Happy Hanukkah!

A very happy first night of Hanukkah to those of you observing it! If your family comes from multiple traditions, like mine, then I wish you joy as you light up the first of eight trees in your yard or the first of the red noses on eight reindeer statues, wear red fuzzy yarmulkes with white trim, or do whatever else you do to honor and celebrate your interwoven diversity in this season of miracles and light.

More Gay Penguin Dads!

Gay penguin dads Guido and Molly of the East London Aquarium in South Africa have been caring for their unnamed chick since it was born five months ago, reports The Sun. The pair began to incubate the egg after an opposite-sex couple rejected it. (Molly was originally thought to be female, hence her name, but is in fact male.)

The pair join the famed Silo and Roy (Tango’s parents) and Z and Vielpunkt of Bemerhaven Zoo in Germany as adoptive gay penguin pairs.

The Sun quotes Curator Siani Tinley, who reports, “He’s strong and healthy and showing no signs of confusion from having non-heterosexual parents. He’s happy and loves swimming around – I think the parents are very proud.”

Also proud, I imagine, are actual gay dads Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, authors of And Tango Makes Three. Here’s what they had to say about their book topping the American Library Association’s list of the most challenged books in the country for three years in a row. That, despite the fact that their story is true—and clearly not an isolated case. How many more gay penguin parents will it take before the right stops it with their “gay parents are unnatural” argument?

Coming soon: a new advocacy and support group called COLAGPE: Chicks of Lesbian and Gay Penguins Everywhere. (With a respectful nod to my friends at COLAGE.)

(Photo: Not one of the actual penguins in question.)

“She Got Me Pregnant”: Episode 93

Helen and I share the harrowing but not tragic story of totaling our car last week. We then discuss asking and telling at our insurance company, which only covers members and former members of the military. Plus: a new memoir about growing up in the 1970′s as the child of a lesbian mom. And really bad car puns!

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

Brought to you in partnership with After Ellen.

A 2009 Review of LGBTQ Family Books

(Originally published in Bay Windows, December 10, 2009. I’ve covered a few of the books below in separate columns, but several of them are new—and good. Enjoy!)

There are still relatively few books for and about LGBTQ families, but 2009 gave us as good and diverse a crop as I’ve seen in a long time. Here are some highlights: Read the rest of this post »

Crash, Bang!

One of our cars was totaled last week. Let me quickly add that no one was hurt. Helen got rear-ended while stopped in traffic, and was pushed into the car in front of her, which happened to be a tow truck. If you’re going to have a car crash, that’s the way to do it.

That gives me as good an excuse as any to introduce her new blog, Science and Money, where she has posted about the accident and its financial aftermath. The blog is the standalone relaunch of one that was associated with her home business. In it, she offers “elements of personal finance from a scientist’s perspective”—and with a fair amount of wit. She doesn’t always write about LGBT-specific issues, but as a lesbian, she does keep an eye out for when those issues arise.

Go say hi and offer her comments with your own stories about car-buying hassles. We’ll tell you what we bought next week.

Glee Doesn’t Have Anything on These Kids

The drama group at Concord-Carlisle Regional High School in Massachusetts is performing William Finn and James Lapine’s Tony Award-winning musical Falsettos this weekend. That might seem to be of only local interest, except that the play is about a man who leaves his wife for another man, and the impact of that decision on his wife, son, and two other couples, one lesbian and one straight. The school is the first public high school in the country to produce it for an outside audience, reports the Boston Globe.

The right-wing group MassResistance, which campaigned against marriage equality here in the Bay State, recently sent out an online newsletter with the headline, “Concord-Carlisle High School presenting depraved homosexual musical.’’

The students don’t seem to mind. Director and math teacher Peter Atlas says that when he told the straight students playing the two gay male leads that if their performances were any good, people would likely assume that they, too, were gay, it wasn’t a problem for them. For sophomore Hannah Kilcoyne, who plays the 12-year-old son, the play hits closer to home. After being married to Hannah’s father, her own mom discovered she was a lesbian. Read the rest of this post »

LGBT Families: Send the President a Holiday Card

A number of leading national and regional LGBT family rights groups have launched the “From Our Family to Yours Campaign,” urging LGBT families to send holiday cards to President Obama and his family. The goal is “to introduce the First Family to thousands of LGBT families” and to “increase visibility and awareness about the need for federal protections for the LGBT community.”

Here’s how it works:

To participate in the campaign, we encourage families to send holiday cards to the First Family, and share their photos and this message:

“Season’s Greetings, from our family to yours. May the next year bring peace and equality for all.”

Please send your holiday cards and photos to:

Family Equality Council
Attn: First Family
P.O. Box 206
Boston, MA 02133

or send a digital version to tina.walker-morin@familyequality.org by January 1, 2010. We encourage you to send your holiday cards as soon as possible so that we can compile all of the images into a holiday package to be delivered to the First Family.

Visit the partnership’s Web site for more details.

Sponsoring organizations include Center Kids: A Program of the New York LGBT Community Center; COLAGE; Equality California; Equality Federation; Family Equality Council; Family Matters: a program of the San Diego LGBT Community Center; L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center’s Family Services Program; Lesbian and Gay Family Building Project; the Mega Family Project; National Center for Lesbian Rights; Our Family Coalition; Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG); and the San Francisco LGBT Community Center.

I say, while you’re at it, send cards to all of your state legislators and members of Congress.

Family Songs from Erin Lee and Marci

Children’s musicians Erin Lee and Marci bring us the next of their regular posts with thematic recommendations for kid-friendly music, plus activities to make the songs an interactive experience for the whole family.

Look for Erin Lee and Marci here on the first Monday of each month, or visit their homepage, www.gottaplay.org.

I’ve created links to Amazon for the full albums (click the album image or name), plus links to Amazon MP3 downloads, when available, for those who want only the singles. (Click the song name.) I also have a widget after the jump that will let you preview most of the songs without leaving Mombian.

One of the cool things about being a performer who sings for children – come December you get to celebrate every holiday, not just the one your own family celebrates. Hanukkah, Christmas, Solstice, Kwanzaa, New Year’s Day– you name it, we sing about it.

What all these holidays have in common is the joy of sharing them with family and friends. So here are some beautifully written songs by award-winning singer/songwriters about all of the wonderful people in our lives. These are some of our favorite songs that celebrate love, family and friendship. Read the rest of this post »