Court Opinion

ID: 9618500
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:13:11.659343+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:29.947958
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE KEENAN,
with whom JUSTICE WHITING and JUSTICE LACY join, dissenting.
This Court has held, as the majority states, that a lesbian mother is not per se an unfit parent. Doe v. Doe, 222 Va. 736, 748, 284 S.E.2d 799, 806 (1981). Nevertheless, the majority ignores the trial court’s refusal to follow this established law of the Commonwealth.
The record plainly shows that the trial court made a per se finding of unfitness based on the mother’s homosexual conduct. The trial court stated:
I will tell you first that the mother’s conduct is illegal. It is a Class 6 felony in the Commonwealth of Virginia. I will tell you that it is the opinion of this Court that her conduct is immoral. And it is the opinion of this Court that the conduct of Sharon Bottoms renders her an unfit parent.
The trial court added to this statement only by citing two other factors to support its custody award. These factors were the “social condemnation” that would “inevitably” affect the child, and “other evidence of the child being affected or afflicted with the evidence [sic] which is unrebutted of the cursing, the evidence of the child standing in the corner.”
As the Court of Appeals properly recognized, “adverse effects of a parent’s homosexuality on a child cannot be assumed without specific proof.” Bottoms v. Bottoms, 18 Va. App. 481, 493, 444 *422S.E.2d 276, 283 (1994); see also Doe, 222 Va. at 746, 284 S.E.2d at 805. Although there is no evidence in this record showing that the mother’s homosexual conduct is harmful to the child, the majority improperly presumes that its own perception of societal opinion and the mother’s homosexual conduct are germane to the issue whether the mother is an unfit parent. Thus, the majority commits the same error as the trial court by attaching importance to factors not shown by the evidence to have an adverse effect on the child.
Additionally, I believe that this appeal cannot be resolved by imposition of final judgment. Since the trial court applied the wrong rule of law in this custody determination, this case must be remanded to the trier of fact, pursuant to McEntire v. Redfearn, 217 Va. 313, 316-17, 227 S.E.2d 741, 744 (1976), for application of the correct principles of law to all the evidence.
The majority’s award of final judgment is doubly inappropriate under the holding of McEntire, because approximately 19 months have passed since the last evidentiary hearing in this case. In McEntire, the trial court had applied the wrong rule of law, and almost 18 months had passed since the last evidentiary hearing. This Court held that, based on the passage of that amount of time, “we are unable at this time properly to determine the issue of custody from the record before us. Accordingly, we will remand the case to the circuit court with direction to hold forthwith another hearing . . . applying the law in a manner consistent with this opinion.” 217 Va. at 317, 227 S.E.2d at 744.
In the present case, the same disposition is required. Thus, I would affirm the Court of Appeals’ holding that the trial court erred in applying a per se rule of parental unfitness based on the mother’s homosexual conduct, but would reverse its imposition of final judgment and remand this matter to the trial court for further proceedings.