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Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Chuck Colson :: Townhall.com Columnist
Legal Fictions:
by Chuck Colson
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Isabella Miller-Jenkins is only four years old, but she is at the center of one of the most important legal battles of our time. A judge will soon decide whether a woman with no biological or adoptive ties to Isabella can legally be declared her mother.

It sounds incredible, but it is the logical result of where our anything-goes society has been leading us all these years.

As the Washington Post reports, Isabella was conceived via artificial insemination while her mother, Lisa Miller, was in a same-sex civil union with Janet Jenkins. But later the civil union fell apart. Lisa took Isabella and left Vermont for Virginia. She also returned to the Christian faith of her childhood and became "determined to 'leave the [lesbian] lifestyle'." That meant that she no longer considered Janet to be Isabella’s parent.

But in our reckless pursuit of getting whatever we want at all costs, our nation has begun interpreting the law in a way that reinforces all the fictions that Lisa Miller no longer believes.

The subhead in the Post article says it all: "Janet Jenkins and Lisa Miller got hitched and had a baby together." Together? Anybody who knows anything about biology knows that’s impossible. But that’s just how the courts are looking at it. As a judge in the case told Janet Jenkins’s lawyer, Janet (the lesbian partner) "without question is presumed to be the natural parent . . . by the basis of the civil union." So in the court’s eyes, Isabella is the child of two women, something biologically impossible.

How is it possible that laws and court procedures could have become so dangerously fantasy-based? Actually, we should not be surprised. Many modern parents have unwittingly been collaborating with the process for years. The Washington Post tells us how Judge Cohen explained it: "[C]onsider the situation of a heterosexual couple in which an infertile husband agrees for his wife to be artificially inseminated with donor sperm." In such a case, the judge stated, the husband would be presumed to have parental rights even though someone else had actually fathered the child.

It all ties together. Heterosexual couples have tacitly approved this practice of including a silent third partner in a marriage to produce a child. And then it makes it very difficult to cry foul when homosexuals do the same thing.

Isabella’s plight shows us the tragic consequences of rejecting the biblical view of marriage, which provides for one man and one woman in the union to raise the child. Sure, there are extraordinary circumstances, and adoption is possible. But the norm is the norm, and the law has always recognized the natural moral order.

If Janet Jenkins wins her case—which may go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court—Isabella may be taken from her biological mother to live with a woman she barely remembers.

And not only Isabella; many other children would also be threatened by this waving of the judicial magic wand to produce legal parents out of nowhere.

I urge you to visit our blog at www.thepoint.breakpoint.org to read more about this important story. We need to see how our attitude of “I can do anything I want, and it won’t hurt anybody” has led to a situation that could hurt families everywhere.

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About The Author
Chuck Colson was the Chief Counsel for Richard Nixon and served time in prison for Watergate-related charges. In 1976, Colson founded Prison Fellowship Ministries, which, in collaboration with churches of all confessions and denominations, has become the world's largest outreach to prisoners, ex-prisoners, crime victims, and their families.
 
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Subject: Bjorn F
You're reading a lot into Mr. Colson's comments that aren't there. Keep your hatred to yourself.

Comment on "Whatever it takes..."
Bjorn F. posts (quoted in part)
"Whatever it takes to beat up a gay woman
It shouldn't suprise anyone that chuckcolsons of this world would gladly punish Janet Jenkins for the outrageous crime for loving the child she raised and being a lesbian at the same time.

Of couse, being a lesbian, she is incapable of any real human emotion like wanting to be part of the child's life.... and of couse good Christians support the situation when in custody battles woman wants to isolate the child from other parent.

This Lisa Miller character is true Christian in modern sense of the word: vicious, vengeful and meanspirited. And by being that she deserves the applause of conservative Christian crowd."

As I indicated in a previous post, I'm not a "good Christian", or even a bad one; but I agree that it would be bad law to grant custody of the child to the mother's former gay partner, or to force the mother to allow contact between the child and the former partner, against the mother's wishes and convictions. And I think you are being just about as unfair to Christians as you accuse them of being to gays.

Clearly it's a sad situation all around. I know of no reason to doubt that the gay lover feels "real human emotion" and love for the child. But emotion, real or otherwise, doesn't automatically give you a legal right to get whatever you want. Ideally, perhaps, even if she no longer wants a sexual relationship with her former partner, the mother might agree to maintain some sort of amicable relationship with the partner and allow contact with the child. But I don't think that choice should be forced on the mother, let alone that the mother should be the one to lose the child in this unfortunate legal tug of war.

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