Former lesbian Lisa Miller, who failed to turn over custody of her daughter to her ex-partner on January 1st, as ordered by a Rutland, VT judge, is now officially a fugitive.
Metro Weekly reports: A family court judge in Vermont Tuesday issued a warrant for the arrest of former lesbian Lisa Miller who disappeared with the child she once shared with her former civil union partner, Janet Jenkins.
Judge William Cohen, a judge in Rutland County, Vermont, ruled February 23 that Miller was in contempt of the Vermont court for failing to turn over custody of the daughter to Jenkins on Jan. 1, as ordered.
According to one of Jenkins’ lawyers, Sarah Star, the judge’s order is essentially an arrest warrant for a misdemeanor. Jenkins must now hope that the state’s attorney in Rutland will seek to file felony criminal charges against Miller. If he does, law enforcement officials in all 50 states, she says, will be empowered to arrest Miller and hold her on $50,000 bond.
Just last week, Judge Louis Harrison, a family court judge in Bedford, Virginia, said he could not issue an arrest warrant for Miller because he could not be sure Miller was aware of the Vermont judge’s order.
Most LGBT Virginians assume that our fight for equality ended with the passage of the 2006 Marshall/Newman constitutional amendment, which banned same-sex marriage in the commonwealth. Most political insiders in Virginia acknowledge that the move was nothing more than a political strategy on the part of Virginia' s republicans to rally and solidify their base. Democratic political strategist and Roanoke native, Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, who actively fought against the amendment, said at the time, "It is political trickery - it has nothing to do with queers and marriage. It is to help Republicans, in general, unite their base in the name of hate."
Four years after Virginia's queer community rolled over and accepted defeat, the issue of same-sex marriage and child custody rights has been forced back on our doorstep with the child custody battle involving Janet Jenkins and Lisa Miller. The couple had entered a civil union in Vermont in 2000. In 2002, Miller became pregnant by artificial insemination and gave birth to daughter Isabella. The couple broke up in '03, whn Miller found Jesus and decided she wasn't gay anymore.
Lisa Miller moved her daughter to Virginia in the believing that our homophobic laws would protect her from having to honor Vermont's custody ruling. A Vermont judge ad awarded primary custody of 7-year-old Isabella to Jenkins in light of Miller's refusal to honor Jenkins' visitation rights. The legal battle followed her to Virginia, where Jenkins filed suite. The Bedford County (Virginia) Court found in favor of Jenkins and ordered Miller to turn over the child last Friday at the home of Jenkins' parents in Falls Church.
Miller, a member of the late Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church, has gone into hiding with her daughter and faces contempt charges. A statewide hunt is now under way. ACLU attorney, Rebecca Glenberg, who represents Miller, told the Lynchberg News and Advance,“We expect Virginia law enforcement to take whatever actions they can to locate the child and make sure the custody order is complied with.”
Maj. Ricky Gardner of the Bedford County Sheriff's Department released a statement on Wednesday saying, “We have been and are, as I write this, working with the Fairfax Co. Police Department and officials in Vermont on this matter. That’s all we have at this time.”
Here's where I go off.
If Lisa Miller had taken her daughter to some other homophobic state, none of us would care about this story. Why? Because Virginia's LGBT community can't be bothered. We pat ourselves on the back for joining activist groups on facebook, but when we are called upon to get off our asses and join together in the real world to create real change, it's too inconvenient. We have done absolutely nothing to fight for our own rights. We don't vote or get involved in anything political. We did nothing to fight the passage of the Virginia Marriage Amendment.
Of the 36 members of the Roanoke Equality group on facebook, only four have bothered to show up at our first two meetings. Don't give me the excuse that you're too busy. It just doesn't fly. Our enemies know that we can't be bothered and they love it. Our own apathy is their greatest weapon against us.
A wise man once said "Civil rights are never handed down from on high. They are fought for from below."
Be ashamed of yourselves, Queer Virginia. Be very ashamed.
More embarrassing news from the comedy-wealth of Virginia. It seems a lesbian couple, Lisa Miller and Janet Jenkins, who got civilly unionized in Vermont in 2000, went through an extremely uncivil divorce in '03, when Miller found Jesus and decided she wasn't gay any more. The wrinkle here is that Miller got pregnant via artificial insemination after the union was formalized, resulting in a daughter who is now at the center of a bitter custody battle.
In 2003, after the couple broke up, Miller fled from blue Vermont to redneck Virginia in order to avoid the shared custody ordered by the Rutland County, Vermont court. Miller now considers rug munching sinful and doesn't want her daughter raised by a sister of Sappho. The court found that Jenkins should be awarded primary custody in light of Miller's refusal to allow visitation by her former spouse.
In a surprising twist, when the legal battle spilled over into Virginia, the courts here repeatedly found in the favor of honoring the Vermont court's decision. The child was to be turned over to Ms. Jenkins on January 1st.
Rather than submit to the custody order, the born again ex-lesbian decided it was better to go into hiding with the child and is now on the lam. Miller has not made contact her her attorneys for over a month. Her whereabouts remain unknown.
Former lesbian Lisa Miller, who failed to turn over custody of her daughter to her ex-partner on January 1st, as ordered by a Rutland, VT judge, is now officially a fugitive.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=041add55-a832-4c15-a589-0f0126476fea)
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