LGBT Parenting Roundup

A compilation of what other people have been saying about LGBT families:

Personal stories:

• CNN.com has a must-read article on the perspective of children growing up with gay parents. Thanks to Abigail Garner, one of their interviewees, for the tip. (And if you haven’t read her book, Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is, do get it. I recommend it for all LGBT parents and their teen/adult children.)
• The gay couple who were the first in Britain to have both names on their children’s birth certificates are now expecting their fourth and fifth children. In 1999, the couple used donor eggs and a surrogate mother in the U.S. to have twins, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruling the pair could both be named as parents on the children’s birth certificates. They also have a five-year-old son.
• The Washington Post reports on the gay and lesbian families in Prince George’s County, Maryland and the suburbanization of gay and lesbian families generally. Much as I myself am, unbelievably, a suburban-mom dyke and happy with my life, I hope some of us have lifestyles that differ. Variety being the spice, and all that.
• A couple in Sweden is attempting to raise their child (now two-and-a-half years old) without gender norms. They do not use a gendered name or pronouns, and have kept the child’s biological sex a secret. While I’m all for raising a child without gender norms, I also don’t think it is right to teach children that their gender is anything to be kept secret or be ashamed of. Besides, I think all their best intentions will go astray when the child starts school.

School issues:

• Victoria Cruz and Deoine Scott were voted “Best Couple” by their peers at Mott Haven Village Preparatory (Public) High School in the Bronx, the first time in the school’s history a same-sex couple had been chosen (and maybe the first time in Bronx history, too).
• The head of a high school English department in Litchfield, N.H., is quitting after some parents complained about reading assignments issued by another teacher in a class unit called “Love/Gender/Family,” part of an elective English class for juniors and seniors. They objected to stories on “homosexuality, abortion, drugs, and cannibalism,” including I Like Guys by David Sedaris, The Crack Cocaine Diet by Laura Lippman, Survivor Type by Stephen King, and Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway.

Read the rest of this post »

Welcome, Washington Post Readers!

Welcome, readers from the Washington Post On Parenting blog! I hope you’ll have a look around. My vision for this site has always been to offer news, analysis, and resources for lesbian moms and other LGBT parents, but also to welcome allies and those who want to learn more about our lives. LGBT parents face some unique challenges and some in common with other non-traditional families, but we also share many challenges—and joys—with parents of all types.

Please also feel free to sign up for a once-daily e-mail digest of Mombian posts, join the Mombian Facebook Group, follow me on Twitter, or subscribe to my RSS feed. It’s all about community and communication.

To my regular readers: Stacey Garfinkle, the editor of WaPo’s On Parenting blog, was kind enough to ask me to do a guest post for her site. The piece, “‘He Has Two Moms,’” is up now. I hope you’ll pop over and have a read, leave a comment, and check out some of her other posts on this common journey of raising kids.

40 Years and Counting

On June 28, 1969, a group of LGBT people fought back against a police raid at the Stonewall Inn in New York City.

In many ways, it was the beginning of the LGBT civil rights movement—but if there’s anything I’ve learned as an erstwhile historian, it’s that beginnings are seldom as clear cut as they first appear. One cannot often reduce such broad social changes to a single event, catalyzing as it may have been.

Joan Nestle, who founded the Lesbian Herstory Archives in 1975, perhaps said it best when she wrote:

I certainly don’t see gay and lesbian history starting with Stonewall . . .  and I don’t see resistance starting with Stonewall. What I do see is a historical coming together of forces, and the sixties changed how human beings endured things in this society and what they refused to endure. . . . Certainly something special happened on that night in 1969, and we’ve made it more special in our need to have what I call a point of origin . . . it’s more complex than saying that it all started with Stonewall.

(In The Question of Equality: Lesbian and Gay Politics in America since Stonewall, ed. David Deitcher.)

We are at another coming together of forces in LGBT rights, I believe, a confluence of awareness, activism, and impatience that may serve as a historical milestone for those looking back in another 40 years. We build on the achievements of our predecessors, and we hope to leave the world a little better for our children and their peers.

A joyous Pride to all of you.

Yet Another Non-Bio Mom Wins Custody Appeal

This just in:

More good news for non-bio moms, to add to the Jenkins-Miller decision I posted about earlier: A California Court of Appeal has denied the latest appeal (PDF) of Kristina S., a biological, “ex-lesbian” mom who has been trying since 2004 to prevent her former partner Charisma R. from being declared a legal parent to the child they planned, conceived, and began to raise together. Kristina was represented by the ultra-conservative Liberty Counsel.

Charisma left a comment on my Enough Already post a few months ago. She wrote:

[Kristina] moved away to Texas when our daughter was 3 and until this past year I hadn’t seen our daughter since she was 5 months old. Like Isabella, our daughter turned a year older this April – she is now 6. I am now a legal parent (have been since she was 3) and have court-ordered visitation in Houston, where they moved. My ex is currently challenging everything that has been thusfar determined by the courts and custody evaluations, etc with an appeal (the 3rd in this case already), which I attended yesterday.

Today’s ruling is the outcome of that appeal. It’s good to see the court upheld Charisma’s parenthood. Best wishes to her and her daughter.

After the jump, an excerpt from today’s ruling so you can see what she has been through. My own child, like hers, is also six—which makes this particularly poignant to me. Read the rest of this post »

Weekly Political Roundup

Federal news dominated this week:

• The Senate Judiciary committee held a hearing on the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Attorney General Eric Holder gave a statement in support. There is some buzz that the Act will be attached to the Defense Authorization bill, which happened to a previous version of the bill and helped kill it.
• Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), and Jared Polis (D-CO) along with eight other House members reintroduced a version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that includes protections for LGBT people.
• The White House press secretary said there will be no stop order to prevent dismissals of military personnel under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell because the administration wants a “durable legislative solution.”
• The Department of Justice’s response to GLAD’s DOMA lawsuit had been due Monday, June 29, but has been postponed. GLAD explains: “Per agreement between the parties (but still waiting court approval which is a virtual certainty) we will be filing an amended complaint in late July. It will include all of our tax plaintiffs, reflect the fact that the Toneys are no longer plaintiffs because their issue has been resolved, and perhaps make some other changes. The government’s response will be due on September 18, or 45 days after our amended complaint is filed.” Read the rest of this post »

But Wait, There’s More: Latest in Miller-Jenkins Case

It’s the case that will not end. The custody battle between Lisa Miller and Janet Jenkins, has dragged on for years. Miller, the bio mom, who now says she is no longer a lesbian, most recently tried in Virginia to block enforcement of a Vermont order granting Jenkins visitation rights with their seven-year-old daughter Isabella. Tuesday, however, the Virginia Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed the decision of a lower court to throw out Miller’s attempt.

At least the courts seem to be doing the right thing, which is more than I can say for ones in Missouri or Louisiana. Still, as I’ve written before, Enough Already!

With all the hue and cry about marriage equality, which I fully support, I think there are also a whole host of separate issues related to parentage that we need to address. As I commented in an earlier post, being married in a state that permits same-sex couples to marry is not enough for a non-bio mom’s parentage to be recognized in other states, even if she is on the child’s birth certificate. If another state doesn’t recognize the marriage, it doesn’t recognize her right to be on the birth certificate, which is why lawyers recommend that non-bio moms still do second-parent adoptions when possible. Marriage may help, but our current state-by-state process means it’s not enough. We need greater state-to-state consistency in terms of parentage recognition.

If we do repeal DOMA and establish federal relationship recognition, there are still plenty of laws that recognize opposite-sex couples as parents even if they are not married. It follows that marriage (or even civil unions) should not be the only way for same-sex parents to gain recognition, either. The intent to become a parent has to take precedence over any legal registration or ceremony between the two adults. (I’m cribbing a lot from Nancy Polikoff here, who has written extensively on the subject.) Not that marriage isn’t an important right—but it won’t solve all our problems.

That’s all looking far forward, however. Back to Miller-Jenkins: Somehow I doubt we’ve heard the last of this, but for Isabella’s sake, I hope Miller stops trying to prevent her from spending time with her other mom.

Hate Crimes Bill May Be In Jeopardy

U.S. attorney general Eric Holder yesterday asked a Senate committee to support the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a bill that would expand current laws to protect victims targeted because of real or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, among other things.

Bil at Bilerico reports, however, that according to a phone call he got “from a well placed source on Capital Hill,” the Act will be added to the Defense Authorization Bill.

Sound familiar? The same thing happened in late 2007 with a previous version of the Act. It was then removed from the defense bill during negotiations and thus died.

The analysis of this move has only just started. Circumstances are different under this administration, so the logic of attaching it to the defense bill is unclear. (This is starting to read like an episode of the West Wing, no?) Regardless, I think Bil is right to urge people to call their senators NOW and ask them to support the hate crimes bill, in case this move does indeed put it on shaky ground.

You can look up your Senator’s direct phone number here or call (202) 224-3121.

“She Got Me Pregnant”: Episode 73

Helen and I discuss two new children’s books (one about moms and one about dads) by Lesléa Newman, author of Heather Has Two Mommies. We then reveal yet another hidden lesbian on children’s television, Lily Tomlin (bonus points if you can guess which show without looking it up), and ask whether we’ll see any actual LGBT families on children’s TV anytime soon.

(If the embedded video above doesn’t work for you, try it here.)

Brought to you in partnership with After Ellen.

(As always, the book links above are provided as a convenience. I do make a small referral fee from Amazon (not from the publisher or author) for each purchase through the links, but you are of course free to buy them through another vendor.)