With Queer parenthood being as accessible and visible as it is today through shows such as Modern Family or Queer family bloggers, it is very easy for the history and the original fight for Queer parenthood to become forgotten. The truth is that children have been parented by Queer people since at least World War II. The ideas of Queer parenthood are connected to the ideas developed during the 60s and 70s that queerness or queer activism and parenthood were only mutually exclusive. It was not until the removal of homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1973 that the courts changed how they ruled in custodial cases when Queer parents were in the mix.
However, the damage had already been done. Most Queer custody battles occurred from 1967 to 1985 and often involved Queer parents who had left heterosexual marriages. In many cases, Queer parents were forced to sign affidavits agreeing never to have their partners and children in the same house simultaneously, undergo regular psychiatric examinations testifying to the denial of their sexual orientation, and stop all pro-gay rights activist work to maintain parental rights. Adverse judicial reactions to queer parents began to appear in response to human rights demands for queer people as a whole. For example, Queer people fighting for employment or privacy rights when discussing their cases with the press or taking part in any Queer political action was enough for a judge to deny a parent custody. Judges also used state-level sodomy laws as justification, arguing that homosexuals were admitted criminals and could not appeal for their rights to employment, privacy, or child custody. Many of these custody cases went unpublished due to child privacy laws and the state’s want to protect homophobic judges. They were only published when the ruling was appealed by one of the parents.
For example, on October 5, 1967, Ellen Nadler of Sacramento, California, lost custody of her five-year-old daughter. Justice Joseph Babich awarded custody to Nadler’s ex-husband because “the homosexuality of the plaintiff as a matter of law constitutes her not a fit or proper person to have the care, custody, and control of… the minor child of the parties hereto.” In short, Ellen Nadler had lost custody of her daughter solely because of her lesbianism. Justice Babich’s ruling was overturned by a California Court of Appeals, objecting to the idea that homosexuality made someone unfit to be a parent. However, Nadler almost immediately lost custody of her daughter once again after Justice Babich stated that a heterosexual environment was “in the child's best interest.” Assistant D.A. Ernest F. Winters referred to California’s sodomy laws (California Penal Code 288a) as he demanded Ellen Nadler release the names of her female sexual partners since 1966. Despite intense objections by Nadler, she was forced the release the names. Ellen Nadler lost her daughter and her community in one fell swoop.
Working in “the best interest of the child” was a smokescreen for anti-queer biases and used to deny Queer parents child custody. Historically, “the best interests of the child” are rooted in a Victorian-era concept of motherhood and childhood, which led to the development of a “maternal preference” when courts decided on child custody issues. This glorification of motherhood had certain built-in restrictions based on class and race. Essentially, the idea of a “perfect and virtuous” mother only applied to a white, middle-class woman of European ancestry. This replaced the notion that children were their father’s property and he, therefore, owned them.
Queer parent groups quickly sprang up around the country in response to these homophobic rulings, including groups such as Dykes and Tykes in New York City, the Lesbian Mothers Union (LMU) in Oakland, California, and the Lesbian Mothers National Defense Fund (LMNDF) in Seattle, Washington. However, their political work did not stop the homophobic rulings that resulted in Queer parents losing rights to their children. The reasons why these children were taken included many stigmas around Queer people during this time. That Queer people were pedophiles and therefore unfit to be around their children, that they were emotionally irresponsible, that their children might be gay, and that these children would face social stigma from being raised by a Queer parent that would result in psychological damage to the child.
For example, A Texas jury denied Mary Jo Risher custody of her five-year-old son in a 1976 trial in which her fifteen-year-old son testified that he had suffered bullying due to his mother’s lesbianism. A New Jersey court denied Sandra Panzino custody of her two daughters in 1977 because her children could potentially be stigmatized from having a lesbian mother. Judge Joseph Gruccio claimed that Panzino was “too dependent” on her daughters. His ex-wife accused Robert Johnson of molesting their son after coming out to her in 1983 as a part of their custody battle that focused on “the sickness of homosexuality.” A petition filed in 1982 by a gay man’s ex-wife in Dekalb County, Illinois, alleged that the man was “recruiting the children into homosexuality” and was likely to molest them. A county examination found that the man’s relationship with his children was not abusive.
In addition to all of this, the struggles of Queer mothers of color were invisible. Remember the definition of a “perfect and virtuous” mother? Orange County social workers accused Cynthia Forcier, a Native American lesbian mother, of molesting her five-year-old daughter in a California custody case. A doctor assumed that bruises in the girl’s pelvic area were indications of sexual molestation and not resulting from being kicked by another child, as her daughter told the doctors. Earnestine Blue was a Black lesbian mother who fled California for Utah in 1974 rather than lose custody of her children to their father. In one Arizona custody case, attorneys suggested that the interracial relationship of a white lesbian mother would harm her children. In a Virginia case, the “looseness” of a lesbian mother’s household was argued based on her lesbianism, the fact that she let her son curse, and that her partner’s son was Black.
Often, Queer fathers in these situations wanted visitation rights, and Queer mothers wanted either visitation or full custody. However, they often lost both. Whenever Queer parents were allowed to see their children, they were not allowed to have their partners around them. They were prohibited from participating in Queer activism or social events. Supervised visits were typical in these cases because judges believed that Queer parents were more likely to molest their children. Later studies of children affected by these court decisions cited distress due to their parent’s separation but not due to their parents’ sexual preference. There was little difference between children raised by heterosexual parents and children raised by Queer parents.
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Queer parents were beginning to win custody of their children due to the work of several sympathetic psychologists such as Dr. Evelyn Hooker, Dr. Richard Green, Dr. John Money, and Dr. Wardell Pomeroy and the work of community activists and compassionate attorneys. However, there were still anti-gay rulings. In 1985, the Virginia Supreme Court denied a gay man both custody of his ten-year-old daughter and any visitation in the presence of another gay man. In 1991, the Illinois Second District Court of Appeals upheld a family court ruling that denied a lesbian mother custody of her daughter because she was “living with another woman.” The first time the Supreme Court even acknowledged the struggles that Queer parents went through was when Sandra Day O’Connor was confirmed to the Supreme Court in 1981. Still, in the same year, the Kentucky Court of Appeals transferred custody of a lesbian mother’s five-year-old daughter to her father because of the threat of the mother’s sexuality. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case. In the 1986 ruling, Bowers v. Hardwick upheld Georgia’s anti-sodomy law, which wasn’t overturned until the 2003 reversal in Lawrence v. Texas.
Little is known about the current lives of the children involved in these custody cases, as none of them have come forward to talk about their experiences. This gross and negligent use of the courts to make queer parents seem unfit to parent or predators carries repercussions to this day.
This specific piece of history makes me think of comments on queer family's Instagram posts. "Kid needs a dad/mom." "It's so sad that your child won't grow up with a father/mother." "Don't you worry about how that will affect them?" "Who will teach them X, Y, Z?" To assume that the children of queer parents will not have other parental influences in their lives is to pigeonhole them into what you want to believe will be a sad or lacking life. In leaving out chosen families and only focusing on the blood relative this child is "missing," you effectively ignore people that this child will be loved by, taught by, and raised by. These are comments we would never make to a straight single parent or a widow, yet we make them freely to queer couples raising their children. It is hard enough to be a parent at any stage in one's life, whether parenting by yourself or with others. So, why do others feel the need to bring these things up about a child that is not theirs? It only makes queer parents feel bad about themselves and feel unfit to be a parent, just as Justice Babich did in 1967.
SOURCE MATERIAL:
Rivers, Daniel. “‘IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE CHILD’: LESBIAN AND GAY PARENTING CUSTODY CASES, 1967-1985.” Journal of Social History, vol. 43, no. 4, Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 917–43, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40802011.
Comments