Book Recommendation: There Is a Bird on Your Head!

My son is starting to read more on his own now, so I was delighted to find the lighthearted early reader There Is a Bird On Your Head! by Mo Willems, of Knuffle Bunny and Pigeon fame.

The simple plot is that elephant Gerald has a bird on his head, and must rely on his friend Piggie to tell him what is happening atop his dome. The bird then finds a mate. Piggie joyfully declares, “They are in love!” and proceeds to report to Gerald on their nest making, egg laying, and chick hatching.

The best part of the book, though, for LGBT parents? At no point are the birds’ genders mentioned. That’s right—it works for families of all types. (It seems a sensible approach, in these days of gay penguins and lesbian swans starting (or trying to start) families, although I am not at all sure that was on Willems’ mind).

I’m a little late to the game on this one, though. The book came out in 2007 and is part of a whole series of books featuring the cautious, slightly pessimistic Gerald and the more exuberant Piggie. The very latest one, Elephants Cannot Dance!, just came out last week, as it happens. In it, Piggie wants to share her love of dance with Gerald, who has been told “elephants can’t dance” and is reluctant to try. Finally, of course, he does, and teaches Piggie a thing or two in return about finding one’s own way. It looks like another winner with a good lesson.

We Now Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

I’m not posting a Weekly Political Roundup this week. I did an LGBT Parenting Roundup yesterday that I hope will hold you until next Friday.

You see, our son is graduating from kindergarten today, and I wouldn’t be a very good parenting blogger if I didn’t get out and, well, parent. Gotta go get him into his khakis and oxford and give him a snack before the ceremony. Blogging can wait.

(Brian and Steven over at Green Dads have a son almost the exact same age as ours, who is also graduating from kindergarten next week. Go wish them congratulations, too!

If you have kids with similar milestones, leave a comment so we can all wish you and them well. Go ahead and brag. We’ll understand.)

Camera. Check. Tissues. Check. I’m off. Have a good weekend!

A Loving Day

Today is Loving Day, a commemoration of the Loving vs. Virginia U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized interracial marriage, and a day that “fights racial prejudice through education and builds multicultural community.” The holiday takes on additional meaning this year with a president who is himself the product of an interracial marriage.

As we celebrate the fall of one prejudicial law today, however, it is worth quoting from Mildred Loving’s statement of June 12, 2007, the 40th anniversary of the decision:

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

President Obama, are you listening?

LGBT Parenting Roundup

Your weekly medley of LGBT parenting news. (No vlog this week; Helen and I have both been swamped with other work. Please come back for one next Thursday.)

Personal stories:

• Transgender man Thomas Beatie and his wife Nancy welcomed their second child into the world Tuesday. All appear to be doing well.
• Single mom Judy Lawrence writes in the Boston Globe about how her second-grade daughter is dealing without a dad in a world that largely expects one. Lawrence’s orientation is unclear, but it doesn’t matter; her experience, and her daughter’s, will resonate with many of us. When her cousin takes the girl to her school’s father-daughter dance, she writes, “I learned a bit about my daughter from this experience. She is resilient. She will get through whatever she needs to. It doesn’t matter if you dance solo or don’t dance at all. What matters is that you show up at the dance. What matters is that you know you are loved.”
• Lesbian mom Isobel White writes at HuffPo of her four marriages to the same woman, and how having children impacts her thoughts on marriage.

People who don’t get it: Read the rest of this post »

New Film Explores How Gender Stereotypes and Homophobia Affect All Teens

(Originally published, with slight variation, as my Mombian newspaper column.)

“I felt that teenagers in particular were really affected by anti-gay prejudice,” said Academy Award-winning filmmaker Debra Chasnoff, “but so much of the conversation that’s been had to date about that prejudice has been solely focused on how homophobia affects youth who are self-identified as LGBT or questioning. While that’s incredibly important, it was leaving out the whole majority of the population.”

Her new documentary, Straightlaced, aims to change that. “I wanted to make a film that would open up dialogue about how everybody is really boxed in by homophobia and anti-female prejudice,” she explained.

The tragic suicide last month of 11-year-old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover in Springfield, Mass., after prolonged anti-gay bullying, followed a week later by a similar suicide in Georgia, reinforced for Chasnoff exactly why Straightlaced was needed. Read the rest of this post »

An Unlikely Friendship

Last week, I pointed out a moving post from Blogging for LGBT Families Day written by Haley Montgomery, a conservative evangelical Christian who was struggling to work through the issue of marriage equality, trying to reconcile her beliefs with the stories of loving LGBT families she was reading online.

This week, I want to highlight another contributed post, this time from the blog May the Beauty. The author describes herself as “a 6 feet tall, spirited, wordy, loving, coffee serving, cheese-ball. Also known as a Mother, Wife, Partner, Daughter, Sister, Aunt, Cousin, Lesbian, Friend, Neighbor and Christian.”

In her post, she describes a close friend who nevertheless voted Yes on Prop 8. She, like Haley, tries to navigate the often complex intersection of belief, friendship, and family: Read the rest of this post »

Getting Married? Consider This Proposal

It should be a happy time for LGBT folks in New Hampshire, with a marriage equality victory making the springtime a little brighter. For the LGBTQ youth organization Seacoast Outright, however, things are looking bleak. The organization, which provides educational, social service and advocacy for gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, and questioning youth in the greater New Hampshire, southern Maine, and northern Massachusetts Seacoast region, has been under financial pressure for some time now, and has just announced its decision to close. The youth members of the group are trying to put together a volunteer group to fund it and allow it to function as a self-reliant entity, but it is unclear if their valiant effort will succeed.

This is not an isolated case. All over the country, smaller LGBT organizations are struggling for donations and survival in a tough economy. Some in the LGBT community put part of the blame on the massive amounts of money sucked into marriage battles such as that of California’s Prop 8. Read the rest of this post »

Baby, You Can Drive My Car

This has nothing to do with parenting or LGBT rights, but I thought I’d pass along this timely tidbit on a groundbreaking woman:

On June 9, 1909, Alice Huyler Ramsey set off on her successful journey to become the first woman to drive across the United States from coast to coast. Three other women accompanied her, friends who didn’t themselves drive, but who presumably helped change tires the 11 times they blew during the trip. Ramsey later became the first woman to be inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame.

She chronicled her journey in the book Veil, Duster, and Tire Iron, now republished as Alice’s Drive. Her best line, though, is perhaps the one she gave to Ms. magazine in 1975:

“Good driving has nothing to do with sex. It’s all above the collar.”

In honor of the 100th anniversary of Alice’s journey, a father-daughter team is now attempting to recreate it in a replica car, “with multiple events along the way to pay homage to women’s accomplishments during the last century.” They also hope to raise money in support of Women for Women International, which helps women survivors of war rebuild their lives. You can follow them via their blog or on Twitter.