• Congressman Joe Sestak, the highest-ranking veteran in Congress, called for a repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told graduating West Point cadets that Congress, and not the military, is responsible for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
• Some say transgender rights could be the next big civil rights battle of our time, and the Nashua Telegraph has a good overview of where some of these rights stand around the country.

Read the rest of this post »

Having preschool teachers who make sure your son brings home two handmade flowerpots for Mother’s Day?

Priceless.

Having a party? Doing a quiet gift exchange? Waiting to see what your kids will spring on you? Ignoring it altogether? How are you and your family celebrating this family holiday?

Helen and I are keeping it pretty casual (unless there’s something she’s not telling me), but as with most holidays at our house, there’s likely to be a cake involved. How about you?

Helen and I do a special Mother’s Day vlog in response to a viewer request about our decision to become parents. What made me finally break down and decide to have a child? Why did we choose the method we did? Was our cat really involved in the selection of our sperm donor? And what was that about dating Ellen DeGeneres and Sharon Stone?

In many ways, this vlog is a precursor to the post I did about the medical and legal details of creating our family. Now you’ll know the whole story.

We also invite all bloggers and vloggers to post on June 2 in celebration of the third annual Blogging for LGBT Families Day. (Yes, videos and photos are welcome, too. Put them on your favorite image-sharing site, make sure they’re public, and send me the link.)

Online Videos by Veoh.com

If the Veoh video above isn’t working (sometimes their server can be flaky), you can try it at Daily Motion.

Brought to you in partnership with After Ellen.

Somebody bring me some water . . . in a sippy cup.*

MomLogic (part of the AOL Living network) just published the article “Melissa Etheridge: Superstar Mama.” The lesbian icon talks about having twins, explaining her cancer to her children, celebrating Mother’s Day, celebrity babies, the most important lesson to teach your children, and her new tour. She also offers this advice to other “non-traditional” families:

I would tell them they have all the power. That feeling inside, that desire, follow that, that’s what life is all about it. Just put it out of their mind that there is some sort of normal out there because there’s not. They may portray it on the television like Leave it to Beaver that there’s a perfect thing, but that does not exist, everyone’s doing the best they can to raise families, and find happiness, and find many ways to love, and there are many ways.

Bravo, Melissa! Bravo to MomLogic, too, for not just sticking to “traditional” families during this period of pre-Mother’s Day maternal celebration. Not all mainstream parenting channels are so bold.

*If you’re not an ME fan, that reference will be lost on you.

For the second year in a row, the children’s book And Tango Makes Three, about two male penguins who care for an egg and raise a chick together, tops the list of the American Library Association’s (ALA) 10 Most Challenged Books.

Personally, I think the guinea pigs will give them a run for their money in 2008 (not that I wish censorship on this or any book). Herewith, my full review of Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, a new LGBT-inclusive children’s book that I’ve mentioned in a few previous posts. I also speak with author Sarah Brannen and her editor, who discuss, among other things, the reaction to the book so far and their feelings about potential censorship.

Fur Better or Worse: Gay Guinea Pigs Wed in New Children’s Book
(Originally published at After Elton, March 25, 2008)

Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, by Massachusetts author and illustrator Sarah Brannen, is more than just a good LGBT-inclusive children’s book; it is a good children’s book, period. Like 2005’s And Tango Makes Three, about two male penguins who hatch an egg together, it is likely to garner critical praise as well as ultra-right censorship.

Uncle Bobby moves us from feathers to fur, however, and tells the sweet story of Chloe, an anthropomorphic young guinea pig who worries that Uncle Bobby won’t keep having fun with her after he marries his boyfriend Jamie. Uncle Bobby explains that their special times together will not end; Chloe will not be losing an uncle, but gaining one. The book ends at the wedding, with Chloe as the enthusiastic flower girl. Read the rest of this post »

Writing about the right always makes me grumpy. To cheer up myself and maybe some of you, here’s a roundup of some happy articles about LGBT families:

• “Mother’s Day Special: A Tale of Two Moms” in the Windy City Times is the first of a two-part series about a couple of lesbian moms in Chicago. They conceived their family the way Helen and I did, using one partner as the egg donor for the other.
• “Surrogate mothers fulfilling gay men’s parenthood dreams” from AFP talks about the increasing number of gay men using surrogates, and the extraordinary expense of the process (over $100,000).
• “Diane Amos Headlines Funny Girlz” in the San Francisco Bay Times would be just another article about a local stand-up comedy event, except that it profiles comedian Diane Amos, the daughter of two moms, one black and one Jewish. She uses tales from her childhood in her routines, and says:
  

  Gay audiences love it because there’s so much funny stuff. Then I found a way to take it to straight audiences just by really telling the truth and telling some of the stuff around our household they’d never experienced. It’s just funny.

  Amos is also the face and voice of Pine-Sol cleaner. (And hey, you’d think a household cleaning product fronted by the daughter of two moms, and whose parent company has a perfect Corporate Equality Index rating, would be interested in advertising to lesbian moms, no? My own selfish interest in that aside, it does indicate that some marketing teams just aren’t thinking creatively enough when it comes to potential audiences. All they’d have to do is rearrange the bottles in the picture so they form a rainbow.)

I don’t usually respond to drivel from the ultra-right, but this one got to me. The Washington Times, in an article titled “Growing Up Confused,” reported Sunday on the memoir “Out From Under: The Impact of Homosexual Parenting,” by Dawn Stefanowicz. Stefanowicz is the daughter of a gay father who was married to her mother. She says that because of her father’s sexual orientation, she “experienced insecurity, depression, anxiousness, sleeplessness and sexuality confusion, and her psychological well-being and peer relationships were affected.”

Stefanowicz has been speaking up for the ultra-right for several years now. The book itself reads like a text for the Family Research Council, whose vice president for policy, Peter Sprigg says “It’s a very moving, brutally honest, first-person account of what it is like to grow up with a homosexual parent.” Perhaps one of them, but let’s not overgeneralize here.

The Washington Times relates: Read the rest of this post »

I’ve always been a foodie, but food seems to impinge even more upon my consciousness now that I’m a mother. I suspect it’s the same for many of you.

The new food-review site Zeer intrigued me, therefore, when I read about it at TechCrunch. Zeer is “a grocery product community that helps you ‘believe in what you buy.’” You can view nutritional information for over 114,000 food products there, and rate and review each one, according to TechCrunch. So far, there seem like a lot of gaps in what’s been rated, but that’s to be expected of a new site.

TechCrunch says Zeer is targeting women between the ages of 20 and 32. This seems young, given that moms must be a potential audience, and lots of us are now waiting until we’re older to have kids. Maybe they’d better rethink that range. Read the rest of this post »

Mildred Loving, a black woman whose marriage to a white man led to the seminal U.S. Supreme Court that overturned Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage, died today at age 68. NPR has a good interview with her from last year, on the 40th anniversary of the Court’s case. Pam at the Blend observes that Loving is also a beacon of hope for supporters of same-sex marriage:

Those of us eagerly waiting for the day when same-sex marriage is finally legalized across the land owe a debt of gratitude to Mildred Loving, whose 1967 case (Loving v. Virginia) resulted in a landmark Supreme Court decision that broke down a major social and legal barrier - interracial marriage.

A moment of silence for a woman who once said she wasn’t trying to change history; she just fell in love.