Superior Judge William Cohen ruled last week that Lisa Miller, a former lesbian who is now a Christian, must hand her daughter, Isabelle, over to her former partner, Janet Jenkins by Jan. 1.
Miller conceived Isabella through artificial insemination while she was in a civil union with Jenkins. About a year later, Miller left homosexuality.
Jenkins sued for custody, even though she has no biological tie to the child.
Miller admits she made mistakes, like signing a custody agreement while still in the relationship with Jenkins, but Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel and legal counsel for Miller, said that wouldn't stop him from appealing the decision to the Vermont Supreme Court.
"This judge in Vermont ultimately ruled that he is going to switch custody from Lisa Miller," he said, "and take her own biological daughter Isabella and move her from Virginia and put her into an activist lesbian household up in Vermont with a person she really doesn't know, who's not her biological mother, and frankly who's not acted as a parent."
The courts had ordered to spend time with Jenkins in the past, and Miller complied until her daughter complained.
"Every time that the visitation actually occurred, Isabella had violent reactions, because Janet exposed her to the lesbian lifestyle," Staver said. "(Jenkins) tried to convince her that she has two moms and even tried to scare her by saying that she was going to be taken from Lisa and transferred to Vermont."
Eventually, Miller refused the court-ordered visitations.
Historically, courts have sided with the biological mother in custody battles, and Staver said the judge has never questioned Miller's fitness as a parent.
"How can a third party, a stranger," he asked, "interfere with the parental rights of a biological parent when that parent is fit?"
Rena Lindevaldsen, professor at Liberty University School of Law, said it's another example of where activist courts are taking the culture.
"To have the first reported decision in the country stripping a biological mother of her child," she said, "solely because she has refused to give visitation to a legal stranger, is shocking.
"There's a lot of talk nowadays about drawing that line in the sand and understanding that government can't order certain things. When you're ordering a child to be stripped from her biological mother, you've got to wonder, has the court overstepped its bounds?"
