Lesbian Loses Custody of Son
* I am responding to “Lesbian Loses Custody of Son to Her Mother,” Sept. 8.
I am a married, heterosexual physician, and the mother of two children, ages 22 and 23. I am furious at the decision of a judge in Virginia who, “in his wisdom,” gave custody of the 2-year-old son to his grandmother. Ostensibly the reason was because the mother admitted to engaging in oral sex, a felony in Virginia.
Since when is oral sex only indulged in by lesbians? If oral sex is the gold standard by which you remove a child from its parent, then we would have a lot of kids in the U.S.A. dragged out of both gay and heterosexual homes. And how does having oral sex translate to a person’s inability to raise a child? The two things are completely separate.
It is time that the Virginia court pokes its nose out of people’s bedrooms. What two consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedroom is their own business!
DEBORAH R. ISHIDA MD
Beverly Hills
* I thought I was awake when I returned from an early morning run to read my paper before work, but then a real alarm went off: “Lesbian Loses Custody of Son to Her Mother.” Your brief account of a Virginia judge’s awarding custody of a child to his grandmother because the mother’s “only alleged parental shortcoming is her homosexuality” was more than chilling in an era of growing intolerance.
What is next? Removing children from their parent’s care because there’s too much sugar on their cereal? The parents insist on home teaching but are not very good at it? A divorced parent has a date sleep over? When children have the steady care and love of their parent(s), I can sleep well. When the state takes aim to shatter families, we had all better be awake.
LIZA WHITE
Calabasas
* Virginia’s decision to take a child away from a lesbian couple because of its determination that homosexual parental behavior would warp the child’s natural sexuality is not only egotistical and uncompassionate, but simple flawed science, biological and logical, as well.
The court in its wisdom has taken from a lesbian her adorable 2-year-old and turned the child over to the heterosexual grandmother who bore and raised the lesbian daughter to begin with.
Can we talk?
BEVERLY SIMONS-MORSE
Manhattan Beach