Mrs. Kramer Vs. Mrs. Kramer

Isabella prefers to skip rather than walk down the long halls of the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va. With each springy step, the first grader's butterfly-print dress puffs full of air, giving her the appearance of weightlessness. She swings a bag of gummy bears in one hand, and in the other, a Sunday-school coloring sheet that reads "Obey God." One particularly high ballerina leap sends gummy bears skidding across the polished floor of the church and stops Isabella dead in her tracks. The dress deflates. Her mother Lisa Miller senses an imminent meltdown and starts counting down: "Five, four, three …" and by one, the little girl has all the candy in her hand again. "You beat the five-second rule," says Miller, "so it's still good." And with that, Isabella smiles, revealing a gap where two front baby teeth used to be, and stuffs the candy back in the bag. Skipping resumes.

Isabella hardly knows that she's at the center of a much bigger drama, a landmark custody battle between two women—both of whom she calls Mommy. Her parents are Miller, 40, who's fighting for exclusive, sole custody, and Janet Jenkins, 44, who's arguing for parental and visitation rights. Their case is the first to tackle the recognition of same-sex unions, marriage and the rights of homosexual parents across ideological, biological and state lines. And, uniquely, across religious lines once Miller became a devout Baptist, renounced her homosexuality and said she was determined to protect her daughter from a "lifestyle that's fundamentally wrong." Miller is Isabella's biological mom and lives with her daughter in Virginia, a state that does not recognize gay unions or marriage. Jenkins lives in Vermont, where she and Miller were happily—and legally—joined in a civil union eight years ago, and where the couple raised Isabella until they split when the child was just 17 months old. Since then, Miller has argued that her former partner—who has no blood tie to Isabella—also has no parental rights. "It would be like handing my child over to the milkman," she says. Jenkins disagrees. She says that as Miller's former legal partner who was at the IVF clinic when her daughter was conceived, and in the delivery room to catch her when she arrived, she should have visitation rights "like any other parent."

The women's exhaustive four-and-a-half-year legal battle has been argued in courtrooms from Fredericksburg to Burlington, their private lives scrutinized by countless attorneys, judges and in the court of public opinion. How often did Jenkins really burp the baby? How mentally stable is Miller? Could Jenkins's homosexuality have a bad influence on the child?

The limits of tolerance are being tested by this polarizing battle, as are the boundaries of our legal system. As more and more gay couples turn to IVF and adoption to have families of their own, the courts will surely find themselves tangled in more cases of mom against mom or dad versus dad. The fact that gay unions and marriages are legal in some places and not others is a large part of the conundrum. For opponents of same-sex marriage, it's proof that as more cases migrate, all states will be forced to legally recognize these homosexual partnerships. For gay-rights advocates, it's further evidence that the uneven patchwork of laws concerning same-sex civil unions and marriage may promise them equality in one locale, but leave them vulnerable in another. This all comes at a time when opinions regarding homosexuals as parents are shifting. A recent NEWSWEEK Poll found that support for the adoption rights of homosexuals is up 8 percentage points (45 percent to 53 percent) from 2004, and when it came to the question of rights for nonbiological gay or lesbian parents who've divorced, 63 percent of our respondents said that the partner who is not blood-related should still have custody rights and a decision-making role in the child's life. But when these cases do wind up in litigation, the custodial rights of gay parents come down to a confusing mess of variables: where the union or marriage was performed, where the case is fought, how the child was conceived and if "second-parent adoption" forms were filed by the nonbiological parent before the dissolution or divorce. Still, more and more same-sex couples are willing to give love, commitment and family a shot, regardless of the risks.

Inside Janet Jenkins's old, two-story home in the quaint town of Fair Haven, Vt., photos of Isabella as a chubby baby, as a toddler with Grandma and Grandpa and as a preschooler smelling flowers can be found in every room. "Ah, she's wearing red in this one. I love her in red," says Jenkins, smiling. The outgoing, 5-foot-2 strawberry blonde runs a licensed day-care center out of her home five days a week, and counsels women with substance-abuse problems in a halfway house during her off hours. Jenkins, who has 12 years of sobriety under her belt (she met Lisa at an AA meeting), doesn't like to talk about the litigation but warms up when the conversation turns to her daughter. She points out Isabella's room on the second floor, where a clothes rack is bare save a bright-pink Hello Kitty! backpack and a flowered bathing suit. Both items still have the tags on them.

Jenkins hasn't seen her daughter since spring because she says Isabella's other mom—who's in contempt of court for not adhering to visitation schedules—continues to withhold the child. "I really hate talking about it because I have to feel it all over again," says Jenkins, sitting at the kitchen table in the home where she'd planned to raise her family. "I did not divorce my child, I divorced my partner. Yet I've missed out on my child's kindergarten graduation. I'll never get that back. I don't even get to talk to my daughter on the phone. It's heinous what has transpired."