ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, August 31, 1996 TAG: 9609030055
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: MIAMI
SOURCE: The New York Times
A Florida appeals court Friday upheld a decision by a trial judge transferring custody of a 12-year-old girl from her lesbian mother to her father, who served eight years in prison for murdering his first wife 22 years ago.
In a unanimous opinion, the 1st District Court of Appeal said that ``competent and substantial'' evidence supported the trial judge's ruling last year that ``conduct'' at the mother's house was harmful to the girl and that she was better off living with the father. Attorneys for the mother, Mary Frank Ward, 47, of Pensacola, said they would appeal to the Florida Supreme Court.
``We are not suggesting that the sexual orientation of the custodial parent by itself justifies a custody change,'' the appeals court said. Rather, ``As is the case when a child is inappropriately exposed to heterosexual conduct, the court's primary focus should be on what conduct is involved and whether the exposure to that conduct has had or is reasonably likely to have a direct and adverse impact on the child.''
But lawyers for gay rights organizations involved in the case said that the court seemed to adopt the stereotypic and prejudicial view that gay parents expose their children to improper behavior.
``The problem is that if you have a judge who thinks negatively about a gay person having custody, it's very easy for him to say, `I find that there are problems in this household,''' said Beatrice Dohrn, the legal director of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, which filed a friend of court brief on the case. ``They don't have to say very much to justify taking a child away.''
Ward and her ex-husband, John Andrew Ward, were divorced in 1992, and she kept primary custody of Cassie. He had been convicted in 1974 of the second-degree murder of his first wife, which he attributed to his ``stupidity, jealousy and anger,'' the appeals court said. The court noted, however, that Ward has since remarried and found steady work as a building supply yard worker.
In September 1995, Escambia County Circuit Judge Joseph Tarbuck ordered the child to move in with her father, after her father told the court that the girl made statements of a sexual nature, exhibited bad table manners and personal hygiene habits and preferred to wear men's cologne.
Mary Ward, who at the time lived with a girlfriend and two older daughters - one of whom is a lesbian and had a live-in girlfriend - denied she had exposed the girl to sexual behavior in her home. She noted that she had filed for increased child support shortly before John Ward petitioned for custody.
LENGTH: Medium: 55 linesby CNB