By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman
CHILE, March 16, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A judge has provoked outrage in Chile by awarding custody of two children to their homosexual father, after he left his wife to live with his male lover. In addition, the judge has ordered the abandoned wife to make child support payments to the husband.
According to Chilean media accounts, the woman (referred to anonymously as “A.G.L.”) was deprived of custody of her two children, 10 and 17, when she failed to appear at a single custody hearing.
Her husband, “C.P.W.,” had previously abandoned her to live with his homosexual lover. Her children reportedly wish to live with their father. The oldest one, according to A.G.L.‘s mother, likes the fact that his father allows him to go to parties without restriction.
“This case is unique in Chile,” C.P.W. told the Chilean media recently. “I feel happy to be able to have my children with me. My children are the happiest children in the world that can exist at this moment,” he said.
“My daughter can’t sleep at night because of what happened,” A.G.L.‘s mother told the Chilean newspaper La Tercera. “The older one already knew, but for the little one to see that his father is sleeping with a man (…) because that’s how they’re living.”
Her mother also said that “as the older one likes to go to parties and the father doesn’t give him any problems about it, he picked him. My daughter used to tell him he couldn’t go to all of them because he couldn’t neglect his schoolwork.”
A.G.L. is currently suing her husband in divorce court and is attempting to recover custody of her younger child. She has reportedly purchased a cable television subscription in the hope of convincing her children to return.
The president of the Homosexual Liberation Movement (MOVILH), Rolando Jimenez, praised the verdict, saying that “what the court is doing is recognizing a reality, and that in this case the father is willing and able to exercise custody of his children and this is true in hundreds of thousands of cases of gay or lesbian couples.”
However, many Chileans have expressed outrage over the decision.
Sebastian Otero of Young People for Life says that the verdict was “an example of the devaluation that maternity and paternity have suffered in recent times. It gives the impression that the issue was addressed with little seriousness and that the children are an object of exchange.”
Chilean Cardinal Jorge Medina also condemned the decision.
“I think the judge acted in an incorrect manner and I don’t think that a child can be happy seeing that his father is living contrary to the law of God,” said the Cardinal.
“Saint Paul says that those who practice homosexuality will not see the kingdom of God, therefore, I think that a person in these conditions is not capable of forming the values of others, not even their children,” stated Medina.