When Gay Parents are "Legal Strangers" to a Child

Here's yet another reason why withholding marriage rights to same-sex couples can lead to sad and unforseen consequences.  This story - as do so many others recently - comes out of the Land of Mormons. 

From the Salt Lake Tribune:  Gena Edvalson tried for years to be a mom. So when her partner of six years, Jana Dickson, became pregnant through artificial insemination and gave birth to a boy in March 2006, nothing brought her "instantly more joy."  And nothing brought Edvalson more pain than a recent court ruling depriving her of a chance to even visit the child.  After all, she had eyed every ultrasound. She had read Little Quack to "the little guy" when he was inside Dickson's womb. She had clicked on a flashlight throughout his first night home from the hospital to check on the sleeping babe.  Both Salt Lake City women, were "mama" and - with the help of lactation medication for Edvalson - both breast-fed the newborn.  But the two split up when the boy was 17 months old and last week, after a yearlong legal fight, Edvalson was cut off from any contact with the 3-year-old she loves as a son.  A 3rd District judge, citing a 2008 Utah law, upheld Dickson's "fundamental" right, as the biological parent, to refuse visitation.

What's weird about this case - or maybe not so weird, when you look at the whole sordid picture - is that lawyers from the right-wing Alliance Defense Fund jumped in, Bibles blazing, to defend the mother who wanted to deny visitation rights to her ex-partner.  There can be no earthly reason why they would take this on except to cause pain to Gena Edvalson.  They don't care one whit about the birth mother - or the child.  To them, it's a matter of spreading grief in the name of their compassionless "Christian" love.  

Kyle at Right Wing Watch observes:  There is absolutely no way that ADF would have gotten involved in a similar visitation dispute between a former straight couple, and since the organization seemingly had no reason step in to this case on religious grounds, it seems that, in essence, ADF got involved simply to further its own anti-gay agenda.  I know I shouldn't be shocked buy this sort of thing - especially since ADF was recently involved in the (unsuccessful) effort to get a foster child removed from her lesbian parents in West Virginia - but I still find the Religions Right's willingness to destroy family relationships in the name of "protecting family values" utterly repulsive.

ADF's shrill intervention exposes the slimy motives of fundie organizations intent on ruining gay lives, whatever the cost.  But this lesbian mother is not blameless, either.  Ms. Dickson claims that she supports marriage equality and that she isn't one of those "born-again" gay Christians who suddenly "finds Jesus" in order to deny visitation rights to an ex-partner.  But her actions indicate that she's just as self-serving as they are.  By accepting help from the Alliance Defense Fund, she is aligning herself with people who would criminalize same-sex relationships and eliminate the rights of every LGBT person in America - and she's doing it at the expense of a little boy who deserves to have the love of both his "mamas."  She should know better, the ghouls at ADF obviously don't.

Comments

[Aggie, Fair Haven, Vt.]

The ADF is taking a page from Liberty Counsel's playbook which they've used in the Jenkins-Miller case. I have a hypothetical... what if a hetero couple had a baby through IVF, say dad was sterile or something. Could mom pull this same stunt and get a ruling that the dad is not bio, therefore has no rights? As a teacher, I don't care whether a kid has two dads, two moms, whatever... two involved parents are better than one, and the gender combination is of no concern to me. It's all good.