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It's hard to be against grandparent visits; that's one reason all 50 states have passed laws allowing suits like the Troxels'. But it's also easy to understand Tommie Granville's argument that as the parent, she should be the one to decide how her children are reared. Granville, whose new husband adopted the girls, says she always wanted the Troxels to be involved with her children, but she disagreed with the extent and timing of their visitation demands. Says her lawyer, Catherine Smith: "The grandparents were not denied access. She went to them and said, 'How about one week a month?' and they sued."
The courts initially awarded the Troxels visitation rights: one weekend a month, one week in the summer and four hours on each grandparent's birthday. But the Washington supreme court sided with the mother, ruling that parents have a right to make decisions about their children. The court was also troubled that Washington State's statute allows visitation not only by grandparents but also by any adult who can persuade a court to order it. Mandatory visitation for nannies and soccer coaches, anyone?
The treatment of grandparent-visitation laws in the courts has varied widely. In some states (including Georgia and Florida) they've been struck down. In others (including Kentucky and Wisconsin) they've been upheld. On the U.S. Supreme Court, the conservative majority may like the idea of grandparent visitation--but they may not like the government intruding on families. One wild card: six of the nine Justices are grandparents.
But it's the battles over gay and lesbian parental rights that have been the most hotly disputed. In some cases, the homosexuals are the parents who want the government to mind its own business. That was the situation with Sharon Bottoms, a birth mother who lost custody of her five-year-old son Tyler in a high-profile 1996 case. A Virginia court ruled that a nonparent--Sharon's mother--should raise Tyler because Sharon's lesbian lifestyle made her unfit.
In other cases, homosexuals want the government's help. In visitation cases, they often argue that they have had a parental relationship and should remain part of the child's life. Penny Kazmierazak went to court last year seeking custody of Zoey, a five-year-old girl born to her partner before the couple's breakup. Kazmierazak and Pam Query had been together five years when Query underwent artificial insemination. Despite Kazmierazak's role in Zoey's birth (she paid for the insemination) and years of parenting, a Florida court turned her down because she wasn't a birth parent and had not legally adopted the child. She is now seeking visitation rights.
The trend, however, is for courts to look beyond whether a parent is gay in evaluating parenting claims. Last March a New Jersey appeals court awarded visitation rights to the former partner of a lesbian mother who had helped raise their children. And two years after the Bottoms case, a court in the same Virginia county quietly awarded custody to a lesbian mother over her former husband. A key factor: in the course of the Bottoms' appeals, the Virginia courts dropped their doctrine that gays are necessarily unfit parents.