Help Restore a Pioneering Film About Lesbian Moms

In 1984, Debra Chasnoff made her first documentary film, Choosing Children, which profiled several lesbian moms who had kids after coming out—a radical idea at the time. The film, co-directed and co-produced with Kim Klausner, her children’s other mom, was selected in 2007 as one of two films that the Legacy Project, a program of OUTFEST, will be restoring this year.

Via the blog of Chasnoff’s GroundSpark organization comes news of a fundraiser to help the Legacy Project with this effort. If you’re in the San Francisco area this Sunday, consider dropping by. You can also make a donation online to help preserve and share a part of our history.

GroundSpark itself produces award-winning films and educational materials that tackle such issues as family structure, bullying, and gender identity and expression. (Chasnoff won an Academy Award for Best Short Documentary in 1991 on a different topic, however. Her Deadly Deception looks at the disastrous health and environmental side effects caused by General Electric’s production of nuclear materials.) I wrote about the release of Chasnoff’s It’s STILL Elementary some time back; I’ll have more on her brand-new release, Straightlaced, shortly. Stay tuned.

(Photo credit: GroundSpark)

Blogging for LGBT Families Day 2009: Win Registration to Family Week in P’town

Save the date: It’s that time of year again! One month from now, on Monday, June 1, I will be hosting the 4th Annual Blogging for LGBT Families Day.

I chose the date not only because it is the start of Pride Month, but also because it sits almost directly between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, honoring both while acknowledging that not all families fit the traditional model.

I am also very pleased to announce that the Family Equality Council will once again be sponsoring the event, and has donated a free Family Registration to Family Week 2009 in Provincetown. I will give this away to one randomly selected participant.

Here’s how it works: Read the rest of this post »

Daughter of Lesbian Moms in New Ad for California Marriage Equality

I’ve complained before about the shortcomings of last year’s No On 8 campaign ads, and suggested that same-sex families with children should have been highlighted more.

Looks like the marriage equality effort, now boosted by Marc Solomon, formerly of MassEquality, is taking the message to heart—not from my urging alone, but from the many of us who voiced our concerns.

Here’s a new ad from Equality California that will air tonight during the Rachel Maddow Show (among other places) featuring Californian Mary Kate Nicholson talking about her lesbian moms, Cynthia and Frances. It’s part of EQCA’s Win Marriage Back campaign.

(As always, you can find this and other videos with positive images of LGBT families on the Mombian YouTube channel.)

Repealing DADT Is Only the First Step

(I wrote this back in February for 365gay.com, but it seemed timely to repost it here (with slight updates) in light of the Army National Guard’s recent dismissal of West Point graduate and Arabic linguist Lt. Dan Choi under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” (He was on the Rachel Maddow Show last week.)

Although the timetable for repealing DADT is perhaps iffier than when I first wrote the piece, there are glimmers of hope, as Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, writes at HuffPo. Regardless of when DADT is repealed—and yes, I say when, not if—it will raise a host of additional questions regarding the recognition of same-sex families, as I explain below.

For more on LGBT families in the military, see my 2008 interview with an active-duty military officer and her spouse who are raising two children while needing to remain closeted.)

The LGBT community is abuzz with the possibility that President Obama will repeal the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy. This is a necessary and important step towards equality for LGBT Americans and enabling our military to recruit and retain qualified personnel.

Repealing DADT, however, is only the first step—albeit the most important one—towards equality for LGBT servicemembers. Unless the federal government not only permits openly lesbian and gay servicemembers, but also recognizes their families, we are asking those servicemembers to defend our country with a fraction of the support given to non-LGBT personnel. Read the rest of this post »

My Best Investment Ever

(In honor of Mother’s Day, here’s a guest post from my spouse Helen, who writes about matters financial at her site, Affine Financial Services, and at Queercents. It’s a slightly different angle on our family story.)

My best investment is not the traditional sort of realized gain, but rather, the investment of time, love, and attention.

The investment was the decision that my spouse and I made before we started a family that one of us would stay home with the child until he was old enough for school. Dana and I were each raised in families with stay-at-home moms, and that was what we both wanted for our child. The problem, of course, was we both had careers, and since we started our family rather late in life, each of us had climbed halfway up the proverbial ladder. Who would jump off?

And how would we live on just one income? We had always had two, roughly equal, incomes. Having one of us stay at home would mean a significant change in our lifestyle. From “2 incomes for 2 people” to “1 income for 3 people.” Hmmm. . . . Not favorable math. Read the rest of this post »

Happy Mothers’ (‘s) Day

A very happy day to all of you celebrating it, no matter how you shape this tradition to your own family.

While you’re enjoying your day, ponder the answer to Parentdish’s Mother’s Day poll question, “Who are the celebs you’d trust your kids with most?” The winners? Ellen DeGeneres and Portia De Rossi. Is this a sign of the times, or just a sign that Parentdish has a liberal audience?

Riffing on this, Autostraddle asks who we would want for our two celebrity Moms, if we could choose. Lucille Ball and Queen Latifah? Clearly her readers have imagination.

Here’s my question for you, on a more contemplative note: What lesson from your own mother(s) or other female relatives do you most want to pass on to your own children?

Dial It Down

[While I'm offline as much as possible this week, please enjoy this second post by Brett Berk, M.S. Ed., aka "The Gay Uncle." Brett seems to have answers to all the tough parenting questions, like how to handle matters when grandma keeps giving your children cheap, crappy toys, how to deal with Wii addiction, and what to do when your child pees in odd places. In the post below, he gives us some good advice on effective discipline.

Brett is the author of The Gay Uncle's Guide to Parenting: Candid Counsel from the Depths of the Daycare Trenches. Visit him at www.askgayuncle.com. —DR]

One of my colleagues at momlogic recently posted a piece about washing her son’s mouth out with soap. Apparently, the boy wouldn’t stop saying things like “poop,” “poo-poo,” and “poopie,” and the mom wouldn’t stop letting this behavior annoy her: a perfect swirly of brinksmanship. So once the kid inevitably crossed the line a final time, Mom squirted some pineapple hand soap into his mouth and had him swish it around. The outcome? The boy pumped his fist and said, “YES! I ate soap!”
Dial

I would like to give this mom a piece of advice: Dial it Down. Why? Read the rest of this post »

Setting Claire Boundaries

[While I'm offline as much as possible this week, please enjoy this post by Brett Berk, M.S. Ed., aka "The Gay Uncle." Brett seems to have answers to all the tough parenting questions, like how to handle matters when grandma keeps giving your children cheap, crappy toys, how to deal with Wii addiction, and what to do when your child pees in odd places. In the post below, he takes on shopping with a tween. Come back tomorrow to see what he says about what to do if your child won't stop saying "poop" or other "dirty" words.

Brett is the author of The Gay Uncle's Guide to Parenting: Candid Counsel from the Depths of the Daycare Trenches. Visit him at www.askgayuncle.com. —DR]

The Gay Uncle was recently down in the queer pot of gold at the end of our nation’s rainbow—Key West—where his sister lives. As part of their ongoing tradition of “Uncle Time”, dating back to when her daughter could first scream the words UNCLE TIME!!, Gunc and niece Amber (now age 10) spent the afternoon together. They had soft serve, they ate pizza, they visited the Aquarium, they watched an insane faux-French man juggle cats on the Sunset Pier. And, like any ideal visit with a tweenage girl, they went shopping for crappy trinkets at the ubiquitous mall-rat “boutique”, Claire’s. Read the rest of this post »