituents.”
But, but, but, Federalizms! And homophobia! And stuff!
Lisa Miller is the one-half of a Vermont lesbian couple that conceived daughter Isabella with partner Janet Jenkins — and then abducted Isabella and took her to Virginia. There, prejudiced state courts violated Vermont’s family-law jurisdiction over the family and allowed Miller to violate Jenkins’ visitation rights until the court rulings were overturned by Virginia’s Supreme Court in 2007.
Since then, Miller lived more-or-less openly as a fugitive — violating Jenkins’ visitation rights, showcasing her daughter as a Christian Right political trophy, and sharing her story of troubled celibacy and sexual confusion (which she described as an ex-lesbian fundamentalist freedom) to Christian Right media. Then, late last year, because Miller had violated Jenkins’ visitation rights since 2004, a Vermont judge issued a final ruling granting sole custody of Isabella to Jenkins.
By the time of that ruling, however, it appears that Miller had already absconded with Isabella again. Miller abandoned her Virginia home and left her lawyers at the fundamentalist Liberty Counsel supposedly unaware of her wishes and whereabouts, even as they continued to represent Miller in court.
LezGetReal now believes that Miller is hiding as a “missionary” in Quito, Ecuador, using a church group affiliated with HCJB Global as shelter for the abduction.
We hope that U.S. and Ecuadorian authorities urgently investigate.
Virginia’s attorney general Ken Cuccinelli is hard at work on the important issues of the day — like making sure the Roman goddess depicted on his state’s official seal isn’t exposing herself.
The current seal shows “Virtus, the goddess of virtue, dressed as a warrior,” with her foot resting “on the chest of the figure of tyranny, who is lying on the ground.” She is holding a spear and her left breast is exposed.
Or at least it was exposed. At a recent meeting, Cuccinelli provided pins to his staff with a new seal on which “Virtus’ bosom is covered by an armored breastplate,” the Virginia Pilot reported. These new pins were not paid for by taxpayer dollars, Cuccinelli’s office insisted.
Because, you see, what if kids see it and know that ladies have boobies? Because how would they have known otherwise?
So anyway, Ken gave Virtus a full-body burkha breast-plate, presumably to keep the male conservative Republicans in the state from masturbating furiously and continuously every time they see an official document from the state of Virginia.
It was a serious problem, you guys!
This, by the way, is the original seal:
Nico Pitney reminds us that this is not the first time Ken Cuccinelli has shown himself to be a completely mentally disturbed wingnut:
Cuccinelli has previously gained national notoriety for questioning President Obama’s citizenship,rescinding protections for gays and lesbians at Virginia universities, and claiming that homosexuals engage in behavior that is “intrinsically wrong” and offensive to “natural law.”
Uh huh. Like the natural law of scary, undefined, nipple-free boobies that give Ken Cuccinelli’s friends and family funny sensations in their tingle parts.
I’ve found in monitoring radical anti-gay Christian extremists that they’re usually not normal, rational people who happen to dislike gay people. Usually, they’re detached from reality on several fronts. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is apparently no exception. Cuccinelli, you’ll remember, decided to use his status as AG to direct Virginia’s colleges and universities to remove sexual orientation from their non-discrimination policies. Unfortunately for him, Virginia happens to be home to Smart Kid Schools, and smart kids and Christian fundamentalist windsockery go together like oil and water, and his efforts have been rebuffed so far.
He’s also embarrassing himself with his efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, which is the only primary healthcare source for many women.
But also? Cuccinelli seems to be a a hardcore birther, having been caught on tape having the following conversation:
Q What can we do about Obama and the birth certificate thing?
Cooch: It will get tested in my view when someone… when he signs a law, and someone is convicted of violating it and one of their defenses will be it is not a law because someone qualified to be President didn’t sign it.
Q: Is that something you can do as Attorney General? Can you do that or something?
Cooch: Well only if there is a conflict where we are suing the federal government for a law they’ve passed. So it’ possible.
Q: Because we are talking about the possibility that he was not born in America.
Cooch: Right. But at the same time under Rule 11, Federal Rule 11, we gotta have proof of it.
Q: How can we get proof?
Cooch: Well… that’ a good question. Not one I’ve thought a lot about because it hasn’t been part of my campaign. Someone is going to have to come forward with nailed down testimony that he was born in place B, wherever that is. You know, the speculation is Kenya. And that doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility.
Right Wing Watch has the video if you want to hear the Cooch for yourself.
This of course also reveals that Cuccinelli probably has race issues, since the birf certifkit thing has been so thoroughly debunked that only backwards knuckle dragging white people with inferiority complexes in the face of black men who are smarter than them still cling to the birther fantasies, the way they cling to guns and religion. (Hee hee.)
Okay, so let’s count. So far, Cuccinelli has
1. Major inferiority and fear issues where gays are concerned.
2. Major inferiority and fear issues where women are concerned.
3. Major inferiority and fear issues where Barack Obamas are concerned, going so far as to cling to fantasies that he is ineligible for the office of the presidency.
4. Probable Fear of a Black Planet.
Isn’t that enough? Isn’t that enough wingnut fear, enough wingnut neurosis, enough mental illness for one far right wingnut official?
In an overlooked recording from the campaign trail, candidate Cuccinelli told a crowd that he was considering not registering his son for a Social Security number because “it is being used to track you.” He also claimed that many others are not registering for Social Security numbers for the same reason.
Direct quote:
We’re gonna have our 7th child on Monday, if he’s not born before. And, for the very concerns you state, we’re actually considering — as I’m sure many of you here didn’t get a Social Security number when you were born, they do it now — we’re considering not doing that. And a lot of people are considering that now, because it is being used to track you.
Video:
Good lord!
Apparently, like Victoria Jackson, Ken Cuccinelli would be a lot safer if he wore a helmet. I’m worried he might hurt himself otherwise.
Anyway, here’s some music, just because it’s still one of the best responses to people like Ken Cuccinelli I’ve ever heard, and also because if Ken stumbles across this post, it might make him pee:
UPDATE: Another quick link for thee: Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog makes a solid case that Cuccinelli is not only a Birther, but also a Tenther (another fringe whackjob movement) and a liar (self-explanatory).
Betty Cracker at Rumproast has traveled into the future and brought back the headlines from wherever in the future she visited. (Next week sometime, Betty?) Anyway, who would have ever thought?
What a completely unexpected tragedy!
(If you don’t follow politics, and have somehow missed the stories that make this funny, click gay for Bob McDonnell and panic for Ken Cuccinelli. If you follow the long arc of these stories, they tend to have a certain, um, pattern, so, as Betty said, “it’s only a matter of time.”)
UPDATE: Jon Stewart took on the subject of the anti-gay lawmakers in Virginia, and their beautiful heads of hair, in a “Gaywatch” segment last night. Watch it, via Good-As-You:
Vermont Family Court Judge William Cohen has given ex-gay activist Lisa Miller 30 more days to appear in court with her 7-year-old child or face a contempt of court finding and possible arrest, according to The Roanoke Times.
Since 2004, Miller has violated repeated court orders to permit visitation by her ex-partner, Janet Jenkins. Late last year, Miller was finally ordered to surrender custody of their daughter to Jenkins, to ensure that their daughter Isabella enjoys her right to know both parents.
Miller violated the custody order on January 1 and disappeared with Isabella, who is now on the missing-children’s list of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Miller’s lawyers at the Liberty Counsel claim not to know their client’s whereabouts, but one of the Liberty Counsel’s attorneys created a Facebook group which supports Miller’s abduction of Isabella and subsequent disappearance.
Since 2004, Miller has violated repeated orders to permit visitation by her ex-partner Janet Jenkins. First, Miller sought refuge in Virginia from Vermont’s family court system, which has jurisdiction over her former union with Jenkins. When Virginia’s Supreme Court effectively ruled last year that Vermont has jurisdiction, Miller continued to violate court orders defending the visitation rights of Isabella and Janet.
Miller’s illegal activities left Vermont with no choice but to transfer custody to Jenkins, effective January 1. Then, it seems, Miller began plotting to go into hiding with Isabella — with the affirmation of Liberty Counsel attorney Rena Lindevaldsen and ex-gay activist Debbie Thurman. The latter pair’s Facebook group affirms the apparent kidnapping as a fundamentalist “Christian” act of “civil disobedience.”
A hearing will be held Friday in Vermont to discuss next steps.
It’s difficult not to get the sense, sometimes, when going up against Religious Right activists, that their beef is less with the gay community, but much more about their own personal demons. Such may be the case with Linda Wall, a candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates. If the name “Linda Wall” sounds familiar, it’s because she has shown up in pieces we’ve written in the past on the escaped child kidnapper Lisa Miller, a close friend of Linda’s. While we don’t know whether or not Wall was involved in Miller’s escape — the time she compared herself to Harriet Tubman in her “fight for the children” raised my eyebrows a bit — it’s safe to say that she’s extremely anti-gay and has little understanding of or respect for the law. So of course, we are not surprised to find out that back in the 1970′s, when she was a physical education teacher, she carried on a relationship with one of her junior high students:
Since then, Miller lived more-or-less openly as a fugitive — violating Jenkins’ visitation rights, showcasing her daughter as a Christian Right political trophy, and sharing her story of troubled celibacy and sexual confusion (which she described as an ex-lesbian fundamentalist freedom) to Christian Right media. Then, late last year, because Miller had violated Jenkins’ visitation rights since 2004, a Vermont judge issued a final ruling granting sole custody of Isabella to Jenkins.
Isabella Ruth Miller-Jenkins, daughter of 
