YEAH? WELL, AT LEAST HE'S NOT A LESBIAN!

This story was frst reported Friday, but now it's reached The New York Times:

Federal authorities last week arrested and charged a Tennessee pastor with aiding in the "international parental kidnapping" of a girl who has been missing since late 2009 and is at the center of a lengthy custody battle between her two mothers -- a onetime lesbian couple who were in a civil union.

The two had a bitter falling-out after one became an evangelical Christian and denounced the other’s continued "homosexual lifestyle."

... Lisa Miller, the girl's biological mother and a newly fervent Baptist, was championed by conservatives for her efforts to shield her daughter from homosexuality....

A Vermont court granted Miller primary custody (yup, a court in Vermont sided with the evangelical Christian, something right-wingers would probably have thought impossible) -- but Jenkins was granted extensive visitation rights. Miller refused to allow the visits, so the Vermont family court awarded primary custody to Jenkins.

Ms. Miller and Isabella, who is now 9, disappeared. A warrant was issued for Ms. Miller's arrest, and they have not been heard from since.

An FBI affidavit that was unsealed on Thursday says a Tennessee preacher helped spirit Miller and her daughter to Nicaragua:

Ms. Miller and Isabella stayed in a beach house in Nicaragua that is owned by a conservative businessman with close ties to Liberty University, an evangelical school in Lynchburg, Va., and whose daughter works at the university's law school, according to the affidavit.

Lawyers from Liberty, including the dean of the law school, Mathew D. Staver, represented Ms. Miller in court appeals on the custody issues....

[Staver] said he knew nothing about the accusations involving a law school office assistant, Victoria Hyden, and her father Philip Zodhiates, the beach house's owner.

Mr. Zodhiates runs Response Unlimited, a Christian direct-mail company in Waynesboro, Va....

Yeah, and I'm sure Zodhiates would be a much better influence on the little girl than some ... some lesbian. That would be this Philip Zodhiates:

For eight years, a major direct-mail firm "specializing in the Christian and conservative markets" has been selling lists of the readers of America's leading anti-Semitic newspaper and, since about 2001, its successor publication.

Response Unlimited, based in Waynesboro, Va., and headed by Christian Right activist Philip Zodhiates, charges $100 for the rental of every 1,000 names of subscribers to the now-defunct Spotlight newspaper. Founded by veteran anti-Semite Willis Carto, The Spotlight carried anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic and wildly conspiracist articles interspersed with ads for Klan, neo-Nazi and related hate groups.

Zodhiates also peddles lists of subscribers to the American Free Press, which replaced The Spotlight when that tabloid was shut down amid legal and financial troubles surrounding Carto.... Today, the Free Press carries stories on Zionism, secret "New World Order" conspiracies, American Jews and Israel. Mixed in are advertisements for outfits like Pete Peter's Scriptures for America and Kingdom Identity Ministries -- practitioners of Christian Identity, a theology that claims that Jews are the literal descendants of Satan....

And this Philip Zodhiates:

The truth about the war on terrorism!
by

Philip Zodhiates

President Bush and our nation's leaders are not telling you the whole truth about the war on terrorism.

In fact, they can't.

Because the war we're fighting is a religious war. A war not against Muslims, but rather a war against Islam.

... Islam is a militaristic and imperialistic religion, whose followers are commanded by the Qu'ran to subjugate all other people without hesitation to shed blood....

(Will it surprise you if I tell you he did direct mail for Christine O'Donnell last year?)

This guy will be a fine influence on the girl if he shows up at his beach house. Right?