Awesome Oscar Moment for Freeheld

OK, this could be possibly the most awesome moment I’ve seen at the Academy Awards in a long time. Freeheld, the documentary about New Jersey police Lt. Laurel Hester’s fight to receive pension benefits for her partner, Stacie Andree, when Hester was diagnosed with terminal cancer, won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject. It is a well deserved honor for a heartbreaking and inspiring story.

Whoever decided that the presenters for the award should be members of the U.S. military talking by satellite from Iraq, however, deserves recognition for a little stroke of political genius. Kudos to the servicemembers, who didn’t flinch when announcing the film.

Garden State Equality, in conjunction with director Cynthia Wade, has just released a video of Lt. Hester that she recorded days before she died. Worth a few moments of your time. Have tissues handy.

Help Win Marriage Equality in California

Passing along this request from Lambda Legal. They’re looking for gay and lesbian couples in California willing to be contacted by the media the day of oral arguments in the California marriage case (scheduled for March 4). They want couples in all media markets, and note that you would not have to do anything or go anywhere, just be willing to be contacted by media. If you’re interested, please contact Jason Howe as below.

Jason Howe
Public Information Officer
Lambda Legal
3325 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1300
Los Angeles, CA 90010
213.382-7600 x247
jhowe@lambdalegal.org
www.lambdalegal.org

Weekly Political Roundup

• Could gay superdelegates make the difference in the Democratic presidential nomination? Writer Lisa Keen explains why, and also looks at how ordinary LGBT voters may have an impact on the race. A long piece, but a good overview of the situation.
• The U.S. State Department lifted the ban on hiring people with HIV to be foreign service officers, and will now evaluate people with HIV on a case-by-case basis. (That still seems like it leaves room for bias, but it’s a big step in the right direction.)
• The Freddie Mac Foundation has given HRC’s “All Children – All Families” initiative a one-year, $25,000 grant. The initiative seeks “to remove barriers between waiting foster children and loving families headed by qualified GLBT parents,” and the grant “supports the implementation of culturally competent practices in adoption and foster care agencies nationwide”. Read the rest of this post »

How Would You Teach Tolerance?

After 15-year-old Lawrence King was shot to death by a fellow student because he was gay, California Assemblyman Mike Eng proposed a new bill to “establish school diversity and sensitivity training to help prevent such tragedies in the future.” According to Gay Wired, “The new bill would require mandatory classes on diversity and tolerance in California school districts.” It would also establish procedures for teachers and administrators if they suspect a potential hate crime, reports the LA Times.

The LA Times has opined, however, that diversity and tolerance is “best taught to children through everyday interactions in the classroom and on the playground, by observant teachers, stern principals and strong school leaders.” Eng’s legislation, they say, “lays another Sacramento mandate on teachers who can barely squeeze required history lessons into the school day.” At the same time, the newspaper also feels a Virginia school superintendent “failed miserably” when he removed copies of And Tango Makes Three from elementary-school shelves. They conclude: Read the rest of this post »

“She Got Me Pregnant”: Episode 16

Helen and I start our vlog this week by explaining the difference between parenthood and lesbian Turkish oil wrestling. Our main topic, however, is storytelling. We discuss the surreal and whimsical works of Caldecott-winning author David Wiesner, which force parents to become storytellers, and recommend a book featuring a boy with two moms that celebrates the art of weaving stories (The Different Dragon, by Jennifer Bryan). We also highlight two new lists of LGBT-themed books for children and young adults, useful for parents or anyone hoping to make her local library more inclusive. Plus: pirate hats and an idea for a new reality show.

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, though the picture quality isn’t as good there.

(Brought to you in partnership with After Ellen.)

Oh, You Mean They’re Having Kids, Too?

Oregon moms Sally Sparks and Heather Dugas had their second child on February 10, 2008, six days after they registered as domestic partners under the state’s new law. At the hospital, however, they ran into administrative complications. The clerk did not put Dugas, the non-biological mom, on the birth certificate, but instead gave her a separate, non-legal form to indicate the names of both mothers and the child. The clerk said the form should be kept with the birth certificate until the state Department of Justice issues a ruling “on the effect of [the domestic partnership law] related to reporting parents on the birth certificate” (Portland Mercury, via Gay Rights Watch).

Given that the governor signed the domestic partnership bill into law in May 2007, you’d think they would have had time to get on top of stuff like this. In any case, Dugas may do a second-parent adoption, so that her parental status can’t be questioned outside of Oregon.

And civil unions in New Jersey? Not exactly as advertised, either.

Sigh. You want to know what the gay lifestyle is all about? Extra paperwork.

Today Show Features Boy with Two Dads

NBC’s Today Show ran a piece Monday featuring an eleven-year-old boy with two dads. It’s one of few mainstream stories in which we hear the perspective of the child him- or herself. It’s also exceptional in that it shows a divorced family; Henry’s dads broke up after they adopted him. Henry is doing well, however, and is described as “wise beyond his years.”

This is progress, it seems. Not only do children thrive with LGBT parents, but they also can flourish (though not without some difficulties) when the parents do what parents of all orientations sometimes do, and divorce. The Today Show titled the piece “Boy’s Unconventional Family,” but it seems to me there’s a whole lot of convention showing.

(Thanks, PageOneQ.)

Show Your Kids the Lunar Eclipse Tonight

If you can keep your kids up till 10:01 p.m. EST tonight (and still maintain their sanity and yours tomorrow), you can share with them the rare occurrence of a total lunar eclipse, the last one until December 2010. Both Sky and Telescope and NASA have details on the event, which should be visible in most of the Western Hemisphere. (Much of Britain will be in fog, alas.) Use the eclipse to teach your kids a bit about science (or have them teach you, if they’re at that age), or make it a starting point for discussion of how myths and legends may have begun.

Oh, heck. You know you want to try out something like: “Look, Junior. Mommy can make the moon disappear. Better clean up your room or I’ll make all your toys disappear.”

Last Dottie Giveaway

This is your last chance to win a copy of Dottie’s Magic Pockets, the first live-action show for children of LGBT families (and their friends). Stick around, though, because I should have more fun stuff like this as well as some other special offers in the coming weeks.

The DVD contains two Dottie episodes, “Doing the Flower” and “Beat Beet.” (You can see a clip here.) Thanks to the folks at the Pink Pea production company for offering this to a Mombian reader.

The DVD will go to the first person who leaves a comment with the correct answer to the following question. Please note rules and restrictions below.

In honor of Tango, the question is about penguins:

In which location would you not find native penguins:

• Chile
• The Galapagos Islands
• Alaska
• South Africa
• The Falkland Islands
• Tasmania
• Queen Maud Land

Rules and restrictions: U.S. and Canada residents only, please. (The DVD is in Region 1 format, and will likely not play in other countries. Postal costs also make it prohibitive to ship elsewhere.) Don’t worry if your comment is moderated; once I approve it, it will appear based on the time you submitted it. Previous winners cannot win again (though you can submit an answer just to see if you got it right). I retain the right to cancel the giveaway if there are any nasty debates about who has the correct answers. If you are or have been a paying advertiser on Mombian, you can’t play. If no one gets the right answers by 11:59 p.m. EST, February 26, 2008, I’ll post an alternate question.

Make sure to leave a valid e-mail address with your comment! (Don’t leave a postal address, though. If you win, I’ll contact you by e-mail about shipping.)

That Pesky Penguin

Yet another school district has made a fuss over And Tango Makes Three, the book about the chick hatched by two male penguins, and the American Library Association’s Most Challenged Book of 2006. The school superintendent of Loudoun County, Virginia, has instructed county elementary schools to take the book out of general circulation and move it to the teacher’s reference shelf, after one parent complained. A spokesperson for the schools said:

Developmentally, some students in the younger grades might not have been able to understand this without having an adult, such as a teacher, parent or guardian reading it with them. So we recommended that this would be a book that a child read with an adult so it can be put in context.

Developmentally, my four-year-old son is perfectly capable of understanding that a penguin has two dads. It’s an avian parallel to his two moms, and he certainly understands us (better than we understand him, sometimes). In fact, since the specifics of sexual reproduction are still vague to him, one might argue that he is more capable of understanding two penguin dads than are older children. His friends, too, seem rather blasé when they find out he has two moms, and I can’t imagine penguin dads would phase them.

On a positive note, I love that the Washington Post used a quote from a straight mom whose daughter wanted to check out the book, demonstrating that this isn’t just a “gay” issue, but one about acceptance of all types of families.

Sigh. I suspect this won’t be the last such kerfuffle. I hope someone organizes a good day of activism around this—filling the library lawn with stuffed penguin toys or holding a demonstration dressed in tuxes. (And why someone hasn’t licensed the right to sell stuffed dolls of Tango and his dads, with all profits going to an organization that educates about tolerance and diversity, is beyond me.)