I just read an article (reg required), not on Katrina, that nearly made me cry. (And I did cry by the time I was done writing this.)

There is a heartwrenching case winding its way through the legal systems of both Vermont and Virginia.

A lesbian couple, Janet & Lisa, who originally lived in Virginia, visited Vermont and had a civil union ceremony. A couple of years later, they had a child, and moved to Vermont where they lived as a family for more than a year. (The article is unclear about whether the child was born in VA or VT.)

When little Isabella was a tot, the bio-mom (Lisa) filed for a dissolution of the civil union — a divorce, essentially. At that time, she acknowledged that Isabella was a child of the union and asked the court to grant the non-bio-mom (Janet) contact with the little girl.

Not too long after that, Lisa says, "I left the homosexual lifestyle and drew closer to God."

Then she fled to Virginia, which up until last November, had the most gay-hostile legal system in the United States.

(Virginia didn’t get better last November, other states got worse. Virginia’s absolute refusal to recognize "marriage, civil unions, or contracts purporting to grant marriage-like rights between same sex couples" is only in statute, where Ohio voters added similar language to their state constitution. Changing constitutions is harder than changing laws, therefore Virginia’s status as "the worst" has been replaced.)

Anyway, Vermont courts had already granted Janet visitation rights with Isabella, and normally state disputes on issues like custody are resolved by whichever court had the case before it first. In this case, that’s Vermont.

But relying on the nasty Virginia "Marriage Affirmation Act" and the federal "Defense of Marriage Act," the Virginia judge said that only Lisa, the bio-Mom, has the right to decide who can spend time with her child. Lisa also now claims that she was confused and never meant to indicate that Isabella was a child of her union with Janet or that Janet had a parental relationship with Isabella.

The cruelest quotation in the article is the last one: "It would be like somebody off the streets coming and taking my daughter," [Lisa] said [about the possibility of Janet being granted visitation]. "They have no ties to my daughter."

No!!! It isn’t like that! They planned for this baby together, as a couple. It would be like a straight married couple where one parent was infertile, so they either used donor sperm or a surrogate mother. One parent isn’t biologically related to the child, but together they found a way to have a baby. As a couple. Creating a family.

And they raised that baby together for more than a year.

Here’s the real kicker. You know the old saw "possession is 9/10 of the law?"

In this case, that’s probably true.

Even if the Vermont Supreme Court rules that Janet is Isabella’s legal parent and that the original custody agreement should be honored, if the Virginia courts refuse to enforce it, there’s basically nothing Vermont — or Janet — can do. She could try to get federal enforcement, but with DOMA in place, they are more than likely to duck too.

Lil Smudge, your other Mommy and I plan on being together for the rest of our lives. But if something happens to us where we feel like we can’t be together any more, I promise you, both of us will still be your parents. Both of us will still love and care for you, make decisions about how to raise you, and be active parents, more involved in your life than you will even want by the time you’re a teenager.

And if we have some major dispute about you that we can’t resolve ourselves, I promise not to take advantage of homophobic legal systems to try to take advantage of your other Mommy, just to get my way.