Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 2, 1995 TAG: 9503020031
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It was back in March 1993 that a juvenile court removed Bottoms' son, Tyler, from his home in the absence of any evidence that he had been harmed, and in the face of evidence that he had, in fact, been well-loved and cared for. The mother's offense: She is a lesbian.
Since then, a Henrico County Circuit Court judge incredibly upheld the juvenile court's decision. The Virginia Court of Appeals appropriately overruled him last June. Yet, to this day, Sharon Bottoms retains only visitation rights with her 4-year-old son, pending a ruling by the state Supreme Court.
The high court this week heard arguments, in which a lawyer opposing Bottoms' parental rights offered heaps of prejudice and nonsense. He also ignored two relevant facts: This case is not a custody dispute between parents, each enjoying legal standing in seeking to raise their child. Nor was it prompted by any abuse or neglect of the child.
Sharon Bottoms' mother, who brought the suit and has had custody of Tyler for two years, holds an obvious interest in her grandson's welfare. But she has no more legal standing before the court, technically, than a stranger would have. In a custody dispute arising from divorce, a judge might consider one parent's homosexuality as a factor in his decision. But, in this case, the grandmother did not simply gain custody of Tyler. The state took him away, handing him to a nonparent.
It did so, moreover, on the sole grounds of the mother's sexual orientation. Had the circuit court's decision stood as a precedent, any parties with knowledge of a parent's homosexuality presumably could seek, and win, legal termination of that person's parental rights - regardless of his or her fitness as a parent.
In fact, Sharon Bottoms is by all accounts a loving mother. The boy's grandmother concedes this. She simply disapproves of her daughter's lesbian lifestyle. Many other Virginians would, too. Yet studies and expert testimony to the effect that homosexuals are not necessarily inferior parents went undisputed by the grandmother's attorneys.
And even if one believes that gays make less than ideal parents, that still doesn't give the state the right to break up families, however unconventional. Normally, the legal presumption is that a child should remain with a parent except under the most egregious circumstances. Every day, parents are convicted of heinous crimes without losing custody of their kids. Sharon Bottoms' only crime is that she shares her home and bed with another woman.
It all comes down to this: "You should not let a child grow up in a household where adults are committing a felony every day," the grandmother's lawyer told the high court, referring to Virginia's sodomy statute.
Yet it so happens that this anti-sodomy law applies to heterosexuals as well as homosexuals. Which means our commonwealth is overrun with felons, including perhaps some lawyers, and this statute isn't good for much of anything except to target and harass and invade the privacy of gays. State lawmakers shouldn't let another year pass before wiping it from their books.
Even more swiftly, Virginia's Supreme Court needs to uphold the appellate court's ruling - defending Sharon Bottoms' rights of motherhood, ending an injustice now entering its third year, and checking an abuse of state power that every Virginian should find intolerable.
by CNB