Weekly Political Roundup

Here’s a roundup of general LGBT news. I’ll do another parenting-specific roundup early next week. Happy weekend, all!

• LGBT-rights leaders gathered in Denver this week for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Creating Change conference. Bil and others at Bilerico have a bunch of posts up about it, including an interview with the Director of Creating Change (and lesbian mom), Sue Hyde.
• Two gay men in Arizona have begun a voter initiative to legalize civil partnerships in the state. If successful, the measure would appear on the ballot in 2010.
• The Arkansas Attorney General has told the conservative Arkansas Family Policy Council to stay out of the case brought to challenge the ban on gay men and lesbians adopting.
• A federal judge denied a request to keep secret the names of donors to California’s Prop 8. Read the rest of this post »

“She Got Me Pregnant”: Episode 56

This week, Helen and I look at Season Six of The L Word with a parent’s eye. What do we think about Bette’s ineptness with a thermometer? Her plans to adopt another child with Tina? What about Helena, Max, and even Shane when it comes to kiddies? Is there any reality in their portrayals? And what about a spinoff with suburban lesbian moms?

(Mild spoilers if you haven’t seen the first two episodes.)

Watch Mombian; She Got Me Pregnant, 01-29-09 in Entertainment Videos  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

(If the Veoh video above doesn’t work, try it at Dailymotion.)

Brought to you in partnership with After Ellen.

Gay Penguin Dads Wed

At the end of last year, I mentioned a pair of male penguins at a zoo in China who had been stealing other couples’ eggs until zookeepers gave them their own. They have become known as the zoo’s best penguin parents.

Now, the helpful zookeepers have decided the two birds should formalize their union. They arranged a wedding for the two lovebirds, complete with “spring fish” at the reception. No word on where they are registered.

Lesbian Mom to Be Prime Minister of Iceland

Many of you may have heard that openly lesbian Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir was picked by Iceland’s Social Democratic Alliance Party to be the country’s next prime minister.

The news gets even better, though: Jóhanna and her spouse Jónína Leósdóttir, an author and playwright, have two adult sons (via Jóhanna’s previous marriage), making Jóhanna not only the world’s first openly lesbian prime minister, but also the first lesbian mom to hold that position.

Alex at Bilerico has more details on her career and political background. She graduated from vocational high school and went to work as a flight attendant, where she eventually led trade unions before being elected to Parliament in 1978. She now serves as Minister of Social Affairs.

Add her to the list of people I’d love to chat with about work-life balance.

No Name-Calling Week

Today marks the start of No Name-Calling Week, “an annual week of educational activities aimed at ending name-calling of all kinds and providing schools with the tools and inspiration to launch an on-going dialogue about ways to eliminate bullying in their communities.” The event was created five years ago by GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network) and Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing. It targets grades five through eight, “years when the problem of name-calling is particularly acute,” but “the concept can be easily adapted by students and educators at other grade levels.”

Name-calling can have tragic consequences, as when a 14-year-old girl in the U.K. hanged herself last year, allegedly because classmates taunted her for over a year about her fashion sense and supposed lesbianism. No, we can’t expect children not to tease each other to some extent. (As a redhead with the last name “Rudolph,” I received my share of this.) We can, however, teach them to recognize when the line is crossed between lighthearted banter where the subject truly doesn’t mind, and harmful insults whose hurt goes deep.

GLSEN has a number of lesson plans, activities, and other resources available for download. If you’re a teacher or want to become involved in creating a more tolerant, accepting, and safer environment in your children’s schools, take a look.

Here’s my own list of safe-school resources, plus a post on a more recent offering from PFLAG.

Poll: Lesbian Parenting Books

It’s time for another poll:

Feel free to leave comments about what you liked/didn’t like about any of these books or others. More books for and about lesbian families, as always, in the Mombian Shop.

LGBT Parenting Roundup

LGBT parenting news from here and there:

• The Ohio Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of a lower court ruling that upheld the joint parenting agreement between two former partners. One partner has tried to use the state ban on same-sex marriage and “marriage substitutes” to void the agreement and deny the other woman custody. The court in this and other cases seems to be taking the stance that the marriage ban applies to institutions that possess all the attributes of marriage, but not to agreements that mimic some of them, like child custody agreements.
• LGBT family group Philadelphia Family Pride, whose reach extends out to the suburbs, celebrated its 15th anniversary January 1.
• A lesbian couple in Raleigh, North Carolina say they were discriminated against at a children’s consignment clothing sale at the State Fairgrounds. One of the partners was volunteering for the event, and showed up with her partner to take advantage of an early preview sale open to volunteers and their spouses. Organizers denied the partner entry, claiming she was not a spouse. The couple began an online protest, and now organizers have agreed to change the policy and allow volunteers to bring a guest of their choice.
• The Australian Government is demanding a New Zealand surrogate mother pay child support for the baby she had for a gay couple in Queensland. Australian law states that surrogates can be made to pay child support if their babies were not legally adopted. Gay male couples are unable to adopt in New Zealand and most of Australia.
• On a related note, the Sunday Star Times profiled the woman in Auckland, New Zealand, mentioned in the above article, who is a surrogate for two gay Australian men.
• Not only that, but a new poll shows that two-thirds of Queenslanders support civil unions, marriage and full legal recognition of same-sex parents.
• There are more than 20,000 same-sex couples raising at least one child in Israel, according to human-rights organization New Family.
• No surprise, then, that Israel is also seeing its first lesbian custody case, complete with one mom who now claims the other “was just another woman living in the same house with them.” Sigh.

Family Voices, International Version

Are you an LGBT parent living somewhere other than the U.S.? Julieta of Ju, An y el Perro Activista and I are teaming up to extend my Family Voices interviews to include a series with non-U.S. LGBT families. (Julieta and several others were kind enough to write a guest post last year about lesbian parenting in Argentina.)

I will post the interviews in English here at Mombian, and Julieta will post them in Spanish on her blog. (She will translate, unless you submit your interviews in both languages.) We welcome contributions in other languages, too, and will do our best to find translators. U.S. expats also welcome.

We would like a varied group of people to participate. If you would like to join us, please send an e-mail with a sentence or two about yourself and your family. We will then e-mail you the list of 8-10 actual interview questions. Thanks!