Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 15, 1993 TAG: 9403090031
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The case in which Sharon Bottoms lost custody of her son is unusual, to say the least. But perhaps most unusual - and bothersome - is the fact that this was not a custody dispute between two parents, each of whom has the same legal standing in seeking to raise their child.
This case was brought by the child's grandmother, Sharon's mother. While having an obvious interest in the welfare of her grandson, she has no more legal standing before the court, technically speaking, than would a stranger. This was a decision by the state to remove a child from his mother.
If it is allowed to stand, and carried to its logical end, this would mean that anyone with knowledge of a parent's homosexuality would be able to go to court and seek termination of that person's parental rights, whether the parent was a fit one or not. And win.
For this also is not a custody case prompted by any abuse or neglect of the child. By all accounts, Sharon Bottoms is a loving mother. Even the boy's grandmother concedes this; she simply does not approve of the fact that her daughter is a lesbian and is worried, without supporting evidence, that this will prove detrimental to her grandson's welfare.
A lot of grandmothers are worried about the parenting skills of daughters and daughters-in-law, often with more cause than a mother's choice of whom she is going to bed with. But, as Henrico Circuit Judge Buford M. Parsons Jr. acknowledged, only under the most dire circumstances does a court sever the parent-child relationship.
In his opinion, Sharon Bottoms' behavior met this abhorrent level. Why? Two reasons: (1) She admitted violating Virginia's sodomy law, and admission of a felony makes her an unfit parent; (2) the Virginia Supreme Court decided, in a 1985 ruling, that living in the household of a homosexual couple would be "an intolerable burden" on a child.
The first line of reasoning would be a joke it it didn't carry such terrible consequences. Virginia's sodomy law states explicitly that it applies to couples of different sexes, as well as of the same sex. So how many heterosexual parents in Virginia, on the basis of this statute, should be declared unfit to keep their children?
Clearly, the law is outdated and unenforceable, useful mainly in targeting gays and lesbians for harassment. It's unimaginable that questions about whether a parent had violated this law would ever be asked in a custody dispute between two heterosexuals. Citing this statute to set a broad legal standard is outrageous.
And since when is admission of a felony cause for terminating parental rights? Parents are convicted every day of crimes far more serious than how they perform the sex act, yet the custody of their children is normally not an issue unless the children are themselves the victims of those crimes.
The second basis for the judge's decision is shaky as well. The case cited, Roe vs. Roe, was a custody dispute between a father and a mother, each with the same parental rights. One parent's homosexuality was used as a contributing factor in weighing which parent should get custody. That is an important legal distinction from the Bottoms case.
An important question, too, is what is best for the child. Roe v. Roe was decided before any of the studies presented in the Bottoms case about the effects of homosexual parents on children were available. The Virginia Supreme Court, having before it no substantiating evidence, figured it surely must be tough to grow up in a household different from those of most of a child's friends, and ruled that this is "an intolerable burden."
Studies since then suggest that a person's sexual orientation has nothing to do with his or her parenting skills; homosexuals aren't necessarily better or worse parents than heterosexuals. And their children are not more likely to be gay. Expert testimony to that effect in the Bottoms case was not disputed by her mother's attorneys.
In any case, never mind all that. Even if one believes that homosexuals don't make the best of parents, the issue still is whether this child, on that basis, could be taken away by the state.
Despite the legal presumption that a child should remain with his parent except under the most egregious of circumstances, despite the lack of any evidence that the child was suffering ill effects from his mother's lifestyle, despite everyone's acknowledgement that she loves and cared well for her child, Sharon Bottoms lost her son.
That is not justice; it is prejudice. It will be appealed, and rightly so.
by CNB