More of the dangers of a mixed bag of civil union laws across the US have cropped up, this time in Virginia. In this case, a Lesbian couple that entered into a civil union in Vermont, have a 2-year-old daughter. The daughter was born in Virginia. The couple dissolved their union in Vermont last year, and a Vermont court ordered temporary visitation rights for the non-custodial partner.
A Virginia court has now claimed jurisdiction over the matter, asserting that since Virginia doesn’t recognize Vermont’s civil union laws (indeed, it has some of the harshest statutory language against civil unions in the US), it gets to make such decisions over a child in its territory.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia and gay rights advocates said the ruling could set a dangerous precedent. “The reason child jurisdiction statutes were enacted was to prevent exactly this scenario ? parents fleeing with children from one jurisdiction to another, because they don’t like the custody rulings of a state,” Rebecca Glenberg, a lawyer with ACLU, said in a statement.
Price said the decision could turn Virginia into “the Las Vegas of gay divorce.”
“If you had a civil union in one jurisdiction and you wanted to be clear and free of the responsibilities under it … you could just move to Virginia and none of those responsibilities would exist anymore,” he said.
Which, I suspect, is not exactly what either the people of Virginia or Vermont want.
And which is one of the problems with the patchwork of civil union laws — and laws that explicitly don’t recognize them — we have in this country right now. One can but hope that a commonly enforceable framework will come to pass, quickly, for the sake (if I can drag out the old cliche) of the children, if nothing else.