Judge Roy Moore and Foundation for Moral Law File Brief in Alabama Supreme Court Opposing Former Lesbian Lover's Visitation Rights Granted in California for Child and Biological Mother in Alabama
April 2, 2008
Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore and the Foundation for Moral Law, a religious liberties legal organization in Montgomery, Alabama, filed a “friend-of-the-court” brief in the Alabama Supreme Court, arguing that Alabama courts should not recognize a California court order stating that an Alabama mother must allow her former lesbian lover in California visitation rights with the mother's biological child. The California court declared that the former lesbian lover was a “de facto parent,” despite there being no biological or adoptive relationship with the child. When an Alabama trial court intervened and ordered that the mother had full custody and control of her child, the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals reversed, holding that only the California court had jurisdiction over the child. The case is now on appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court.
Read the brief in Ex parte N.B. here.
Judge Moore said about this case,
“Alabama does not condone homosexuality despite what California or any other state may believe. Our state passed a Constitutional Amendment in 2006 stating that marriage is a ‘sacred covenant solemnized between a man and a woman,' and that homosexual unions would have no ‘legal force or effect in this state.' Visitation with a minor child by the mother's former lesbian lover is not recognized in Alabama. The State of Alabama is not required by the ‘full faith and credit clause' of the U.S. Constitution to recognize something which is directly contrary to our law and public policy and the Defense of Marriage Act passed by Congress in 1996. What occurs in California should stay in California.”
The Foundation for Moral Law argues in its brief in Ex parte N.B. that the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution does not require Alabama to follow another state's court rulings if it violates Alabama's public policy and laws. In this case, after the mother and her child had moved to Alabama, the former lesbian partner based her petition for visitation and “de facto parent” status in California on the homosexual relationship that she had with the mother when the mother became pregnant by artificial insemination, later giving birth to the child now caught in the center of this dispute. However, Alabama has no “de facto parent” status and its public policy and laws oppose the underlying homosexual relationship serving as the basis for the former lesbian lover's visitation rights.
Moreover, the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) upholds Alabama's right to protect the mother and her child because DOMA stands for the proposition that a same-sex relationship “treated as a marriage” in one state need not be recognized in another. The visitation claim arose from the former lesbian relationship.
The Foundation urges the Alabama Supreme Court to reverse the Court of Civil Appeals and allow Alabama courts to protect the mother and her child from the life they left behind in California.
The Foundation for Moral Law, a national non-profit legal organization, is located in Montgomery, Alabama, and is dedicated to restoring the knowledge of God in law and government through litigation and education relating to moral issues and religious liberty cases.
