Woah. Another reason I hate my home state of Virginia. Virginia is so anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-choice and pro-conservatism and pro-religion, it makes me want to puke. I think what happened to you today is a huge injustice and unconstitutional. I third and fourth the recommendations to go to the ACLU.
Are you in Northern Virginia? Even if you aren’t, let me say as a former newspaper reporter and editor for a paper in this area, you should go to the Washington Post! The love stories like this. This calls for outrage. This needs to be exposed. Please consider speaking out about this in the media.
As ButtonJockey308 said, subpoena the court transcript asap. I can pretty much guarantee you that none of the opinions noted by the judge will be in the court order. With the transcript in hand, raise hell.
Is it an option to have him stay somewhere else the visitation nights? If not, is the judge saying the children can’t visit because he lives with you, or is it just nighttime thats bad?
Oh, why do I think I’m going to get Pitted for this?
I’m 24 now, the daughter of a straight woman and a gay man. My father came out when I was 16. My brother and sister were thirteen and ten, and we grew up in a very conservative town in New Jersey. (For the record, my father is one of my best friends in the world, and always has been).
It sounds to me like you only know half the story. Of course you support your partner, and of course you should have the rights of every other couple.
However. You’re dealing with children whose reality is quite different from yours. They’re the ones who have to go home and deal with their mother, and they’re the ones who are dealing with their father in a completely different role than they knew him in when they were little (YES, there are differences between gay fathers and straight divorced fathers).
Part of my parents’ deal was that when my father had us, there wasn’t any other adult in the picture; at least not for a few years. Our lives had been so shaken at that point that adding a boyfriend into the mix would have been horrible. (As it was, my father partnered with someone about a year later, and it was the boyfriend’s volatile relationship with US that lead to their breakup after six years).
The ex-wife may well say that she knew her husband was gay for ten years. What she says doesn’t make it so, and she could very well be shocked, and looking to save face. My mother didn’t date for several years after my father came out. She put US (and our financial needs) first.
Oh, boy, how can I say this? This is directed at both you and Jason. Please know I am saddened by the court ruling and hope it can be reversed.
Please, think before you move away from the children. They’ve been torn apart because of a divorce and a spiteful mother. They need their father, now more than ever. And he needs them.
I know you and Jason love each other, but his relationship with his children must take precedence over yours. Yeah, it sucks six ways to Sunday. Yeah, it sucks that you can’t live in your own house when the kids come to visit. But you know what? It’s only for a few years. Then the kids will be old enough to tell their mother and the courts to go pound sand.
Whether or not you continue to fight this, please don’t stand in the way of his relationship with his children. If you have to go stay in a hotel one weekend a month, don’t you think preserving a relationship with his children is worth it?
I’m not saying anything about this is fair. None of it is. But, I think you have to work within the parameters of the ruling until you can get this mess sorted out. Don’t reduce their time with their father just to make a point. You can still fight it. Just don’t bring the kidlets into it.
I don’t think you’ve said anything pit-worthy NotWithoutRage. I don’t get your point though. Are you saying the mother may not be as bad as she is being shown? Or are you saying rostfrei shouldn’t be with his partner because of the kids?
I am sorry that you had to go through a parental separation like that. I know what it’s like coming from a “broken” home. But I still wouldn’t judge someone else’s circumstances on what happened to me. I have friends in almost exactly the same set of conditions as myself and they went through an entirely different set of circumstances as me.
rostfrei keep us informed about what goes on. And I would do my best to appeal against that narrow-minded judge. A person of his power shouldn’t be letting personal views cloud his judgement. That’s not how the courts work. Until then do what you need to, for the kids and for your partner. hugs
I, uh… twenty-three the option of getting the transcripts and talking with ACLU, and thristy-or-so the don’t move away to Cali, that won’t make things better.
The problem with this kind of thing is that the American system is based on precedent at least as much as on the letter of the law. If the judgment stands as it is, some other idiot of a judge can use it as a basis to screw up someone else.
I’m a straight female and a practicing Catholic, but by now even my mother has figured out that whinning about “the advance of gay rights” to me is Not A Good Idea. I didn’t decide to like guys
I’m saying that the mother may not be half as bad as she’s being portrayed, for one. I’m also saying, as ivylass did, that the kids’ relationship with the father comes way before the partner relationship. That’s just how it works. Anything else is selfish.
But not over the father. Why does she get to dictate what sort of relationships her ex-husband may engage in? If rostfrei takes a dislike to his ex’s boyfriend, does he get to demand that he not be around when his kids are with her?
Unfortunately, there’s not much that can be done here. Virginia still holds that, as a matter of law, homosexuality pertains directly to parental fitness and a judge is fully justified under the law to limit visitation to a homosexual parent or even deny it altogether. About the only chance for reversing this is to make a federal case arguing that the right of familial association (which is protected by the First Amendment) is being curtailed without a compelling reason, using Lawrence to argue that the State of Virginia’s presumption of parental unfitness for homosexuals is insufficient to overcome the constitutional protection. That’s a difficult road to hoe.
Moving to another state, unfortunately, will not help much; under the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (adopted in large part by most states), child custody determinations are made by a court in the state where the children reside. As long as the kids live in Virginia, this court will have the authority to make decisions regarding visitation and custody.
This not being the Pit, I will not share my thoughts regarding the government of the State of Virginia.
But what about the Sharon Bottoms case? Didn’t it go to the Virginia Supreme Court and wasn’t it decided that being gay does not, in an of itself, make a parent unfit?
For the record, we are not planning to move to California for any other reason than we both love the Bay Area and have always wanted to live there.
The Bottoms case was decided by the Virginia Supreme Court on unrelated grounds. The court took no position on whether homosexuality rendered a parent unfit (a position almost certainly taken by the Virginia Supreme Court to avoid an appeal to the United States Supreme Court). As a result, the presumption of unfitness remains intact, albeit hampered, in Virginia.
Equality in domestic issues? Justice is blind? Meh. Ownership of a penis is strike one, automatically, without appeal in matters domestic. Sadly, the OP has two strikes, e.g. ownership of said appendage and how he chooses to use it recreationally.
