Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 7, 1993 TAG: 9309070033
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LARRY O'DELL ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
It is a highly unusual custody battle because it pits a nonparent against a mother whose only alleged parental shortcoming has been her sexual relationship. A trial is scheduled for today in Henrico County Circuit Court.
Sharon Bottoms, 23, lives with her partner, 27-year-old April Wade. Kay Bottoms, 42, contends that fact makes her daughter unfit to be a mother.
"The question is whether a parent should be disqualified because of sexual orientation or lifestyle," said Donald Butler, Sharon Bottoms' lawyer. "We don't think the law should allow people to lose a child on that basis."
A different answer to the question Butler posed comes from Anne Kincaid, spokeswoman for the Family Foundation, a conservative Virginia group.
"Is it discrimination based on sexual orientation, or is it child protection based on the mother's sexual behavior?" she asked. "It looks like there would be a compelling state interest to protect the child . . . ."
Abby Abinanti, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco, said she knows of no other case quite like this one.
"There have been cases where a child was raised by two lesbians, the birth mother dies, and the partner is challenged for custody," she said. "The courts have struggled with that and have come out with different rulings."
Usually, she said, the person seeking custody is the other parent. In Bottoms' case, the father and ex-husband is not involved.
Henrico County Juvenile Court Judge William Boice awarded custody of Tyler Doustou to the boy's grandmother in March, relying on a 1985 Virginia Supreme Court ruling that said a parent's homosexuality is a legitimate reason for losing custody. That case, however, involved a mother who sued her gay ex-husband for custody.
Sharon Bottoms, who has had limited visitation rights since Boice's ruling, and Wade decided to fight for custody. Their phone number is unlisted, and Butler says he has advised his client not to talk publicly about the case.
The dispute "certainly has caused her a great deal of heartache," Butler said. "Even if she had her child, the threat that the state could step in and take the child away would be heartache enough."
Kay Bottoms' lawyer, Richard Ryder, did not return a reporter's repeated phone calls. However, he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in an interview in May that "the lesbian relationship is detrimental to the child and will get more so in the future."
Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Virginia, disagreed. The ACLU is assisting Sharon Bottoms' lawyers, who "will argue that the principles that were applied in the Supreme Court ruling were wrong then and even appear antiquated eight years later," Willis said.
"There is ample evidence that gays and lesbians make good parents," he said.
"What really needs to be looked at is parenting skills," Abinanti said. "The best interest of the child is not adversely impacted by the sexual orientation of the parent."
Charlotte Patterson, a University of Virginia psychology professor who has studied children of homosexuals, said children of gays generally have no more problems than other children.
Patterson studied 37 children of lesbians in the San Francisco area in 1990 and 1991. Some of the children were adopted, but most were conceived through artificial insemination. "The basic finding was that children of lesbian parents are developing much like children of heterosexual parents," she said.
by CNB