Gender Protections In Schools: Shows Progress, but Room for Improvement

The Gender Public Advocacy Coalition (GenderPAC) today released its 2007 Gender Equality National Index for Universities & Schools (GENIUS Index). The index evaluates how well colleges, universities, and K-12 school districts are doing in ending gender discrimination and raising awareness of gender identity and expression. It looks at non-discrimination and anti-harassment policies as well as the availability of gender-neutral bathrooms and housing.

This second year of the Index shows a fourfold increase in responses over 2006, with 496 students, administrators, and alumni, representing 278 colleges and universities, answering the survey. The good news is that the number of universities specifically banning discrimination based on gender identity or expression is up: 147 currently have such policies, versus 131 in 2006. All eight Ivy League schools have inclusive non-discrimination policies, but several other top schools lack such protections, including Stanford University, the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and Northwestern University.

At the secondary-school level, Read the rest of this post »

Weekend Reading

A few highlights of note from mainstream media:

• In “A Reason to Take the Early Bus Home,” Michael Winerip of the New York Times last week profiled two gay dads in Montclair, New Jersey. It’s nice to see dads getting coverage—when mainstream media does cover LGBT parenting, it’s most often about us moms.
• Having said that, Lornet Turnbull of the Seattle Times in fact reported on a local gay dads group two weeks ago, in “Gay Dads Meet Kindred Spirits.”
• In “Same-Sex And Worried About Retirement,” Martha Hamilton of the Washington Post gives an overview of some of the financial hurdles facing same-sex couples, including those with children:
  

  In some states, only one member of a same-sex couple is allowed to be the legal parent of the couple’s child or children. Only that parent will be able to cover a child under employer-provided health insurance. Often that means that the insured parent will feel he or she can’t retire or change jobs because it would result in the loss of dependent health insurance.

  Not to mention that all of the other financial hurdles impact not only our retirement, but our ability to save for our children’s education, put them in decent daycare, and buy them the latest branded gizmos (which no doubt contain lead and will have to be returned in a week).

Weekly Political Update

• Evan Wolfson, Executive Director of Freedom to Marry, offered his perspective on Marriage Equality and the Presidential Election.
• The ultra-conservative Arkansas Family Council has submitted a proposal to the state Attorney General as the first step in placing a measure on the November 2008 ballot to ban adoption by unmarried couples. The group failed earlier this year to get the state Legislature to pass a law banning adoption by same-sex couples.
• A California man will be able to receive the pension benefits of his deceased partner after the Industrial Employers and Distributors Association and Warehouse Union (ILWU) bowed to pressure from the National Center for Lesbian Rights and changed its policy to grant registered domestic partners the same pension benefits as spouses, retroactive to March 1, 2005.

Read the rest of this post »

Medieval Civil Unions?

Did the concept of a civil union originate in medieval Europe? That’s the intriguing possibility raised in the respected Journal of Modern History by Allan A. Tulchin of Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania. (Via Box Turtle Bulletin.)

As a recovering academic with a graduate degree in medieval history, I find this fascinating—though I’ve got the usual klaxon going off in my head warning against projecting the present back onto the past. If Tulchin is correct, however, this is at the very least evidence that opposite-sex marriage has not had a monopoly on legally recognized human pairings—a major blow to the argument that same-sex relationships are destroying the time-honored foundations of society. Science Daily has a synopsis:

In late medieval France, the term affrèrement—roughly translated as brotherment—was used to refer to a certain type of legal contract, which also existed elsewhere in Mediterranean Europe. These documents provided the foundation for non-nuclear households of many types and shared many characteristics with marriage contracts, as legal writers at the time were well aware, according to Tulchin.

The new “brothers” pledged to live together sharing “un pain, un vin, et une bourse”—one bread, one wine, and one purse.

While most of these arrangements were for brothers who lived together in an inherited family home, they could also be for non-relatives. When the men were unmarried and unrelated:

. . . these contracts provide “considerable evidence that the affrèrés were using affrèrements to formalize same-sex loving relationships. . . . I suspect that some of these relationships were sexual, while others may not have been. It is impossible to prove either way and probably also somewhat irrelevant to understanding their way of thinking. They loved each other, and the community accepted that. What followed did not produce any documents.”

As opposed to modern-day civil unions, which still require wills, powers of attorney, adoption papers and various other documents for dealing with the federal government or leaving the state. We may not have full equality, but at least we’ll leave a good paper trail for future historians.

Not that the Middle Ages were really all that enlightened, of course. As Boing Boing pointed out this week, sexual decision making according to the medieval penitentials was a truly mind-boggling progess. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about history, though, it’s that it rarely proceeds in a straight line. That in itself is a heartening thought.

(Image created with the Historic Tale Construction Kit.)

From the Ivory Tower to the Family Room

(Originally published in Bay Windows, August 23, 2007.)

“I just keep having this desire to do work that seems impossible,” says Dr. Abbie Goldberg of her research on LGBT and other understudied families. The assistant professor of psychology at Clark University in Worcester is passionate about delving into these areas few other social scientists have tackled, however. She wants her work to be used not only by other academics, but also by a wider audience. “Politicians and the media, in the absence of any scientific research, are pretty free to make their own assumptions and conclusions about how things might be,” she explains. “A big goal for me has always been to counter that with actual data about people’s real-life experiences.”

She took on that task after noticing a lack of research on the transition to parenthood among lesbian and bi women parenting together. Her first attempt to remedy this focused on one of the central dichotomies for most female couples who inseminate, that of biological and nonbiological mothers. “Society places such importance on biological and kinship relationships,” says Goldberg. “I was interested in how the nonbiological mother negotiated her role within the family, and where couples were successful in carving out roles that were satisfactory for both partners.” Read the rest of this post »

Science and Poetry

In my last post, I wrote about the very cool new Google Sky and how it could be a fun way to teach kids about astronomy. As an astronomy major myself, and someone who is married to an engineer, I’m all for science education, particularly for girls, who still tend to be overlooked when it comes to math and science exposure.

Two pieces of recent news about science education therefore caught my eye. President Bush two weeks ago signed legislation to recruit thousands of new science and math teachers, improve the science and maths skills of existing teachers, and help interested children along the path to research careers. It also calls for “significant increases” (though unspecified) to the National Science Foundation budget, and gives $300 million to a funding agency for new energy systems. Elsewhere, Montana Senator Max Baucus (D) has proposed free college tuition for math, science, and engineering majors who agree to work or teach in the field for at least four years.

All well and good. Science and technology do help our country’s competitiveness and can lead to all kinds of good things like alternative energy sources and cures for cancer. As a major in history as well as astronomy, though, I have to ask “What about the poets?” What about the humanities majors who have a passion for chronicling the world, for weaving stories to capture imaginations, for creating art to provoke and inspire, for probing human morality, for studying the past so we don’t repeat its mistakes? Science education needs help in this country, but so does education overall. The No Child Left Behind Act is a shambles, hit with lawsuits and a plethora of ideas on how to fix it.

Science is inherently more expensive an endeavor than the humanities, and so it does make sense that it gets more raw dollars. Let’s not, however, forget the importance to our culture (and to the inspiration even of scientists) of literature, music, art, philosophy, and history, and the teachers who can pass them on to a new generation. One of my son’s favorite books is Frederick, by Leo Lionni, the tale of a mouse poet whose words inspire his friends through a long, cold winter. It’s a fable worth remembering.

You Want Skies with That?

We always knew Google was planning to take over the universe. They come one step closer with the release of Google Sky, part of an upgrade to their very cool Google Earth software. If you or your children are into astronomy, or have to learn more about it as part of a school science project, this is a must-have. (Even my four-year-old thinks it’s fun to zoom the sky around with the mouse.)

I’ve written before about several other free astronomy applications, which each have their strengths and are still worth checking out. Google gets points for its integrated earth-sky interface, extensive descriptive content, and ability to create “sightseeing” tours to save and share. Those interested in an application for real stargazing, however, will find Stellarium a better choice, since Google Sky lacks such basics as a way to set user location and time or view the horizon line. If you just want to immerse yourselves in the cosmos, though, Google Sky will deliver.

(When you’re tired of staring at the screen, pick up a copy of Miss Leavitt’s Stars: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe, about an astronomer at the turn of the twentieth century whose work was key to determining whether galaxies existed beyond our own Milky Way. It’s a small but fascinating biography of one of the almost-forgotten pioneers of women in science.)

Illegal Elmos and Other Hazards of Children’s Music

Children’s musicians Erin Lee and Marci spoke with me aboard the R Family cruise in July about their inclusive approach to kids’ music. They gave me too much material to include in a single article, so below is a second piece from our conversation. I’m also very pleased to announce they will be regular guest posters here at Mombian, with monthly recommendations for children’s songs and ways you can make music an interactive experience for the whole family. Look for them starting the first Monday in September, or visit them now at their own site Gottaplay.org.

In the meantime, read on for their answer to my question about their most memorable concert moments. They bravely relive the trauma of an unsanctioned Elmo on the loose. Read the rest of this post »

Book Recommendation: The Science Explorer

Yesterday I mentioned Steven Caney’s Toy Book as a great source of ideas for homemade kids’ toys. Along the same vein, but with an added bonus, is The Science Explorer by Pat Murphy, Ellen Klages, and Linda Shore of the San Francisco Exploratorium Museum. It’s chock-full of quick, craft-like projects aimed at six- to nine-year-olds, plus explanations of the science behind them. Children a little younger might still be amused by many of the gooey, noisy, flying things, without quite as much technical information, and those a little older might work some into a larger science-fair project. Many of the ideas in the book are also available on the Science Explorer Web site.

An added bonus for both book and site? Either this grown-up character featured throughout is a lesbian mom, or my gaydar is seriously off.

Blogjam

Apologies for the sporadic site outages today. I’m thrashing things out with my Web host. With luck, things will resolve in the next 24 hours or so. As I often say about my son’s behavior, it’s just a phase.

Thanks, as always, for stopping by.