When the foundations are being destroyed...

I hadn’t picked up a newspaper in a couple days, but the following headline from the Washington Times caught my eye as it lay on the kitchen table: Birth mom must give child to lesbian ex-partner.

I wanted to ignore it, but a mixture of perplexity and curiosity compelled me to pick up the newspaper, thinking that there must be more to this story. As I read the article, it only got worse. Read the details for yourself if you like, but the story in a nutshell is as follows:

1. Lesbian couple joins in a civil union. It happens. For better or for worse, this is becoming increasingly acceptable.
2. One of the partners gets artificially inseminated and has a child. Everything should be “happily ever after” from here on out.
3. Biological mother becomes an evangelical Christian, renounces her homosexuality, and wants to dissolve the civil union.
4. The biological mother gets custody of the child, and the other partner gets visitation rights.
5. Given her new found outlook on life, the biological mother is uncomfortable about giving her former lesbian partner access to her daughter.
6. The lesbian ex-partner takes her to court and convinces a judge to give her custody instead, with visitation rights to the biological mother.

Is it just me, or is there something wrong with this picture? Yes, I know, there is probably something else to this story and I am not saying that Lisa Miller, the biological mother, did everything right. But not very long ago, such a court decision would have been unthinkable.
Of course it can be argued that the judge followed the letter of the law. Indeed, as stated in the article, “The supreme courts of Virginia and Vermont ruled in favor of Ms. Jenkins [the lesbian partner], saying the case was the same as a custody dispute between a heterosexual couple. The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear arguments on it.”
But the Dickens character Mr. Bumble was right: “The law is a ass.” The law is presupposing a moral equivalency between a homosexual couple (which is incapable of producing children) and a heterosexual couple. But even in traditional marriages that end up in divorce, absent the mother having serious issues, preference is usually given to her as the one who has done most of the heavy lifting. In this case, the lesbian ex has absolutely zilch-zero-nada connection to the child, except that she was previously in a “civil union” with the biological mother.
This tragic decision is the inevitable consequence of a continuing moral slide, where homosexuality was formerly viewed purely in moral terms, then later more compassionately considered a behavioral disorder to be overcome, and finally as an inherent and insurmountable proclivity (lack of scientific support notwithstanding). And of course if homosexuality is an inherent trait, as if you were somehow born with a homosexual gene, your behavior is sanctioned and protected by law, with all the rights and privileges thereof.
That is why I suspect that there is an agenda here, if not on the part of the judges who are claiming to uphold the letter of the law, at least on the part of the lesbian who sued for custody (and of course the homosexual rights groups who are undoubtedly supporting her). The biological mother, by renouncing her homosexuality as part of her conversion to Christianity, represents a threat to the entire premise of the homosexual rights movement. If it is indeed possible to make a radical change in lifestyle by choice, then homosexuality is not an inherited trait after all, but very much a moral behavioral choice.
I have unapologetically stated elsewhere that homosexuality is an egregious sin, but so is heterosexual adultery and fornication, groundless divorce and other forms of spousal abandonment, cheating on your income tax and other forms of theft, all forms of deceit ranging from simple lies to full scale perjury, harsh words spoken in anger, and (last, but certainly not least) hypocrisy, pride or self-righteous attitudes toward those who practice any of the above. All these and countless other unlisted evils are equally effective at evoking divine displeasure. And all of them are equally forgivable where there is genuine remorse and a desire to change.
I therefore claim no moral superiority to the players in this saga, or to anyone for that matter. I have plenty of my own sins. My main point is that shifts in basic assumptions as illustrated in this case will have a profound impact on how the law is applied. Once moral equivalency is assumed and morality is removed from the equation, the very foundations of our system of law and government start to crumble. As the psalmist says, “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?" (Psalms 11:3)