Poll: School Vacation Week

Many school districts had the week off. How did this affect you?

Surprise, Surprise: Kids of Lesbian and Gay Parents Are Normal

The Chicago Tribune yesterday published “Gay parents rights issue divides U.S., not families,” with the subtitle, “Sociologists find that children of gays are no more likely to suffer from psychological problems than kids raised in conventional homes.”

If you’ve been around this rodeo for a while, you’ll recognize that the studies they cite have existed for some time. No new news here. Still, it’s a pretty positive article, even though they felt the need to quote someone from the ultra-conservative Family Research Council who of course states that married heterosexual parents are best.

They also managed to speak with two adult children of just about the most stereotypical lesbian and gay parents out there: a lesbian construction worker and a gay hairdresser. Just because we want to prove that not all lesbians are construction workers nor all gay men hairdressers, though, doesn’t mean none of us are—and it’s nice to hear tell of construction-worker dykes in the midst of the gloss of L Word season.

One of the adult children quoted by the Tribune is Tina Fakhrid-Deen, founder of the Chicago chapter of COLAGE, who is also quoted in Families Like Mine, which I just happened to mention in my LGBT Parenting Roundup this week. Go Tina!

Another TV Alert: Finn’s Girl

It’s a night of lesbian and gay parents on TV!

Tonight, right after Fostering Love, a documentary about gay dads on Discovery Health (8 p.m. EST and again at 11), is Finn’s Girl on Logo (9 p.m. EST). I did a review last fall of this film about a lesbian mom and her tween daughter, but somehow never got around to posting it. Here it is.

(Originally published in Bay Windows, August 6, 2008.)

Dr. Finn Jeffries is at loose ends. Her partner Nancy has died, and Finn is left to raise their 11-year-old daughter Zelly, manage Nancy’s abortion clinic, deal with threatening anti-abortionists, and re-enter the dating scene. It’s no wonder Zelly is rebelling by skipping school, shoplifting, and smoking Finn’s pot. Finn is unsure how to reconnect with her daughter, though, and this forms the central theme of Finn’s Girl, by Toronto filmmakers Dominique Cardona and Laurie Colbert. The award-winning film has been touring LGBT film festivals since last year, including the Boston Gay and Lesbian Film/Video Festival in May. It is now out on DVD from Wolfe Video.

Finn’s Girl is a welcome addition to the small genre of movies and shows about LGBT families. Unlike many other lesbian-parenting films and television shows, it steers clear of overdone storylines like the search for sperm. In this, it stands in contrast to pictures like Wolfe Video’s recent DVD Tick Tock Lullaby, which centers on the quest for a sperm donor. Instead, Finn’s Girl focuses on the parent-child relationship and the demands of being a mother, not the difficulty of becoming one. Read the rest of this post »

LGBT Parenting Roundup

• The family of Larry King, a gay middle school student who was shot to death last year by a classmate, has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit that accuses the school district, a shelter, and the Ventura County Rainbow Alliance, an LGBT-rights organization, of failing to protect him. The suit claims the Alliance “encouraged him to make sexual advances toward his classmate.”
• Annie Crowder, parent of a first-grader in Calfornia’s Alameda Unified School District, wrote a great letter to the Mercury News in support of instituting a safe schools curriculum. Her letter is a terrific model for any others hoping to do the same. She says in part:
  

  This is not an issue of whether or not people understand me as a person or agree with my decision to have children with my partner. This is not about teaching our children “how to be gay” or what it means to be homosexual. It is about teaching children that all people, no matter who they are or how different they may be from who you are, deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Period.

  Read the rest of this post »

TV Alert: Gay Dads on Discovery Health Tomorrow

Tomorrow night (February 18) at 8 pm EST, the Discovery Health Channel will premiere Fostering Love, a documentary about two gay dads. Here’s the official blurb:

Fostering Love is the story of two California parents who have opened their home and their hearts to kids who desperately need both. We’ll meet Jim and Mark, a couple who has an unusual, ever-growing family. They’ve just moved from the city to the country, along with their biological, foster and adopted children. We’ll see the chaos and comedy of raising kids that range from infants to teenagers, while attending to a barnyard full of animals, and facing challenges as the “odd couple” in a rural community. We’ll understand what it’s like for this family to embrace foster kids, and the heartbreak that sometimes is the result of that commitment. We’ll also follow a tense and dramatic journey to adoption. Ultimately, we’ll watch an amazing family that has more than enough love to go around!

I thought Discovery Health was only obsessed about lesbians with large families. Now it seems they’re gender neutral, but still have a thing about lots of kiddies. On Top magazine has more about the show and the family.

Family Voices International: I

I am very pleased to present the first of a new phase in the Family Voices series of interviews I launched back in 2007. This time, I am teaming up with Julieta of Ju, An y el Perro Activista to extend the series to include non-U.S. LGBT families. (Julieta’s network of LGBT families outside the U.S. is far bigger than mine.) Julieta has also done Spanish translations of all the interviews, which you will find after the English below.

Below is the first of our weekly series. Bärbel is German; Sarah is Canadian. They met in the U.S. and now live in Germany with their two-year-old son Nicholas. They discuss favorite family activities, rights for LGBT families in Germany, using a known donor, and good advice for parents of all types. [Update: Bärbel has posted a German translation of the interview on her own blog.] Read the rest of this post »

Bending the Law

(Originally appeared in Bay Windows, February 4, 2009.)

“Family law is very vague,” says Kimberly Richman, an associate professor of sociology and legal studies at the University of San Francisco. “That leaves room for a lot of open interpretation.” In her new book, Courting Change: Queer Parents, Judges, and the Transformation of American Family Law (New York, 2009), she explains that while this openness has sometimes led to discrimination, the inherent flexibility of family law in fact “allows openings for new types of families and new types of rights to emerge, and that’s exactly what’s led to custody and adoption rights for gay and lesbian parents.” Read the rest of this post »

How Are You Celebrating Love?

What are you doing to celebrate love today?

I will be enjoying the first week of school vacation with my spouse and our son. We don’t have any special plans, but I intend to bake a cake later just because I’m always looking for an excuse to do so. (It will probably be the Chocolate Mocha Cake from the Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts, my go-to recipe for such endeavors. I’ll top it with Fudge Frosting from the The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion, also posted online at the KA Web site.)

This post is my last entry in the “Some/Thing” Freedom to Marry blog carnival hosted by The Other Mother.