The NY Times article linked below is a longish look at the greater complications of same sex custody disputes. if you ever wondered if they would be more civil than hetero wonder no more. They are far more complex for a host of reasons, including the fact only one parent is biological. I have been following this one for years, first through attention given it by Glenn Sacks, in the USA.
I have always wondered if same sex disputes would accelerate the political process to equal parenting given they are part of a politically and socially protected group. I hope it does so children are not put through these kinds of divisive and dysfunctional, not to mention expensive, court battles and they are free to love and be with both parents.
This is not the only battle to occur with Lesbians getting divorces or breaking up from a partnership , civil union, or marriage but it is one of the first to garner this kind of MSM attention.
Cheryl Senter for The New York Times
July 28, 2012
MANAGUA, Nicaragua — Lisa A. Miller and her daughter, Isabella, started their fugitive lives here in the fall of 2009, disguised in the white scarves and long blue dresses of the Mennonites who spirited them out of the United States and adopting the aliases Sarah and Lydia.
“We wanted to have a family and spend the rest of our lives together,” said Janet Jenkins, whose former partner, Lisa A. Miller, underwent a born-again conversion to conservative Christianity and took their child to Nicaragua.
Now 10, Isabella Miller-Jenkins has spent her last three birthdays on the run, “bouncing around the barrios of Nicaragua,” as one federal agent put it, a lively blond girl and her mother trying to blend in and elude the United States marshals who have traveled to the country in pursuit.
She can now chatter in Spanish, but her time in Nicaragua has often been lonely, those who have met her say, long on prayer but isolated. She has been told that she could be wrenched from her mother if they are caught. She has also been told that the other woman she once called “Mama,” Ms. Miller’s former partner from a civil union in Vermont that she has since renounced, cannot go to heaven because she lives in sin with women.
Isabella’s tumultuous life has embodied some of America’s bitterest culture wars — a choice, as Ms. Miller said in a courtroom plea, shortly before their desperate flight, “between two diametrically opposed worldviews on parentage and family.”
MANAGUA, Nicaragua — Lisa A. Miller and her daughter, Isabella, started their fugitive lives here in the fall of 2009, disguised in the white scarves and long blue dresses of the Mennonites who spirited them out of the United States and adopting the aliases Sarah and Lydia.
“We wanted to have a family and spend the rest of our lives together,” said Janet Jenkins, whose former partner, Lisa A. Miller, underwent a born-again conversion to conservative Christianity and took their child to Nicaragua.
Now 10, Isabella Miller-Jenkins has spent her last three birthdays on the run, “bouncing around the barrios of Nicaragua,” as one federal agent put it, a lively blond girl and her mother trying to blend in and elude the United States marshals who have traveled to the country in pursuit.
She can now chatter in Spanish, but her time in Nicaragua has often been lonely, those who have met her say, long on prayer but isolated. She has been told that she could be wrenched from her mother if they are caught. She has also been told that the other woman she once called “Mama,” Ms. Miller’s former partner from a civil union in Vermont that she has since renounced, cannot go to heaven because she lives in sin with women.
Isabella’s tumultuous life has embodied some of America’s bitterest culture wars — a choice, as Ms. Miller said in a courtroom plea, shortly before their desperate flight, “between two diametrically opposed worldviews on parentage and family.”
