Concerned Women for America Press Release, June 6, 2008:

Washington, D.C. — The Virginia Supreme Court temporarily avoided locking horns with the state of Vermont today. The Commonwealth’s highest court did not rule on the merits of a case which would have determined whether Virginia will respect the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Virginia’s Marriage Affirmation Act (MAA), and Virginia’s own constitution, or whether it will allow the state of Vermont to redefine marriage and family in the Commonwealth.

The Vermont Supreme Court had granted Janet Jenkins, the former lesbian partner of Lisa Miller, parental rights over Miller’s daughter Isabella, even though Jenkins has no relationship to the little girl and is neither an adoptive nor a biological parent.

Photo appearing on homosexual group Equality California’s website. The group will be leading efforts to oppose a proposed constitutional amendment to protect marriage as one-man, one-woman in that state.

By Peter LaBarbera

One of the factors that makes the homosexual activist agenda so peculiarly evil is its habit of glomming on to humanity’s most noble institutions and truths — parenting, marriage, love, honesty, justice and “equality” — and putting them in the service of its starkly ignoble cause of winning acceptance for immoral and unhealthy homosexual behavior.

Dear AFTAH Readers,

Either I’m going nuts or the sentence in blue below is one of the strangest ever to begin an opinion piece — especially one titled, “Ordinary, Like Us.” Lesbian writer Jennifer Vanasco writes in the homosexual newspaper Chicago Free Press:

Young gays and lesbians want to be married. And have kids.

That’s what the first survey of the aspirations of gay and lesbian youth discovered.

Rockway Institute reported that more than 90 percent of the lesbians and more than 80 percent of the gay males they surveyed “expect to be partnered in a monogamous relationship after age 30.”

About two-thirds of the males and just over half of the females said they thought it was very likely they’d have children.

What’s extraordinary about this is just how very ordinary it is….

Gay and lesbian youth want stable marriages and children?

Of course they do.

Because they have grown up in an America where being gay is starting to seem unremarkable. Where being gay doesn’t need to mean living a particular way. Where being gay doesn’t have to mean putting limits on your future.

Young gays and lesbians don’t want to destroy “traditional marriage” the way social conservatives fear. They want to be traditional – and one state, Massachusetts, allows them to do that. Hopefully others will follow. … [Click HERE to read the whole piece reprinted on the Independent Gay Forum website]

Now, Vanasco’s entire piece deserves a response point-by-point, but here I only want to discuss the calculated semantic distortion by her and fellow homosexualists of using the words “having kids.”

Think about it: what’s the phrase we use regarding infertile couples? “Oh, have you heard? John and Nancy can’t have children.” In this context, to “have” means to beget, to produce, to procreate, through God’s wonderful plan of conception and pregnancy. The context is always people who normally could produce children, but something has gone awry preventing Nature from taking its course.

Matt Barber, Policy Director for Cultural Issues at Concerned Women for America (and Board Member or Americans For Truth), has requested prayer for Lisa and Isabella Miller, whose tragic case will be heard before the Virginia Supreme Court this Thursday, April 17. Lisa Miller is a born-again Christian who abandoned the lesbian lifestyle. As Matt writes, “this hearing will determine whether a lesbian woman who is Lisa Miller’s former partner will share custody of Isabella, Lisa’s daughter. The woman is neither an adoptive parent nor is she biologically related to Isabella. In fact, she’s a total stranger to the little girl. Isabella, who is now 6-years-old, hadn’t seen this woman since she was 17-months-old. This case could have national ramifications and will help decide whether state’s like Vermont and Massachusetts get to export their radical new definitions of marriage and family around the country.”

Please pray for justice and protection of this innocent child. You can commit to praying for the Millers at www.cwfa.org/millersign.asp. Below is Matt Barber’s original column on this sad situation:

You’re Not My Mommy!

By J. Matt Barber

This article was published by CWA on August 1, 2007:

The person trying to take Isabella away from her mother is entirely unrelated to the little girl and is essentially a total stranger.

Stephen Green, national director of [British group] Christian Voice, said, “It seems that Christians are gradually being squeezed out of the adoption process. It’s exactly what we said would happen. In the name of equality, it’s discriminating against Christians.” 

 British couple Owen and Eunice Johns are being denied as foster parents because they agree with their Creator about homosexuality.

By Peter LaBarbera

Commenting on LifesiteNews story by Hillary White:  http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/feb/08022705.html

For more information, see the British Christian Legal Centre’s site at: http://www.christianlegalcentre.com/view.php?id=253

The once-great nation of Britain is being reduced to a bastion of politically correct silliness. Is America next? So now British couples aren’t qualified to raise children unless they can recite pro-“gay” shibboleths?

Why no, Johnny, you don’t have to have a man and a woman to get married — in fact, two daddies are often better at raising children than a mommy and a daddy. When you are old enough, we will tell you all you need to know so we can support you if you have a gay or transgender orientation. Did you know that being gay is a one of God’s gifts for special people?”

You chuckle, but it is surreal to behold the deterioration of Western civilization before our very eyes — one sad story like this at a time. Meanwhile, smug, agnostic pundits and religious leftists like Jim Wallis castigate the “Religious Right,” which is made up of people who are merely trying their best to hold back the march of evil (masquerading as progress). Which reminds me: when is the last time you heard the media use the phrase “Religious Left,” anyway?

Destructive and radical ideologies (e.g., Marxism) often are imposed from above by force, relying on disinformation — or stealth strategies — because an informed, moral (and generally conservative-leaning) citizenry would never approve such nonsense on their own. Hence the homosexual activists’ drive for power culminates in state punishment and repression of their opponents — mainly Christians and other religious adherents. Invariably, as we are seeing abroad and now here in the USA, “gay rights” comes at the expense of religious freedom.

Liberals and “gay” activists alike ask: “But how does granting equal rights for gays and lesbians affect you?” It’s the wrong question (it’s not all about ME), and one that radically redefines civil and human rights, but here’s part of the answer: state-enforced, pro-homosexuality ideology ultimately criminalizes Judeo-Christian ethics, ideas and even compassion (per the U.K.) — and that destroys societies and hurts children. “Gay” ideology is at war with common sense and “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” — as our Declaration of Independence from Britain states — giving rise to misguided social policies like that below. 

The following is excerpted from a column by Matt Barber, “You’re Not My Mommy!” appearing in today’s WorldNetDaily: 

Jesus said, “But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh” (Mark 10: 6-8, NKJV).

Virginia resident Lisa Miller – now a born-again Christian – and her beautiful 5-year-old daughter, Isabella, find themselves immersed in a nightmarish custody battle. But this battle is unlike most others. The person trying to take Isabella away from her mother is entirely unrelated to the little girl and is essentially a total stranger. She’s lesbian Janet Jenkins, a woman with whom Lisa at one time had been homosexually involved.

By her own account, emotional problems brought on by a series of events – including abandonment by her father, abuse by her mentally ill mother and a decade-long struggle with alcoholism now overcome – eventually led Lisa Miller into the lesbian lifestyle. In 1999, Lisa began a homosexual relationship with Jenkins after coming out of a legitimate marriage that ended in divorce.

In 2000, soon after Vermont became the first state to legalize homosexual “civil unions,” Miller and Jenkins made a weekend trek from Virginia to Vermont to enter into such a “union.” They then headed back to Virginia where they lived together.

In 2001, Lisa was artificially inseminated after the two decided to raise a child in an unnatural, deliberately fatherless home environment as self-deluded “wife” and “wife” – mother and “mother.”

In August of 2002, Miller and little Isabella, now just a few months old, moved to Vermont with Jenkins. However, things were unstable, and according to Lisa Miller, Jenkins was physically and emotionally abusive. “It was a troubled relationship from the beginning,” Lisa told World Magazine in a recent interview. “The relationship did not improve, as Jenkins – working as a nightshift security guard – grew increasingly bitter and controlling,” reported World.

About a year later, when Isabella was less than a year and a half old, Lisa ended her lesbian relationship, took her daughter back home to Virginia and filed for dissolution of her homosexual “civil union” back in Vermont.

And that’s when the nightmare really began.

Although Jenkins had no parental connection to Isabella (she was neither an adoptive parent, nor biologically related) she filed papers in Vermont in 2003 to try to take Isabella from her mother. Even though the child was conceived, born and living in Virginia, the Vermont court nonetheless held that it had jurisdiction. The legal battle has continued since that time, and incredibly, the court recently ruled that Jenkins possessed parental rights over Lisa’s daughter. It granted Jenkins regular and very liberal visitation. Isabella is now required to make the several hundred mile roundtrip journey from Virginia to Vermont every other week to visit a total stranger (Jenkins) who, according to reports, outrageously forces the confused and traumatized little girl to call her “momma.”

Click HERE to read the rest of Barber’s column on WorldNetDaily

Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate. — Matthew 19:6

Pray for the six children whose homes have been broken, whose fathers have been left behind…and the many more just like them.

Excerpted from Gay Marriage Advocates Switch Strategies, by Ray Henry, published Mar 17, 2007, by Associated Press:

Aronda Kirby and Digit Murphy were once married to men, received the tax breaks for married couples and were legally permitted to take family leave if their husbands or children got sick. Both women lost those protections when they came out as lesbians, divorced their husbands and set up a new household together with their six children.

Now, with couples like Murphy and Kirby in mind, some gay rights advocates who previously fought for “marriage or nothing” are shifting strategies. Rather than fighting to legalize marriage for same-sex couples, they’re lobbying for the protections marriage provides…

“We’ve had all the rights, so we want them back,” Murphy said. “We don’t care how we get them.”

Continue reading at TBO.com…

From Is a Christian Parent Unfit to Raise a Child Whose Other Parent Identifies as a Homosexual?, by Chris Stovall, published Mar 14, 2007, by Constitutionally Correct:

This week there is news that former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey, who resigned from office after publicly announcing he is a “Gay American” who had an extra-marital affair with a male staffer, has amended his divorce lawsuit to seek custody of his 5-year-old daughter. The article gives us an important clue as to what may have prompted McGreevey to seek custody: “[McGreevey’s estranged wife Dina] Matos said last month that the two ‘continue to have profound differences about what our daughter should be exposed to, and until they are resolved, there will be no agreement.'”

Of course, we don’t know the specifics in the McGreevey case. But, this fits the pattern of a growing wave of attacks on parents with Biblical, traditional beliefs on sex and marriage. The Alliance Defense Fund receives a growing number of requests for assistance in this area (see, e.g., this ADF press release). One parent decides to identify as a homosexual, breaks up the marriage, and eventually moves in with a same-sex partner. Eventually, the parent who identifies as homosexual sues for custody, claiming it is not in the child’s best interest to remain in the custody of the non-homosexual parent, because that parent (often a Christian) cannot in good conscience condone or remain silent about the departed parent’s homosexual behavior. Typically, it is alleged that any discussion with the child of the Biblical teaching that homosexual behavior is sinful, or perhaps that God’s design for the family is for a man and a woman to unite to raise their children, violates a nondisparagement clause in the divorce decree meant to prevent one parent from turning the child against the other parent in the wake of a bitter divorce. Since it is not uncommon for these nondisparagement clauses to place a duty on the parents to ensure that third parties do not disparage the other parent in the presence of the child, taking the child to a conservative church that preaches the Biblical message on homosexual behavior can become grounds for losing custody.

Christian family law attorneys must start being vigilant about this issue in divorce litigation and settlement negotiations. Given that the historic Supreme Court cases which recognized the fundamental due process right of parents to raise their children have often involved issues of moral and religious instruction, this custody dispute scenario is yet another area in which it remains to be seen exactly what impact the ascendancy of the homosexual agenda in our modern era will have on the constitutional rights of parents who will not bow the knee.

Excerpted from ADF Helps Protect Three Children from Demands of Unfaithful Military Father Who Left Wife for Boyfriend, published Mar 2, 2007, by Alliance Defense Fund:

Court denies father’s appeal for boyfriend to stay overnight while children visiting and for permission to show affection with boyfriend in children’s presence

An active duty military officer who left his wife to pursue sexual relationships with other men failed in his appeal to have certain visitation restrictions to his three children dropped Tuesday.

The mother, represented by attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund and the Alexandria law firm Gannon & Cottrell, P.C., the lead attorneys in the case, opposed the father’s request to be allowed overnight stays with his three children while his boyfriend is present. She also objected to her former husband’s request that he be allowed to openly display affection with his boyfriend in front of the children.

“The interests of children far outweigh a man’s desire to be selfish,” said ADF Legal Counsel Dale Schowengerdt. “We are talking about a man who repeatedly cheated on his wife to engage in sexual acts with other men and then left her for one of those men. This father and his attorneys with Lambda Legal then decided to take it a step further and demand that very minimal and common visitation restrictions designed to protect the children be dropped. There’s no doubt the Court of Appeal did the right thing in refusing this demand.”