LGBT Parenting Roundup

• When Constance McMillen filed a lawsuit against her school district after they canceled the prom rather than let her bring a same-sex date and wear a tux, a federal judge ruled that she had a right to clothes and a date of her choice. He did not ask the school to reinstate the prom, however, since parents were already planning to hold a private one. The private prom, however, was a fake, held for Constance, her date, and only seven others, two of whom had learning disabilities. The “real prom” was held in another location for everyone else.The good news from all of this? McMillen and Ceara Sturgis, a Mississippi student who had tux trouble of her own, will be at the National Center for Lesbian Rights’ 33rd Anniversary Celebration, which NCLR says is often referred to as “the lesbian prom.”
• A gay teen in upstate New York who was repeatedly bullied by classmates has reached an out-of-court settlement. The U.S. Department of Justice joined the case, filed by the ACLU.
• The American College of Pediatricians? Not a real professional organization. Spreads anti-LGBT lies. The American Academy of Pediatrics? Real, valid, and supportive of LGBT parents, as Timothy of Box Turtle explains.
• Should step parents be considered de facto parents? Nancy Polikoff looks at a recent case that tackles this tricky legal matter, and explores the question of who decided two parents was the “right” number. No, she’s not advocating for polygamy (she doesn’t touch that subject one way or another), but rightly notes that many children “have more than two functional parents.”
• The Jewish Daily Forward reports on same-sex couples in Israel, and the struggle to change a law that allows only opposite-sex couples to use an Israeli surrogate.

Scholarships for LGBTQ and Allied Students

Here’s a great resource for those of you with kids nearing college age. HRC has created a database of scholarships for LGBT and allied students. (Even though many straight children of LGBT parents consider themselves straight members of the LGBT community rather than “allies” per se, I assume they are eligible for many of these scholarships as well.)

HRC itself will be awarding three non-renewable $2,000 “Generation Equality” scholarships to LGBT and allied students “who have demonstrated exceptional commitment to the fight for queer equality.” Besides the HRC scholarships, there are over 220 others, though, so check them out.

Kids’ Poems, LGBT and Not

April is National Poetry Month, for no reason I can discern except that this glorious weather seems a perfect inspiration for writing poems. The Academy of American Poets site has everything you’d ever want to know about the celebration, but I’m going to share a couple of additional resources because we’re almost all parents and/or LGBT people around here.

First, writer Lee Wind is sharing seven days of poems by LGBTQQ teens. Here are the first, second, and third installments, as well as his introductory post, in which he lists a whole bunch of other poetry sites and activities across the kidlitosphere. (And if you don’t know his blog, I’m Here, I’m Queer, What the Hell Do I Read? already, you should. It’s one of the best sources of reviews and information about LGBTQQ teen literature.)

Second, Robin Reagler, of the erstwhile blog The OTHER Mother, has organized A Poem a Day through the Writers in the Schools (WITS) program that she runs in Houston. The poems are not LGBT specific, but are all from K-12 students in the WITS program—and pretty amazing stuff. (I’m not going to link to each individual one here; go to the WITS homepage and you’ll see them, or sign up to receive them by e-mail.)

What are your favorite poems for kids?

Mud 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.

Spring has sprung—at least, here in NYC it has. We’ve just set a new record for rainfall – and everyone knows that April Showers bring great mud puddles. Here are our favorite mud songs! Read the rest of this post »

Weekly Political Roundup

• Not news per se, but the Victory Fund has put together a nice video of LGBT women in politics.
• In a constitutional challenge to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT), the Department of Justice filed a brief supporting the current DADT law. Several experts on DADT are claiming the Obama administration misrepresented their views in the brief.
• Army Secretary John McHugh stated that soldiers still can be discharged for saying they are gay, clarifying his statement from earlier in the week when he implied that such discharges had been suspended.
• President Obama used his power of recess appointments to appoint lesbian law professor Chai Feldblum and three others to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. An unknown senator had previously put a hold on Feldblum’s nomination.
• The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin struck down a law that barred transgender people from receiving medical care, including hormone therapy or sex reassignment surgery, while they are incarcerated. Read the rest of this post »

“She Got Me Pregnant”: Episode 103

Helen and I celebrate our 17th anniversary this week and wonder how we made it. We also discuss a new way of thinking about kids and rules and try (perhaps in vain) to plan for when our child becomes a teen. Plus: a look at how parenthood changed Ricky Martin.

Mombian: She Got Me Pregnant 04-01-2010
Uploaded by drudolph. – Discover LGBT videos.
(If the embedded video above doesn’t work for you, try it at Dailymotion.)

Brought to you in partnership with After Ellen.

New Research Shows Children of LGBT Parents More Likely to Win Nobel Prizes

New research from the University of South Falls-Nebraska, has found that children of LGBT parents are more than three times as likely to win Nobel Prizes as their peers with one mom and one dad.

In-depth interviews with 1,283 children of LGBT parents showed that 89 percent felt they were “likely” or “very likely” to win one of the awards, versus 59 percent in a similar sample of children with non-LGBT parents. “Initially, the results were closer,” explained lead researcher Dr. Kate Fabri, “but then a number of the straight parents came out and we had to recalculate.”

Dr. Fabri denied accusations that she herself had been involved in many of those revelations. Her conversation with this interviewer was cut short, however, when one of the many toaster ovens in her office caught fire.

After dousing the flames, Dr. Fabri offered an explanation of her findings. “Children of LGBT parents often feel pressure to do better than their peers in order not to cast doubt on their parents’ abilities to raise them. Clearly, that leads to a trend of overachievement.”

Dr. Fabri speculates, therefore, that one way for the U.S. to maintain its scientific and cultural predominance in the 21st century is to allow only LGBT people to have children.