Activist Applauds Ruling That "Virginia Is Not Vermont"
by Rusty Pugh and Jenni Parker
September 2, 2004
(AgapePress) - A federal judge in Winchester, Virginia, recently undid a bit of homosexual activist strategy when he ruled that Vermont had no jurisdiction in a custody case involving a two women who were formerly joined in a Vermont civil union.
The court battle involves an ex-homosexual woman in Virginia who is trying to gain full custody of her biological child in a battle with her former partner, a lesbian woman who lives in Vermont. After the couple broke up, the biological mother of the child moved from Vermont back to Virginia, where public policy does not recognize same-sex unions or other marriage-like relationships.Invoking the state's Marriage Affirmation Act, federal judge John Prosser ruled that Vermont's civil union law could have no bearing on the case, since such same-sex unions are effectively null and void in the State of Virginia. The judge's decision gave the State of Virginia sole jurisdiction in the matter.
Victoria Cobb of the Family Foundation of Virginia applauds Prosser for sending a clear message that Virginia is not Vermont. She says this entire case is the result of a judicially-imposed controversy -- one she suspects the Vermont court may have anticipated when it created a law encouraging same-sex couples to come there to obtain civil unions, then return to the state in which they live. Cobb believes the Vermont judges must have known their legalization of civil unions would result in just the sort of legal chaos the Virginia custody case entails. "They had to know the consequences would be these kinds of court battles," she says. "In fact, I think they hoped other state courts would impose their will as well. That just didn't happen in this decision."
The Virginia custody battle came about as the result of what Cobb calls "an artificial relationship," which was created by one of the only states in the union that allows such arrangements. When that artificial union broke apart, the courts were left to sort things out, and the pro-family advocate remarks, "I think the saddest part is that the children are the ones caught in this legal mess."
Cobb says the homosexual activists' strategy did not prevail in this case because Virginia had the courage to pass the Marriage Affirmation Act, and a judge had the courage to uphold it. She says cases like this are the reason the state passed the measure prohibiting civil unions and other marriage-like arrangements between same-sex couples.
