Lesbian wins visitation rights

Christian Century, May 10, 2000

The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled April 6 that a lesbian woman deserves visitation rights for the children she helped raise, even though the woman and her partner are no longer together.

In a decision praised by gay rights organizations, the court found that the woman is a "psychological parent" because she helped raise the couple's twins before the two women separated. The case involved a woman, identified only as M.J.B., who was artificially inseminated and gave birth to twins in 1994. She and her partner, V.C., raised the children together before separating in 1996.

After the couple broke up, V.C. was denied visitation rights and custody. A lower court gave her visitation rights but was divided in its opinion. When the state Supreme Court heard the case, Associate Justice Virginia Long said each woman could be a "fully capable, loving parent committed to the safety and welfare of the twins."

The decision stopped short, however, of granting V.C. shared custody of the twins. The court said those rights belong to the children's birth mother, and V.C. had not been involved in decision-making for the children for four years.

Some observers were upset with the ruling, saying the court was making law instead of enforcing it. "They have acknowledged that there is no statute that would grant psychological parenthood, yet they went on to create it," said Jan LaRue, a lawyer with the Washington-based Family Research Council. The decision was issued by the same court that ruled the Boy Scouts could not dismiss an assistant scout leader because he is gay.

The legal precedent set by the visitation-rights case is unclear. Last year a Massachusetts court issued a similar decision, while courts in California, New York and Florida have ruled that ex-partners are not entitled to visitation rights. --RNS