Oh, Maggie Gallagher. Always trying to walk the thin line between outright bigotry and putting on a smiley face for the camera. Right Wing Watch posted comments Maggie made on the case to the Catholic News Agency (link apparently broken for the moment):
In a Monday e-mail to CNA, Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for Marriage, made general comments about the case.
“I have sympathy for the pre-eminent claims of natural parents versus legal parents, when the natural mother is a fit parent (which nobody has denied in this case). But we have to be a nation ruled by laws, even when those laws may be unjust.
“Let this act as a warning call: Don’t enter civil unions with people if you do not want to give them legal rights over your children. And do not give much faith in the “best interest of the child’ standard to protect your child. If the best interest of the child conflicts with fashionable legal norms, courts will not care what is in your child’s best interest.
“It cannot be in Lisa’s daughter’s interest to be forcibly moved to Vermont away from the only mother she has ever known. This case is a tragedy all around. I cannot endorse what Lisa Miller has done, but I understand it, and pity both women and most of all this child. I wish Lisa’s partner had the wisdom of Solomon, but I cannot blame her either,” Gallagher told CNA.
I’m not sure if she intended to, but Maggie Gallagher seems to have conceded our legal point: Lisa Miller and Janet Jenkins decided to have the child together. It wouldn’t matter whether it was a straight couple with a child linked biologically to both mother and father, a straight couple with a biological link to just one parent, an adopted child, or whatever else. Maggie actually (accidentally) gave some good advice: if you’re going to bring a child into the world with your legal partner, you both assume responsibility for that child.
Now, some of what she said was drivel, of course. This has nothing to do with “fashionable legal norms” and the courts are not ignoring the child’s best interest, not by a long shot. And obviously, referring to Lisa Miller as “the only mother [Isabella] has ever known” is convenient, since it has been Miller’s refusal to comply with court ordered visitation that has removed Janet Jenkins from the child’s life.
But I wanted to note the concession. Again, Maggie may not realize it, but she sort of just said we were right.
