Daughter’s Speech at Dads’ Wedding

Proving my earlier point. Have the tissues ready.

(Thanks to Cynthia for the tip.)

Deja Vu All Over Again

“Homosexual marriage [could be] taught in schools whether parents like it or not.”

Sound familiar? The ultra-right used the argument to drum up support for Prop 8. Now, Stand for Marriage Maine is busting out the same drivel in support of that state’s Referendum 1, which would overturn marriage equality there. (You can see a copy of their latest ad over at YouTube.)

I’m therefore reposting a piece I wrote earlier this year about how we need to counter this approach. The right has long tried to own the argument that what they are doing is in the best interests of the children. We need to reclaim that argument and show that equality is in fact in children’s best interests. If we simply assert “no they won’t” or “so what” when the right says children will be “forced” to learn about same-sex couples getting married, we still run the risk of making the right look like they care more than we do about the needs of children. If instead we show how inequality in fact hurts children, and equality helps them, then we position the LGBT community and our allies as the side that is doing more for the next generation. More on this below.

The piece first appeared in slightly modified form at 365gay.com.

Marriage Equality and the Protection of Children

Denying marriage to same-sex couples harms our children.

So said the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission, which published its final report at the end of 2008. Although many of the arguments focused on the economic damage of civil unions and the difficulty of equal access to health care and other services, much of the report also discussed the harm that inequality causes to the children of same-sex couples. Read the rest of this post »

Let’s Stay in Touch

A reminder to all readers that there are several ways to stay in touch with Mombian:

• Subscribe to Mombian by Email to receive a Daily Digest of Mombian posts. (Max of one e-mail per day, even if there are several posts.)
• Join the Mombian Facebook Group to meet other members and receive an occasional message from me on items of interest. (I keep the volume low—no more than one per week unless there’s major breaking news.)
• Also, NEW: Become a Fan of Mombian on Facebook, which doesn’t get you on the group mailing list as above, but shows that you like the site.
• Follow me on Twitter for more frequent messages about Mombian posts, breaking news, and occasional chatter. (I try to keep the signal-to-noise ratio high, but sometimes throw in something fun and random.)
• Subscribe to the Mombian RSS feed to read posts via a feedreader like Google Reader or Bloglines, or include the feed in a customized homepage like My Yahoo! or iGoogle.
• You can also now sign in to Mombian using your Facebook account (the button is over in the right sidebar of the site) to see other Mombian readers who are online and using Facebook. You can also choose to crosspost your Mombian comments to Facebook. (You’ll see the checkbox below the comment box.)

I hope this helps us share and continue our ongoing conversations about LGBT parenting.

Many thanks for being part of the Mombian community,
Dana

New Books Showcase Stories of LGBTQ Youth

(I’ve been meaning to write about these books for a while, and back-to-school time is giving me the motivation I need.)

Ongoing incidents of students (and teachers!) harassing LGBTQ students, students perceived to be LGBTQ, and children of LGBTQ parents are one of the scariest and most frustrating things for me as a parent. I take hope, however, not only in the fact that more parents are organizing to prevent this, but that these students are sharing the stories of their experiences.

Two recent books have compiled many of these stories, and are highly recommended resources for parents, schools, libraries, religious congregations, and anyone involved with youth today. Read the rest of this post »

The Captain and the Kid

Elton John and his partner David Furnish may adopt a child, according to the BBC. The musician met a 14-month-old boy called Lev during a charity performance at an orphanage in the Ukraine, and said the boy has “stolen my heart.” The performance was part of John’s work with his AIDS foundation.

He explained, “David and I have always talked about adoption, David always wanted to adopt a child and I always said ‘no’ because I am 62 and I think because of the travelling I do and the life I have, maybe it wouldn’t be fair for the child. But having seen Lev today, I would love to adopt him.” Read the rest of this post »

Weekly Political Roundup

• Next Tuesday, Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), and Jared Polis (D-CO) will introduce legislation to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
• Lisa Keen has a nice summary of all the LGBT-related bills poised for action in Congress.
• A new report from the Congressional Research Service Supreme Court says it is unclear whether previous Supreme Court rulings would support new laws protecting gay men and lesbians who want to serve openly in the military.
• The House Education and Labor Committee will hold a full committee hearing on the transgender-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) on Wednesday, September 23.
• Six more openly LGBT Democrats are on track to join the 447-member Democratic National Committee as at-large members. They will be confirmed next weekend by a committee member vote. Read the rest of this post »

In Memoriam

In honor of all the victims of the tragedy of September 11 and its aftermath, their families, and their friends.

I will always remember, as will many of us, where I was the morning of 9/11. A lucky change in job the day before kept me away from Ground Zero at the time of the attack.

I was a vice president at Merrill Lynch (before the recent debacle and sale to Bank of America). For a year, I had been commuting on the PATH train from New Jersey to the World Trade Center, arriving around 8:45 a.m. every day. I then took the escalator and sky bridge over to my office at Two World Financial Center. On Monday, September 10, 2001, I started a new position in the company’s Princeton, New Jersey office. At 8:46 a.m. on Tuesday, when the first plane hit, I was pulling into a parking lot in suburbia, not in a crowd of panicked commuters underneath the WTC. The first sign that something was amiss was when my NPR signal went out. (WNYC had a transmitter on top of the WTC.) The “could have been” occupied my thoughts for weeks.

I don’t want to overstate my experience versus those who were killed, injured, or knew those who were. It affected me, though, in more ways than I realized at the time. It is perhaps not coincidental that shortly after 9/11, Helen and I began to talk seriously about having a child, after more than eight years together. Unseized opportunities took on new immediacy. Yes, it gave us pause, wanting to bring a child into a world where “detonate” is a reflexive verb. But when we lose our faith in the future, the terrorists have already won.

May we all work in whatever way we can for a safer, more peaceful world for our children.

(The tall building with the flat black top just to the left of the WTC in the photo is Two World Financial Center, where I worked.)

LGBT Parenting Roundup

Politics and Law

• Uruguay’s Senate approved a bill to allow same-sex couples and unmarried opposite-sex ones to adopt children. It now goes to President Tabare Vazquez, who is expected to approve. Uruguay would then become the first Latin American country to permit same-sex couples to adopt.
• In other happy news, same-sex female couples in the U.K. can now put both their names on the birth certificate of a child conceived through assisted reproduction. The couples need not be in a civil partnership. Read the rest of this post »