Lisa Miller

Back in 2010, when a federal district court in California heard the first legal challenge to the anti-gay Proposition 8, the judge asked the attorney defending Prop 8 how marriage equality would hurt the ability of straight couples to bear and raise children. The attorney sputtered and answered, “I don’t know.” A key witness for Prop 8’s supporters had the same answer, and later changed his mind to support marriage equality.

Four years later, the case is coming before the Supreme Court, and marriage equality opponents are still struggling to answer that question. In an amicus brief [pdf] filed with the court last week, the anti-gay Liberty Counsel took a shot at it. If marriage equality is achieved, Liberty Counsel argues, “Many boys will grow up without any positive male influence in their lives to show them what it means to be a man, and many girls will grow up without any female influence to show them what it means to be a lady.”

Not only does Proposition 8 further the state’s interest in steering childrearing into the husband-wife marriage model, but it furthers the important interest in providing male and female role models in the family. Male gender identity and female gender identity are each uniquely important to a child’s development. As a result, one very significant justification for defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman is because children need a mother and a father. We live in a world demarcated by two genders, male and female. There is no third or intermediate category. Sex is binary. By striking down Proposition 8, this Court will be making a powerful statement: our government no longer believes children deserve mothers and fathers. In effect, it would be saying: “Two fathers or two mothers are not only just as good as a mother and a father, they are just the same.”

The government promotion of this idea will likely have some effect even on people who are currently married, who have been raised in a particular culture of marriage. But this new idea of marriage, sanctioned by law and government, will certainly have a dramatic effect as the next generation’s attitudes toward marriage, childbearing, and the importance of mothers and fathers are formed. By destroying the traditional definition of marriage, the family structure will be dramatically transformed. Many boys will grow up without any positive male influence in their lives to show them what it means to be a man, and many girls will grow up without any female influence to show them what it means to be a lady.

The repercussions of this are incalculable and will reshape the culture in which we live. Many children learn appropriate gender roles by having interaction with both their mother and their father and by seeing their mother and their father interact together with one another. By redefining marriage to state that this is not a family structure that the state wants to foster and encourage, this Court will be overturning centuries of historical understandings of family and the home.

To give you an idea of the kind of parenting that Liberty Counsel supports, its lawyers Mat Staver and Rena Lindevaldsen, who are named on its brief, are also representing a woman accused of kidnapping her daughter rather than let her have contact with her other mother (the woman’s former same-sex partner).
 

Back at the very beginning of the Lisa Miller saga, a Facebook page called "Only One Mommy: The Story of Lisa and Isabella Miller" that had been created by Rena Lindevaldsen, Miller's attorney and a professor at Liberty University Law School suddenly went dark and an announcement was made it would be "replaced by a new group (still to be named) that will be created by Linda Wall."

Wall, an "ex-gay" activist and close friend of Miller's who was among those named in a RICO lawsuit filed by Miller's ex-partner Janet Jenkins, created a Facebook group called "Lisa and Isabella" where she occasionally posted updates on the Miller case along with prayers for all those involved. 

On Saturday, with Hurricane Sandy closing in on the East Coast, Wall set off a bit of controversy when she posted this short message on the group's page:

That statement, understandably, did not sit well with some of the Vermont-based members of the group: 

Now what I am seeing is people openly admitting to imprecatory prayer that God will smite my neighbors and me because of where we live. Not prayers that Vermont's politicians and judges will see the error of their ways and come around. Not love. Hatred. And the worst part is that it's not just hatred for enemies, but for innocent people. We must pay the price too solely because of where we live.

And then when I object to prayers FOR MY DEVASTATION (yes that's personal!), I'm met with self-righteous self-justification and excuses. I'm told that I need to do things that are not practical or else I deserve to be harmed.

But Wall was unapologetic, shooting back that "God's judgment is upon this country" and Hurricane Sandy was an example of God's vengeance:

I didn't expect most of you to agree with my statement. But I tell you this the tragedy here is that a little six year old Christian girl and her born again Mother had to flee America in order to obey God's Word.

And now a Minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ is facing imprisonment for helping protect a little child from being removed from her biological Christian Mother and turned over to a stranger.

Christians who loved and nurtured Lisa and Isabella through the six plus years are also being sued for obeying God's Word. So look in the mirror and decide where your commitment is.

Vengeance is God's and He does repay.

Not surprisingly, all the offending posts have since been removed. 

Yesterday Kenneth Miller was convicted of aiding an international parental kidnapping for the role he played in helping Lisa Miller (no relation) flee the country with her daughter rather than abide by a court order transferring custody to her former partner, Janet Jenkins.

But that was not the only interesting development in the case, as Jenkins has now filed a civil RICO lawsuit [PDF] against Kenneth Miller and several others who allegedly played a role in helping Lisa Miller kidnap her daughter and leave the country, including Liberty University Law School and Thomas Road Baptist Church:

 41. Unbeknownst to Plaintiff Janet Jenkins, in 2009 Victoria Zodhiates (now Hyden) was an employee of Response Unlimited, Inc., and also a "student worker" at Liberty University School of Law. On information and belief, Victoria Zodhiates sent an email during this time period to her co-workers at the law school requesting donations for supplies to send to Lisa Miller to enable her to remain outside the country. Lisa Miller's attorney, Matthew Staver was the Dean of the Law School and Ms. Zodhiates's boss. Matthew Staver and Philip Zodhiates were also personal
acquaintances at this time. On September 20, 2009, both Philip Zodhiates and Victoria Hyden called Lisa Miller's father, Terry Miller in Tennessee to assist in arranging her and Isabella's transportation from a Walmart parking lot in Lynchburg, Virginia, to Waynesboro, Virginia, from whence they would depart for Canada and Nicaragua the next day.

42. In early November, 2009, elders of the Thomas Road Baptist Church packed up the personal belongings of Lisa Miller in two bags. These bags were picked up from Lynchburg, Virginia by Philip Zodhiates who arranged to have the bags transported to Nicaragua by sending them with his son's school teacher who was taking some children on a mission trip to Managua. Philip Zodhiates arranged for the teacher, John Collmus, to deliver the bags at the airport to Timothy Miller. The bags also contained some supplies for Lisa Miller, such as peanut butter.

...

47. Lisa Miller's attorneys Mathew Staver and Rena Lindevaldsen also routinely instructed their Law School students that the correct course of action for a person in Lisa Miller's situation would be to engage in "civil disobedience" and defy court orders.

48. Also in 2009, TRBC Head Pastor Jonathan Falwell was among several religious leaders who made a call for "Christian civil disobedience" and published a public declaration, known as The Manhattan Declaration stating that they:

"will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family."

49. Hence, Defendants TRBC and its related ministry Liberty University School of Law encouraged its agents to disregard state laws governing parental rights, particularly Vermont's law giving rights to members of same-sex families. The TRBC and Liberty University School of Law through its public declaration promoted, condoned and explicitly ratified its agent's tortious, racketeering activity. These agents and employees have followed this direction, making TRBC and Liberty University School of Law liable in respondeat superior for the consequences.

...

57. At the trial of Kenneth Miller in August 2012, a number of Lisa Miller's friends and supporters testified, including Defendant Wright, and several members of the PIC. When asked if any of them had met or heard of Philip Zodhiates, the answer was no. At the trial, the government introduced phone records that showed phone calls made from Philip Zodhiates's cell phone between 1:28pm and 1:30pm on September 22, 2009, to a cell phone with an Orlando area code that is registered to Liberty Counsel, a landline registered to Liberty Counsel, and a landline registered to Liberty University School of Law. Mathew Staver, Dean of the Liberty University School of Law, splits his time between Lynchburg, Virginia and Orlando, Florida. At the time that the calls were made, Philip Zodhiates was still en route back to Virginia after depositing Lisa Miller and Isabella near the Canadian border.

58. Lisa Miller's attorneys, Matthew Staver and Rena Lindevaldsen have at all times maintained that they did not know their client's location to various courts in Vermont (including in sworn testimony of Rena Lindevaldsen) and Virginia, and to the press that she simply stopped communicating with them and disappeared.

59. Meanwhile, Matthew Staver's acquaintance, Philip Zodhiates, and his daughter Victoria, an assistant in the Law School knew of Lisa Miller's whereabouts and solicited donations from other Law School employees for her aid. Upon information and belief, other law school employees who spoke to Victoria about Lisa Miller's whereabouts were too intimidated to come forward to law enforcement for fear of angering Dean Staver and losing their jobs. During the time that Lisa and Isabella were missing, Dean Staver fired several members of the admissions and financial aid department who were under his supervision. To this day, Victoria Hyden is still an employee of the law school, even though her tortious conduct involving Isabella Miller-Jenkins has been in public court records for over a year. Also, while Lisa Miller and Isabella were missing, Lisa Miller's attorneys continued to press appeals on Lisa Miller's behalf until the last appeals were exhausted in November 2010 (more than a year after she was missing), stating that they had advance instructions from Lisa Miller as to her wishes for the ongoing litigation.

...

62. Based on the foregoing, all of the Defendants named herein, in both their individual capacities and as agents of TRBC, Liberty University Law School, Response Unlimited, Inc., and CAM are liable for conspiring with Lisa Miller and with each other to kidnap Isabella Miller-Jenkins, assure her continued detention outside the State of Vermont, and for conspiring with Kenneth Miller to participate in the affairs of the Beachy Amish-Mennonite Brotherhood through a pattern of racketeering activity .. Defendants are also liable for conspiring to violate Janet Jenkins' and Isabella Miller-Jenkins' rights to a parent-child relationship on account oflsabella having two mothers instead of a mother and a father, and Defendant Wright is liable under 42 U.S.C. 1986 for failing to prevent the violation of Plaintiffs' civil rights.

For years now, we have been covering the case of Lisa Miller, a former lesbian who found Christ thanks to Jerry Falwell's church and then sought to prevent her former partner from having any sort of visitation with the couple's daughter.  After repeated violations of court orders regarding visitation arrangements, Miller was ordered to hand over custody of her daughter, at which points she kidnapped her and fled the country.

Ever since, the case has become a rallying point for anti-gay Religious Right activists and today a trial got underway for a man accused of helping Miller and her daughter flee to South America, prompting Bryan Fischer to come to Miller's defense by declaring that this kidnapping was entirely justified because the little girl was being sexually abused by Miller's former partner and so Miller had a responsibility "to obey God rather than man" and had no choice but to kidnap her daughter and run:

We have been following the Lisa Miller saga for nearly two years now, beginning back in late 2009 when it started to become apparent that Miller had kidnapped her daughter and fled the country rather than abide by court-ordered custody arrangements with her former partner Janet Jenkins.

Earlier this year there was a break in the case when a Mennonite pastor named Timothy Miller (no relation to Lisa) was arrested for allegedly having helped Miller and her daughter Isabella flee the country for Nicaragua and charged with aiding and abetting in the international kidnapping. 

A few weeks ago, the charges against Timothy Miller were dropped in exchange for agreeing to cooperate with authorities in the investigation. Today it is being reported that information Timothy Miller provided has led to charges against another man, Kenneth Miller (who is not apparently related to either Timothy Miller or Lisa Miller,) for his role in the kidnapping:

A Virginia man who federal prosecutors say helped a woman leave the country with her daughter so she wouldn’t have to turn custody of the girl over to her former lesbian partner surrendered Tuesday to face charges he aided in international parental kidnapping.

A complaint unsealed Tuesday said Kenneth L. Miller, 46, of Stuarts Draft, Va., arranged passage for Lisa Miller to travel to Canada before flying with her daughter in September 2009 to Nicaragua, where she was sheltered for a time by a group of Mennonite missionaries.

...

The affidavit made public Tuesday indicated that Timothy Miller had helped provide the information that led to the charges against Kenneth Miller.

The affidavit says Timothy Miller arranged passage for Lisa Miller and her daughter, paying for the tickets with his mother-in-law’s credit card, but Kenneth Miller had told him he would be reimbursed for the price of the tickets.

...

The latest complaint alleges that Kenneth Miller, a Mennonite pastor, asked another Mennonite pastor from Ontario, whose name was redacted from the affidavit, to meet Lisa Miller and her daughter Isabella, now 11, at a hotel in Niagara, Ontario.

In Ontario, that pastor picked Lisa Miller and her daughter up at the hotel and took them to the airport in Toronto, where they flew to Mexico and then Central America.

If convicted of aiding in international parental kidnapping, Kenneth Miller could be sentenced to three years in prison.

In January of last year, Lisa Miller fled the country, likely to Central America, with her daughter Isabella after refusing to obey a court-ordered custody arrangement that gave custody to her former partner Janet Jenkins. A Mennonite pastor was recently arrested in connection with the kidnapping, and the Associated Press reports that Miller “appears to have had the support in the Mennonite community outside [Nicaragua’s] capital of Managua.” Andrew Harmon of The Advocate reports that the charges against the pastor, Timothy Miller (no relation), have now been dropped as he has agreed to cooperate with the kidnapping investigation:

In a stunning development, government attorneys have dropped charges against a Mennonite missionary accused of aiding in the kidnapping of a young girl at the center of a high-profile child custody case.

Though the reason for the decision is not yet clear, documents filed in federal court late Friday indicated that Timothy “Timo” Miller, who was arrested in April and later charged with aiding and abetting in the international kidnapping of Isabella Ruth Miller-Jenkins, is cooperating with the ongoing investigation.

…

In the Friday order, U.S. Attorney Tristram J. Coffin dismissed the grand jury indictment against Timo Miller in the kidnapping.

“In light of Timothy Miller’s role in the international parental [kidnapping], and his agreement to cooperate with the investigation of the United States government, including an agreement to return to the United States and to provide truthful testimony as requested in any proceedings in this matter, further prosecution is not in the interests of the United States at this time,” the order, signed by Coffin and U.S. district judge Christina M. Reiss, read.

…

Lisa Miller entered into a Vermont civil union with Jenkins in 2000, one that ended in 2003. Following the break-up, she moved to Virginia with Isabella, joined an evangelical church, and began reading books on ex-gay reparative therapy. Miller was later represented in custody proceedings by the social conservative legal group Liberty Counsel, but was ordered to transfer full custody of Isabella to Jenkins after she repeatedly refused to grant her former partner court-ordered visitations. Liberty Counsel attorneys Mathew D. Staver and Rena Lindevaldsen have said that they have not had contact with Miller since her disappearance and did not advise her to break the law, the New York Times reported earlier this year.

According to the April FBI affidavit, Victoria Hyden, an administrative assistant at the Liberty University School of Law, had been asked by her father "to disseminate a request to get Lisa Miller supplies" in Nicaragua, where she and her daughter had allegedly been staying at a beach house owned by Hyden’s father. Liberty Counsel has offices on Liberty University’s Lynchburg, Va. campus.

Last month we noted that Rena Lindevaldsen, the attorney for Lisa Miller, had written a book all about Miller's saga ... or, at least most of it, since there is barely any mention of the fact that Miller ultimately kidnapped her daughter and fled the country, which is odd considering that Lindevaldsen is reportedly teaching young lawyers at Liberty University to recommend just this sort of "civil disobedience" to clients they believe are being ordered to violate "God's law."

The book itself was predictable and, frankly, rather dull but that didn't stop Mat Staver, Wendy Wright, Mike Huckabee, and Peter Sprigg from glowingly endorsing it ... and now we can add Tony Perkins to the list of those endorsing the book:

Every parent's nightmare is losing a child--and Lisa Miller couldn't face the prospect of losing hers. Hello, I'm Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. Lisa Miller's child wasn't at risk from a dreaded disease. Or from violence. Or even from kidnapping. No, believe it or not, Lisa faced the prospect of losing her biological daughter because the courts ordered her to turn the child over to another woman. Why? Because she and the other woman were lesbian partners in Vermont when Lisa's daughter was born. The women are no longer together, and their civil union was dissolved. In fact, Lisa's now an ex-lesbian, who's renounced homosexuality and accepted Christ. So instead of giving up her daughter, she disappeared. Rena Lindevaldsen of Liberty Counsel was Lisa's lawyer through all the court battles--but she also became her friend. She's telling Lisa's story in a new book called, Only One Mommy. Anyone concerned about parental rights, the homosexual agenda, and religious liberty should read this book--Only One Mommy, available on Amazon.com.

It is amazing that Perkins says that it is every parent's nightmare to lose a child and then actually mentions the threat of kidnapping in an effort to portray Miller as the victim when it was Miller who literally kidnapped her daughter and fled the country in order to defy multiple court orders and escape law enforcement. 

I guess we probably should not hold our breath waiting for any Religious Right leader to actually step up and suggest that maybe Miller ought to have obeyed the law or, at this point, turn herself in to authorities.

Family Research Council senior fellow Peter Sprigg appeared today on The Matt Friedeman Show on the American Family Association’s American Family Radio to discuss the budding controversy over the right-wing “charity” service CGBG. The progressive groups AllOut.org and Change.org have persuaded over 200 retailers to leave the CGBG, a for-profit group that allows customers to shop at companies online and direct part of their proceeds to right-wing organizations like FRC and Focus on the Family – success that, unsurprisingly, has got the Religious Right up in arms.

It’s rather ironic that the AFA is helping the FRC denounce the pressure campaign against the CGBG, as the AFA itself led boycotts against Ford, Home Depot, Old Navy, Pepsi, and Glee along with pressure campaigns against Burger King, Toyota, Lexus and Cellular South to stop running ads on Glee and Google and Disney to drop out of the It Gets Better Project. But this double-standard should come as no surprise, as the FRC endorsed the AFA’s boycott campaign against McDonalds and led its own campaign against Wal-Mart.

Sprigg and Freideman alleged that FRC is only facing a backlash from gay rights and women’s rights groups because the group oppose marriage equality. However, the AllOut.org petition urging companies to drop CGBC doesn’t mention the FRC’s position on marriage at all, instead focusing on FRC’s advocacy for laws criminalizing homosexuality, opposition to anti-bullying efforts and dishonest attempts to tie homosexuality to pedophilia.

Sprigg: People are afraid of the homosexual activists and they’re particularly afraid of this character assassination that comes in the form of the word ‘hate.’ Nobody wants to be accused of participating in ‘hate’ and so throwing that word  ‘hate’ around becomes a trump card even when nothing that we have done can reasonably be called  ‘hate.’ On the contrary, everything we do is motivated by love for the people who are hurt by this lifestyle.

Friedeman: Well, again I think what Tony Perkins has done and Peter Sprigg you by extension, you just say, we’re asking people, and AFA does this all the time as well, you urge retailers to remain neutral in the culture wars, the current cultural battles, particularly when you come down to something like homosexuality.

Such a claim is hard to believe coming from Peter Sprigg, who:

• Said that he would “much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them into the United States because we believe homosexuality is destructive to society.”

• Supported the criminalization of homosexuality.

• Lobbied to make it harder for students to join Gay-Straight Alliances because “homosexuality is harmful to society.”

• Argued that gays and lesbians shouldn’t be judges because a gay judge can’t “be held up as a role model.”

• Linked homosexuality to pedophilia even when scientists rejected their correlation.

• Opposed allowing same-sex partners or their adopted children from collecting their deceased partner or parent’s Social Security benefits.

• Cheered on Lisa Miller after she kidnapped her daughter and fled to Central America in order to evade court order granting custody to her former partner.

But the LGBT community, Sprigg says, should see all these as acts of love.

Since the Charity Give Back Group was forced to defend its financing of right-wing organizations like the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, spokesman Kevin McCullough (who himself has propagated virulent anti-gay rhetoric) has stated that the campaign to have companies withdraw from the CGBG represents bullying. Tony Perkins, the president of the FRC, even said it was an attempt to “censor” Christians. After Apple dropped out of the CGBG, which was previously known as the Christian Values Network, McCullough told The Christian Post, “We're not asking Apple to embrace our position or the other side's position. We just want them to stay neutral,” and the FRC is calling on activists to tell companies to “remain neutral in the current cultural battles.”

But by indirectly assisting the FRC and Focus on the Family, two of the major ‘culture war’ players, companies listed in the CGBG’s virtual mall are inadvertently finding themselves anything but ‘neutral’ parties. Both groups are heavily involved in the electoral politics and lobbying, which makes it difficult to consider them purely charitable organizations. FRC is one of the most prominent Religious Right advocacy groups in Washington D.C., and Focus on the Family has a policy arm (CitizenLink) dedicated to political activism. If companies really wanted to ‘remain neutral in the current cultural battles,’ that is more reason to drop out of the CGBG’s list.

While FRC and Focus have received the most attention, another group listed as an affiliated organization is Liberty Counsel.

Liberty Counsel is a sister organization of Liberty University and Liberty Action, part of the network established by the late Jerry Falwell. Liberty Counsel’s Liberty Alerts depict their legal victories as “Gaining Ground in the Culture War,” and the head of Liberty Counsel, Mat Staver, wrote a book called Take Back America that he descried a Liberty Action flyer called “an Invaluable Resource to Help Win the Intensifying Culture War!” Staver’s deputy at Liberty Counsel Matt Barber even described liberalism as “hatred for God” and demanded President Obama’s impeachment for providing family benefits to federal employees in domestic partnerships. Most recently, they defended Lisa Miller, who kidnapped her daughter and fled the country to escape a court order granting her former partner custody of the child, and the Florida teacher who used his Facebook to post anti-gay messages. Like FRC and Focus, Liberty Counsel consistently propagates the most stringent anti-gay rhetoric.

Barber has argued that marriage equality is “rebellion against God,” held that gay and lesbian youth who commit suicide do it because they intuitively know homosexuality is “immoral” and called anti-bullying programs part of a “a homosexual activist political indoctrination agenda.” Such anti-gay rhetoric is extremely similar to that used of the FRC and Focus. The FRC’s Perkins claimed that homosexuality is “man shaking his fist in the face of God” and said that gay and lesbian children are likely to commit suicide because they “recognize intuitively that their same-sex attractions are abnormal.” Focus on the Family led the push against anti-bullying programs across the country, calling them efforts “to promote homosexuality to kids.”

Liberty Counsel and the FRC also defended Malawi’s law that criminalizes homosexuality and attacked American efforts to alter it.

Despite right-wing criticisms of the pressure campaign on companies tied to the CGBG, Liberty Counsel launched their own pressure campaign against schools that allowed students to participate in the ‘Day of Silence,’ which protested anti-gay bullying. Liberty Counsel also conducts an annual campaign against companies that they believe are supposedly undermining Christians, and Staver calls on customers to “shop elsewhere” if the store is not seen as sufficiently respectful of Christmas.

Liberty Counsel even joined forces with the militantly anti-gay Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, Illinois Family Institute, and the American Family Association to launch a boycott and pressure campaign against McDonalds after it made a donation to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. Barber lashed out at McDonalds for working with “militant homosexual activists” in front of their company headquarters.

Who else supported the boycott and pressure campaign against McDonalds?

Why, none other than the Family Research Council, which supported the boycott against McDonalds and lauded “McDonald’s agreement to stop financing the homosexual agenda.”

Now, will FRC and its allies please stop complaining that pressure campaigns against companies represent “discrimination” and the undue influence of ‘cultural battles’ into the corporate world? Probably not.