LGBT Parenting Roundup

First, congratulations to lesbian mom Annise Parker, who won election as mayor of Houston, Texas, the country’s fourth largest city. She is the first openly gay or lesbian mayor of any of the country’s 10 largest cities.

Schools and Youth

• The Oklahoma City School District voted to amend the district’s bullying and harassment policy to include protections for LGBT students.
• U.K. Schools Minister Vernon Coaker announced that starting next September, schools will be required to record all incidents of homophobic, racist and sexist bullying, in order to promote faster responses as well as trend tracking.
• The Alameda, California school board decided to keep an elementary school curriculum aimed at preventing anti-LGBT bullying among elementary school kids until a broader anti-bullying program is developed. While this is being reported in some places as a loss for LGBT rights advocates, who wanted the board to adopt “Lesson 9,” an anti-bullying program more specifically focused on anti-LGBT bullying, I’m going to reserve judgment until I see what the broader curriculum contains. In many ways, I feel a broad program that shows the effects of bullying in all its many guises will be not only more acceptable to all parents, but more effective with children as well. The danger, however, is that the new curriculum will be so broad or touch so lightly on LGBT issues that it won’t be as effective in preventing anti-LGBT bullying as a more focused program. Stay tuned. Read the rest of this post »

Gringa Giveaway II

It’s time for the second giveaway of Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood, writer Melissa Hart’s memoir of growing up in the 1970’s separated from her mother, who lost custody of her children after she divorced their father and came out as a lesbian. (More about it in my 2009 Review of LGBTQ Family Books. You can also check out her YouTube video at the bottom of the sidebar to the right.)

The book will go to the first commenter who leaves the correct answer to the question:

Name the recent LGBTQ parenting anthology that included one of Hart’s essays.

Rules and restrictions: U.S. and Canada residents only, please. One entry per person. Don’t worry if your comment is moderated; once I approve it, it will appear based on the time you submitted it. Previous winners of Mombian contests cannot play again. If you are or have been a paying advertiser (or an employee of a paying advertiser) on Mombian, you can’t play.

You must also leave a valid e-mail address with your comment. Don’t leave a postal address, though. If you win, I’ll contact you by e-mail about shipping. (I will then share the winner’s name and postal address only with the publisher, for the sole purpose of allowing them to mail you your prize.)

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program, and get a small referral fee from all purchases made at Amazon.com via links on this site. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.

D.C. Passes Marriage Equality; D.C. Parent Claims Child’s Innocence Destroyed by Gay Guinea Pigs

It’s a joyous day in our nation’s capitol as the D.C. City Council voted for the second and final time in favor of legal marriage for same-sex couples in the District of Columbia. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has promised to sign it soon, after which it will go to Capitol Hill for Congressional review before becoming law.

Yesterday, however, came news that Margaret C. Hemenway, the mother of a first-grader at Horace Mann Elementary, a public school in D.C., had filed a complaint with the D.C. school chancellor because her son’s teacher had—horrors—mentioned to the class that she was going to get married—to a woman. The teacher had also read Sarah Brannen’s Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, about two male guinea pigs who marry, to the class.

Hemenway, a member of “Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX),” said she asked the chancellor, “What department in the DC Government we can appeal to for restoration of our child’s sense of innocence?” Her post about this on the PFOX site (http://pfox-exgays.blogspot.com/2009/12/real-purpose-of-gay-marriage.html) is full of the vilest assumptions that talking about a same-sex couple getting married means talking about sex. (You can read coverage of it at the Washington City Paper if you’d rather not visit the PFOX site.)

[Update: Reader A points out in a comment below that Hemenway has used this same schtick before. I'd even covered it, but was clearly thrown off because she had tried to use it against Obama and William Ayers last time around. I guess the whole "gay people are indoctrinating our children" gag still has some miles left in it.]

News flash: My son is in first grade, too. He’s had same-sex parents since he was born. His parents got (legally) married when he was three, and he attended the ceremony. He still doesn’t know a thing about sex. Read the rest of this post »

Kids Have an Itch to Program? Scratch It!

Do your kids like to use computers? Do they linger in the computer areas of science museums, playing with the demos? Do they eye the Lego Mindstorms robot sets until you see the nearly $300 price tag and quickly usher them away?

Here’s good news: Scratch, a programming language designed just for kids, is absolutely free. It’s a drag-and-drop system developed by the folks at the MIT Media Lab—the “Lifelong Kindergarten Group,” to be exact. (That sounds like my dream job.) With very little effort, kids can get started creating their own animations, video games, drawing programs, and whatever else strikes their imagination. Read the rest of this post »

Lesbian Mom . . . Albatrosses?

Hot on the feathered heels of last week’s news about another pair of gay penguin dads comes the story of two female albatrosses in New Zealand who are incubating an egg together (Queerty, via GayNZ.com). They are not the first Sapphic avians who have tried to start a family, however; two of the famed swans in Boston’s Public Garden are a female pair who attempted to incubate an egg a few years back.

I am very happy we continue to find evidence that same-sex parenting is not, as the ultra-right says, unnatural. I just hope all of this doesn’t mean same-sex parenting is for the birds. I prefer to think of it as an egg-cellent adventure.

(Photo credit: Mila Zinkova. Distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2. Not the actual albatrosses described above.)

High School Performance of Gay-Themed Musical Receives Cheers, Not Jeers

Last week, I wrote about the performance of a Tony Award-winning gay-themed musical by students at Massachusetts’ Concord-Carlisle Regional High School. Anti-LGBT group MassResistance was up in arms about a high school producing a “depraved homosexual musical” and was trying to use director Peter Atlas’ supposed friendship with Assistant Deputy Secretary of Education Kevin Jennings to smear Jennings.

What would happen, I wondered, at the actual performances? Protests? Catcalls? Snickers from fellow students in the audience?

The reality was much happier. Sarah S. Brannen, the author and illustrator of gay-inclusive children’s book Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, attended the show on Saturday and was kind enough to submit this guest post about it.

December 13, 2009

Falsettos in Concord

I went to see Falsettos at Concord-Carlisle Regional High School on Saturday night. According to the Boston Globe, it was the first-ever production of the musical by a public high school. A production of The Laramie Project by the Acton-Boxborough Regional High School two years ago met with pickets and protests, so I was delighted to see nothing outside the school but audience members hurrying through the cold. Read the rest of this post »

Book Giveaway: Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood

It’s time for a book giveaway! I’m very pleased to offer a copy of Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood, writer Melissa Hart’s memoir of growing up in the 1970’s separated from her mother, who lost custody of her children after she divorced their father and came out as a lesbian. (More about it in my 2009 Review of LGBTQ Family Books.)

The book will go to the first commenter who leaves the correct answer to the question:

Name the documentary that Hart appeared in to talk about her mother’s and her experiences in the 1970′s with homophobia.

If you don’t get it, I’ll be giving away another copy tomorrow (at a different time of day), so you can try again.

Rules and restrictions: U.S. and Canada residents only, please. One entry per person. Don’t worry if your comment is moderated; once I approve it, it will appear based on the time you submitted it. Previous winners of Mombian contests cannot play again. If you are or have been a paying advertiser (or an employee of a paying advertiser) on Mombian, you can’t play.

You must also leave a valid e-mail address with your comment. Don’t leave a postal address, though. If you win, I’ll contact you by e-mail about shipping. (I will then share the winner’s name and postal address only with the publisher, for the sole purpose of allowing them to mail you your prize.)

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program, and get a small referral fee from all purchases made at Amazon.com via links on this site. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.

Weekly Political Roundup

U.S. National News

• Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), sponsor of a bill to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) said it wouldn’t be repealed in this Congress and that efforts next year will focus on building support for the issue.
• A Senate committee approved the nomination of openly lesbian law professor Chai Feldblum as a member of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The nomination now goes to the full Senate.

U.S. State News

• The Democratic Caucus of the California State Assembly selected its first openly LGBT Speaker of the Assembly, John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles). The full Assembly is expected to take an official vote on the Speakership in January 2010.
• Openly gay Santa Clara County Supervisor Ken Yeager will become president of the Board of Supervisors in January 2010. Read the rest of this post »