How Much More Does It Cost to Be a Same-Sex Couple?

The New York Times has just published a major new piece on the costs of being a same-sex couple. Their conclusion? Lifetime added costs range from $28,595 to $211,993.

Authors Tara Siegel Bernard and Ron Lieber did extensive financial modeling and analysis, based on a hypothetical same-sex couple whom they chose to be similar to an “average” heterosexual one. The couple has two children, with one partner staying home for five years to take care of them. The authors make other socioeconomic and geographic assumptions, but lay them all out and attach a 25-page workbook for those who want the gory details.

They initially thought it would take a week to run the numbers. It really took two months, and the simulation of more than 900 tax returns. While I would love to see the numbers for a greater range of couples, that seems more a matter for academe. The article is well worth a read in any case. We need more data-driven arguments for equality to go along with the emotional and moral ones. Along with the economic and demographic work by the Williams Institute at UCLA, this article should be essential ammunition for positive change.

Weekly Political Roundup

Bunches of news this week. I’m saving parenting/youth-related stuff for a separate roundup early next week. This week was busy with the extra Banned Books Week content. Stay tuned!

• An article written by an Air Force colonel in Joint Force Quarterly, which is published for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, concludes that having openly gay troops in the ranks will not hurt combat readiness. (My spouse Helen, who was an Air Force captain, says this is a pretty big deal.)
• Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also sent a letter directly to President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates asking them to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
• The federal judge overseeing the California Prop 8 case has refused to allow the Protect Marriage campaign to keep their campaign records secret from the Olson/Boise legal team seeking to overturn the measure. Read the rest of this post »

And Gemma Makes Three: A Baby for Tango’s Real Dads

“We tried to incubate a rock and that didn’t work,” jokes Justin Richardson, one of the authors of And Tango Makes Three. The truth is, however, that he and his co-author and partner, Peter Parnell, became dads themselves back in February, as the New York Times reports today. Gemma Parnell-Richardson doesn’t have feathers like Tango, but if the photo in the NYT is any indication, she’s just as cute.

To wrap up Banned Books Week, Richardson was also kind enough to share with me some of his thoughts on Tango being the most challenged book in the country for three years in a row:

We can think of lists we’d prefer to top.

I will say that, as gay men of a certain age, we are no strangers to fear and anger being directed towards us and families like ours. But unlike in the debate of gays in the military, gays at the altar, gays in the boy scouts, and so on, this time the government is squarely behind us, and that makes all the difference. And not only is the US Constitution indisputably on our side (the U.S. Supreme Court wrote about a similar case of book suppression in 1982 “Our Constitution does not permit the suppression of ideas”), but throughout these years of challenges we have had the great support of the American Library Association, the ACLU, and PEN America as well as countless teachers, librarians, parents, and most meaningful to us, children. When a group of New York City 5th graders get together to give you an award for writing a book that furthers the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr., it becomes much easier to shake the image of the angry mother waving your book around on Fox News.

Best of luck to both Richardson and Parnell with their future books (More! We want more!) and, most importantly, with their new daughter. I’m sure they’ll be great dads.

“She Got Me Pregnant”: Episode 85

Helen and I celebrate Banned Books Week with old and new LGBT-themed children’s books that made the American Library Association’s Most Challenged Books list (as well as a children’s book that was challenged in 1959 for promoting (gasp!) interracial marriage). We also commend President Obama for including same-sex-headed families in a recent proclamation. After that, it’s on to entertainment, where we discuss a live version of the classic Schoolhouse Rock (and manage not to burst into song too many times), as well as a great new series about the national parks.

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

Brought to you in partnership with After Ellen.

It Can’t Be Banned If It’s Not In the Library

More words of wisdom on banned books, this time from acclaimed young adult author Julie Anne Peters:

You can’t ban a book that never makes it into a library. When I hear about authors who are up in arms about their book being banned, or removed from reading lists, I confess to a sliver of jealousy. I’d actually love for my books to be banned so at least I’d know they were once accessible to readers who needed them.
—School Library Journal [See my interview with Peters here.]

That’s a really good point. Over at Bilerico, author Patricia Nell Warren (whose novel The Front Runner has itself faced challenges) offers a few suggestions on how to fight book banning. I think they would work just as well to help books like Peters’ make it into libraries in the first place. Warren recommends that we buy challenged books, give them to family and friends, and donate them to libraries, many of whom are facing budget crunches. Read the rest of this post »