Archives › 2007 › May
Southwest Airlines has just launched a travel site dedicated “to the gay and lesbian community,” following the example of American Airlines and other travel firms. Let’s hope Southwest updates their terminology to include the bi and trans communities as well. Their corporate diversity policy includes gender identity as well as sexual orientation, so I don’t [...]
Open Thread on Workplace Equality
Today is Clock In for Equality day, which Lambda Legal organized as a “national day of action for workplace fairness for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) workers, and workers living with HIV.” In honor of the event, here’s an open thread on workplace fairness. For those who work outside the home: Is your workplace [...]
Colorado Approves Second-Parent Adoption
A piece of news too good to wait for my Weekly Political Roundup: Colorado is now the 10th state in the country to allow second-parent adoptions. Both same- and opposite-sex unmarried couples may now adopt children together. Governor Bill Ritter signed the bill into law yesterday, despite pressure from conservative religious groups to veto it. [...]
Student Loans: Should You Consolidate?
A lot of my posts here are aimed at parents of young tots, so here’s one for you folks with older children, or those not long out of higher education yourselves. The Christian Science Monitor just published a lengthy article on student-loan consolidation, offering advice on what to consider and highlighting some recent changes in [...]
Mother’s Day is now past, Father’s Day is approaching, and in between is June 1, the start of Pride Month and Blogging for LGBT Families Day. Contribute a post and join the celebration and the outreach. Any blogger who wants to support LGBT families is welcome, LGBT or not, parent or not. I encourage those [...]
Happy Mother’s Day or Mothers’ Day
However you choose to celebrate (or not) this day, may it be a joyous one for you and your family. May we also not forget that the first proclamation of Mother’s Day in the United States, by Julia Ward Howe, was a call for peace and disarmament, urging all women to take up the cause. [...]
Integrated Dichotomies
I was feeling a little butch and a little femme yesterday: Morning: Built forklift for son using wardrobe box, duct tape, and box cutter. I had promised to make him cool things out of boxes after we moved, thinking of houses and castles. He of course decided to test my skills with something more challenging. [...]
Weekly Political Roundup
The Alabama House voted not to consider a bill that would add sexual orientation as a protected category to the state’s hate crimes law, despite urging from Patricia Todd, the state’s first out legislator. Opponents said existing legislation was sufficient. (Thanks to the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund Smartbrief.) The California Assembly passed legislation that [...]
Who Said That?
Marriage is not an activity that goes on within the border of a state. It is a status, a marital status, and therefore, somebody who becomes married and moves to Ohio will be seen in the eyes of many as being married. A. New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, on his administration’s decision to recognize out-of-state [...]
Morning Reading Roundup
A few recent articles about LGBT families for you to peruse: “Gay Man Reflects on Struggle to Become a Father,” by Nick Grabbe in the Amherst Bulletin, is the story of David Jean and Don Babets, “pioneers in the struggle for equal adoption rights for gay and lesbian couples” in Massachusetts. “No Such Thing as [...]
Gay Family Foundation Seeking LGBT Parents for Study
Passing along this information about a new study of LGBT parents, sponsored by the Gay Family Foundation. Please contact Melissa Noyes, as indicated at the bottom of the announcement, for more details or to participate. Melissa is working on this research project in fulfillment of her Masters in Public Health degree from The George Washington [...]
Lend an LGBT Voice to the Parents’-Rights Movement
Moms Rising, the organization dedicated to building a “family-friendly America” through better employment rights and benefits for parents, is promoting a bevy of activities for Mother’s Day weekend. I’ve written before about Moms Rising, and noted the similarities between the parents-rights movement and the LGBT rights movement: Parents’-rights groups are working to change the playing [...]
Morning Quickie: What Really Matters
This image by Jessica Hagy at Indexed says it all. (Thanks to W. for the tip.)
Known Donor Must Pay Child Support, Court Rules
In one of the more interesting recent cases involving same-sex parents, a Pennsylvania appellate court ruled that a lesbian couple’s known sperm donor must pay child support to the bio mom. The man was active in the couple’s life, and the two children he helped conceive called him “Papa,” according to an article in the [...]
Gadget Love: Safety Can Opener
I may be the last person in the country to discover the wonders of a safety can opener, which takes off the top of cans without leaving a sharp rim. It was always a point of pride with me that I used a simple Swing-A-Way opener. The Swing-A-Way was classic. It did the job it [...]
Marriage Counts, When You Least Expect It
Sometimes we sense the paradigm changing when we least expect it. My partner and I married in Massachusetts last fall. The first time I used my marital status to obtain something, though, was for a service based out of state, from a firm not known for LGBT inclusiveness. My partner and I get our insurance [...]
Tell Me About Yourselves
I’m participating in this year’s Blog Reader Project in order to find out more about you, my readers. I’m therefore asking you to take a completely anonymous survey about yourself and your interests, blog-related and otherwise. This will give me (and potential advertisers) a better sense of who you are, and will be compiled with [...]
Best Countries for Mothers and Children
It’s important to keep things in perspective. Much as we rightly criticize the U.S. for its less-than ideal policies towards parents and children, especially LGBT ones, we generally do all right here in the developed world. The humanitarian organization Save the Children today released its eighth annual Mothers’ Index, ranking the best and worst places [...]
Offsprung Has Sprung!
Many months ago, I agreed in a caffeine-fueled haze to write for an upcoming parenting Web site, Offsprung. Today the site launches. Offsprung isn’t your mother’s parenting Web site, however. Instead, it’s a humor magazine designed to eviscerate the excesses of modern parenting culture. It’s offbeat, in your face, and irreverent. If you don’t like [...]
From the “but we knew that” department: A study commissioned by the Canadian government back in 2003 has concluded that “children living with two mothers and children living with a mother and father have the same levels and qualities of social competence.” The study, based on “empirical literature,” also noted: “A few studies suggest that [...]
Book Review: Courting Equality
If you are still searching for the perfect Mother’s or Father’s Day gift for your partner or your own parents, you need look no further than Courting Equality: A Documentary History of America’s First Legal Same-Sex Marriages. It is a glossy, large-format work, but to call it a coffee-table book is to do it an [...]
Life Is a Highway
I was driving home from Boston the other day, reflecting that if I got hit by the semi in the next lane, at least I had a legal spouse who would be able to visit me in the hospital. I began then to ponder the advances in same-sex relationship recognition over the last several weeks. [...]
Rosie O’Donnell Transforms Our World
TIME magazine has named actor, comedian, philanthropist and lesbian mom Rosie O’Donnell one of the TIME 100, “men and women whose power, talent or moral example is transforming the world.” TIME asked Rosie’s The View co-host Barbera Walters to write a descriptive piece about her, in which she says, “Rosie, 45, is a fine actress, [...]
Weekly Political Roundup
The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 (LLEHCPA), aka the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act. The Senate must now vote on the measure, although the White House has already threatened a veto. Pam’s House Blend has fuller coverage and a breakdown of the vote. The U.S. [...]
Vote in the Family Pride Drawing Contest
The Family Pride Coalition is asking people to vote for their favorite among the ten finalists in the FPC Family Drawing Contest. The artists are ages 3 1/2 to 12, and clearly enjoyed depicting their families on paper. Feel awkward judging children’s art? Have your own child select the one she/he likes best. Or vote [...]
