Choosing Children Showcases Pioneering Lesbian Families

Debra Chasnoff and Kim Klausner, directors of Choosing Children, in the editing room in the early 1980's. Photo credit: GroundSpark

(Originally published in Bay Windows, August 30, 2010.)

With Eric Stonestreet winning an Emmy Sunday for his portrayal of a gay dad in ABC’s Modern Family, and the summer movie about two lesbian moms, The Kids Are All Right, garnering early Oscar buzz, it is easy to forget what things were like just 25 years ago. Then, people both inside and outside the LGBT community assumed that “you gave up the ability to have children,” if you came out, said Academy Award-winning filmmaker Debra Chasnoff. In her 1985 documentary, Choosing Children, however, she profiled six pioneering lesbian families who were defying this assumption.

The film, made with her then-partner Kim Klausner, helped inspire many lesbians to become parents. Now, years after the film’s negative was lost, Choosing Children is being restored, and Chasnoff hopes it will inspire the next generation of LGBT parents—as well as teach people about a key part of LGBT history.

Neither Chasnoff nor Klausner had ever made a film when they began Choosing Children, but both were intrigued by stories they had heard of lesbians becoming parents after coming out (in contrast to those who had children from previous heterosexual relationships). “It was a big topic of conversation in our social circle,” Chasnoff explained in an interview. They didn’t know any such parents personally, but decided to find some, “and ask them all the questions that all of us were talking about.” After placing classified ads in feminist and women’s newspapers, they drove around the country to meet the women who responded.

The families they chose showcase the diversity of our community from many angles. The children were created through known donors, unknown donors, and adoption. They ranged in age from infant to early teens. One mother was still pregnant when filming began. The women are white, black, and Hispanic, and include two interracial couples. In addition to three couples, there was one woman co-parenting with a gay man, a single mother, and a group of five women co-parenting together. Attorney Donna Hitchens, one of the founders of the Lesbian Rights Project (now the National Center for Lesbian Rights), provided legal commentary.

Chasnoff said that the one thing all the women had in common, however, was their courage. “They were the first in every single community to take their kids to school or go into a doctor’s office and say ‘I want to inseminate.’ They were all so brave, to face great societal opposition with very little resources.”

When the documentary was first shown at film festivals, Chasnoff recalled, “People would come to the screenings and you could see these little light bulbs going on over their heads, saying, ‘Oh my god, I could have a child if I wanted to?’ People would turn to each other and say, ‘Honey, what do you think?’ Over the years, I would get letters of so many people who said ‘I never thought I could have kids until I came to see the film. Now we have a four-year-old.’” Read the rest of this post »

Reading, Writing, ‘Rithmetic, and Reaching Out

(Originally published as my Mombian newspaper column.)

Back-to-school time is upon us once again. We LGBT parents with kids in school are busy buying pencils and notebooks, rulers and knapsacks. We’re not that different from any others.

For many LGBT parents, however, the start of the school year brings up concerns about our children’s inclusion and safety. To begin, we may wonder about how and whether to come out to our children’s new teachers. How do we get a sense of whether they will create an inclusive classroom?

There are three basic approaches one can take. First, one can wait until any questions or issues arise. Some parents may feel most comfortable with this least intrusive method. For parents of older students, too, this may be the way to go, allowing the children to take control over how and when to come out about their families.

Others may choose to be more proactive, setting up a time to meet with the teacher, get a feel for their commitment to inclusion, and answer any questions they may have. If you think there may be issues, this could be the best way to bring them into the open. On the other hand, it might be overkill—for all you know, the teacher could be LGBT her/himself, or a strong ally.

A more middle-ground approach would be to find a way—without making a special appointment—to let your children’s teachers know you are an LGBT family. If you are a two-parent family, for example, make sure both of you take your child to school on the first day or go to a start-of-year parent gathering. Make a point of introducing yourselves as “So-and-so’s parents.”

There is no one right answer for every family. Parents may even mix methods as they deal with homeroom teachers as well as music, art, and physical education specialists. Read the rest of this post »

Modern Family’s Gay Dad Explains His Role’s Impact on Children, Bullying

After winning an Emmy Sunday night for playing a gay dad on ABC’s Modern Family, Eric Stonestreet talked at a press conference about the impact of the show:

“We get amazing compliments from kids of same-sex marriage families. For example, the most recent one just was the other day. A gentleman approached me and said he was raised by two moms and they adopted another daughter. When he was in school, there was no reference to two moms or two dads raising a child. And he just wanted to thank me and tell the producers thanks for giving his sister something to point the bullies and the people who make fun of her at school to and say, ‘Look at Mitch and Cam. That’s what my family is and you like them.”

Stonestreet is in fact, a straight ally.  (Actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who plays his partner on the show, is gay.) I think Stonestreet deserves an “ally of the week” award for that comment, since mainstream media seems to be picking up on it. (The New York Times, however, botched their excerpt, stating, “He [Stonestreet] said, ‘We get amazing compliments from kids of same-sex-marriage families’ and recounted a recent conversation with a man who thanked him for giving his sister ‘ammunition for the bullies.’” More accurate would be: ”for use against the bullies.”)

Video of Stonestreet’s remarks after the jump. Read the rest of this post »

Emmys for Lesbian Mom; Gay Dad Portrayal

Congratulations to Jane Lynch, who won a Best Supporting Actress Emmy last night for her role as Sue Sylvester in Fox’s Glee. Here’s an absolutely adorable picture of her, her spouse Lara Embry, and their daughter, from the couple’s New York Times wedding announcement last June. All together now: Awww.

The gay-friendly (but surprisingly gay-dad free) show’s Ryan Murphy picked up the Emmy for directing.

In related news, Eric Stonestreet of ABC’s Modern Family won a Best Supporting Actor Emmy for his portrayal of gay dad Cameron Tucker. The show’s Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd grabbed Best Writing for a Comedy Series, and the show itself won for Outstanding Comedy Series.

Congratulations to all!

Weekly Political Roundup

• Ken Mehlman, President Bush’s 2004 campaign manager and a former chair of the Republican National Committee, has come out as gay. He led the party when it was increasing its anti-gay campaign rhetoric and trying to rally voters around anti-gay initiatives.
• After harshly criticizing the Pentagon survey of military spouses regarding Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Servicemembers United announced that members of the Pentagon’s working group on the policy will meet with a group of lesbian and gay military partners during Servicemembers United’s Military Partners Forum in September.
• The New York Times has a great piece on lesbian and gay cadets at West Point.
• The Advocate rounds up this week’s primary election results for LGBT candidates.
• Conservatives in Iowa are trying to get people to vote out of office three State Supreme Court judges who ruled last year that the state law barring marriage for same-sex couples is unconstitutional.
• Supporters withdrew a proposed anti-discrimination ordinance in Memphis, Tennessee, citing a lack of support from the City Council and the mayor. Read the rest of this post »

“She Got Me Pregnant”: Episode 113

Helen and I discuss what a lesbian mid-life crisis looks like, whether station wagons are frumpy, and meeting other families—gay and straight—while on vacation.

Mombian: She Got Me Pregnant, 08-26-10
Uploaded by drudolph. – More gay and lesbian lifestyle videos.
(If the embedded video above doesn’t work for you, try it at Dailymotion.)

Brought to you in partnership with After Ellen.

New Study: Children of Same-Sex Parents Make Normal School Progress

A new study has found that children of same-sex parents are making progress through primary school at the same rate as children of opposite-sex couples. This will come as no surprise to most readers here; you’ve likely already read about this study and this one, which found that children of same-sex couples are just as well adjusted as any others. The big thing about this new study, however, is that it is big.

Lead researcher, sociologist Michael Rosenfeld of Stanford University explains in the latest issue of Demographics that earlier studies have been criticized for using small samples. He therefore went for the biggest sample he could find: the U.S. Census, “the only nationally representative data set with a large enough sample of children raised by same-sex couples to allow for statistically powerful comparisons with children of other family types.”

His conclusions? “To the extent that normal progress through primary school is a useful and valid measure of child development, the results confirm that children of same-sex couples appear to have no inherent developmental disadvantage.”

Duh—but bless you, Professor Rosenfeld, for putting statistics behind the “duh” for all those who still need them. Read the rest of this post »

Back to School, Back to Sleep

Eighty percent of American students in grades 6 through 12 aren’t getting enough sleep during the school year, according to research by the National Sleep Foundation, reports the LA Times. The paper also discusses the increasing number of schools starting classes later, especially for teens.

It’s about time, I say. I have never understood why high schools start later than elementary schools. Get the young kids into class early so the parents can go off to work, I say, and give the teens—who can take care of themselves in the morning anyway—more time to get the sleep they need at that age.

Of course, I may be biased because I’m an incurable night owl. (And near as I can tell, night owls are fated to fall in love with morning people. Some kind of cosmic balance—or cosmic joke. I’m not sure which.)

What are you most and least looking forward to if your kids are going (back) to school?

Photo credit: a2gemma

Quote of the Day: “Whatever”

Today’s young people tend to look at homosexuality—the people who are paying attention, that is—with a big fat ‘whatever,’ which any parent can tell you is three steps beyond ‘tolerance.’ Tolerance implies a power structure. ‘Whatever’ does not.

—Susan Campbell, Hartford Courant, June 15, 2010.

My mom saves newspaper clippings for me. When I was in college, an envelope would regularly arrive stuffed with scraps of whatever caught her eye that she thought would interest me. Now, she saves them to pass on whenever she comes to visit her grandson. I’d say she has about a 50 percent success rate — but that’s better than many blog and Twitter streams I follow.

Yesterday, for example, she handed me a copy of  the column about Glee and Christian fundamentalism from which the above quote is taken. Thanks, Mom!

LGBT Parenting Roundup

Personal Stories

• The Children’s Hospital Boston blog shares the story of Sylvia (not her real name), who was born Ryan, diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder at age six and transitioned to live as a girl at the start of fifth grade. The blog has also posted an essay by Sylvia’s father—both must-read pieces, as is the piece that led me to them, Joanne Herman’s “A Wedding Just for the Kids” at HuffPo.
• On a related note, if you missed Slate’s early-August piece on a camp for transgender and gender-variant kids, go read.
• On a more sobering note, and one that makes us appreciate stories like the above, Kim Pearson, executive director of TransYouth Family Allies (TYFA), relates the story of a school district in Kansas that is refusing to recognize a 10-year-old transgender girl’s gender identity, even though at least one school in the district was willing to make a safe, productive environment for her. TYFA (in conjunction, I assume, with the girl’s two moms) is now trying to raise money to bring a lawsuit against the district.
• Central Pennsylvania’s Patriot News profiles lesbian moms Joy Verner and Sue Waldner, mothers of four. The article mentions the movie The Kids Are All Right, and cites the latest results from the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS; about which more here), but feels it has to counter it with a quote from the spokesperson of the anti-LGBT American Family Association of Pennsylvania. It also feels like it tries a bit too hard at times, with pedantic sentences like, “The two nurture their children, exposing them to social and cultural interests, and teaching them the importance of education and respect for others.” Still, it’s an overall positive article, and a sign that movies like Kids and studies like the NLLFS are indeed raising awareness of lesbian families.

Starting a Family

• A small study in the U.K. has found that the costs of getting pregnant are a barrier to many lesbians trying to conceive, despite new laws that make it easier for them to use fertility clinics. Read the rest of this post »