Weekly Political Roundup

Another slow summer week, but a few items of note:

• Eight members of the LGBT activist organization GetEqual were arrested during a sit-in at the U.S. Capitol. They held the event in order to get House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to take a vote on the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA).
• The New Jersey Supreme Court declined to hear Lambda Legal’s case claiming that civil unions have failed to provide the equality that the Court earlier mandated for same-sex couples. The Court said “This matter cannot be decided without the development of an appropriate trial-like record,” and told the plaintiffs they could take their case back to Superior Court, if they wished.

Around the world:

• Australia’s first openly gay cabinet minister, Penny Wong, said she agrees with the Labor Party’s view that marriage “is an institution that is between a man and a woman.”
• Nepal will hold its first Pride march on August 25, said Sunil Pant, the country’s first openly gay MP.
• The New York Times looks at the contrast between South Africa’s embracing of marriage equality and the reality for gay men and lesbians in many of the poorer townships.

In Memoriam: Ina Mae Murri and Stella Lopez-Armijo

Via the Bay Area Reporter (BAR) comes the sad news of the deaths of Ina Mae Murri, 75, and Stella Lopez-Armijo, 76, a lesbian couple from Fremont, California, who were killed in a car crash in Idaho two weeks ago. The women had been together for more than 35 years, and were mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers. They were active in the LGBT community and among the original founders of Lavender Seniors of the East Bay. Each was married to a man and had children before coming out. BAR calls them “pioneers in recognition for lesbian mothers.”

In their lives, they each came up against some of the biggest institutions that oppose LGBT rights. Lopez-Armijo is Catholic; Murri is Mormon, and each has written about trying to reconcile faith with sexual orientation. Murri also enlisted in the Air Force, but was discharged for being a lesbian.

Danette Ariotti, Murri’s great-niece, has a touching personal reflection about them at the Salt Lake City Examiner, and Inside Bay Area has their funeral notice. Go read.

It is stories like theirs that make me realize how much we are indebted to those first generations of out lesbian mothers. No matter the obstacles we face today, they are less because of the courage and visibility of women like Murri and Lopez-Armijo. My condolences to their family and friends.

We see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature.

—Bernard of Chartres (12th century), quoted by his student John of Salisbury

Sara Gilbert: “I am who I am”—But Does She Represent All of Us?

Last Thursday, I pointed out that the CBS press release announcing lesbian mom and actor Sara Gilbert’s new talk show simply said she lived “with her family,” whereas for each of the other five co-hosts, it mentioned their husbands by name.

Deadline Hollywood now reports that Gilbert told the Television Critics Association (TCA) Press Tour, “That came from me, CBS would write whatever I wanted. I’ve been acting all my life, and never discussed my personal life . . . I will do it here but a press release is so impersonal.”

Trish Bendix at After Ellen, who also covered the event, wrote, “OK a little strange, in my opinion. She seems to almost be shy about publicizing the fact she’s a mom and a lesbian. That or Allison [Adler, Gilbert's partner] is not interested in being on camera or a huge part of the show.”

But Trish notes that Gilbert then said, “I don’t ever really think of things as out or in. I am who I am. When topics come up that are appropriate, I’ll talk about them and share when it seems right.”

I have to respect that. It is her life and her family, after all. But I also agree with Trish that it seems a little odd, if only because the discrepancy with the other co-hosts was glaring, at least to many of us in the LGBT community. From a marketing perspective, it seems a bad call. Still, I’m glad it wasn’t because of homophobia at CBS.

Over at Entertainment Week’s PopWatch column, however, writer Tanner Stransky effuses, “I’m excited to hear more about the way Sara and Allison raise their two adorable children, mostly because they seem like good ladies and great representatives of lesbian moms everywhere.”

Gah. I know the comment was meant well, and I’m sure Gilbert and Adler are fine people. I just dislike when the media makes one person or couple, however noble they may be, representatives for a whole group. It’s not fair to either the person/couple or the group.

Ah well. At least this way people won’t think we all sleep with our sperm donors.

Target in Mother’s Sights

Target Corporation has come under fire this week for a $150,000 donation to a Minnesota PAC that supports Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer—who has in turn expressed support for a ministry/rock band that says Muslim countries that kill gay people are moral. Michael Jones at Change.org has the details, and a petition you can sign; I’ve added a few thoughts of my own over there on what this means for a company that scored a perfect 100 on the HRC Corporate Equality Index last year.

Michael has also pointed out a touching video of mother and grandmother Randi Reitan, who is making a statement by shopping at Target one last time and then returning the merchandise. Her son is gay, and she says, “A number of the items were for my grandchildren, and they love their Uncle Jake so much, and Jake is gay. They wouldn’t want to have things come from a store that contributes to a campaign that would have a governor candidate with the anti-gay views that Tom Emmer has.”

A Target spokeswoman told Minnesota Public Radio that the company gives funds not based on party, but rather on matters that “directly effect [sic] the company’s retail agenda.” With more mothers like Reitan, they might have to reevaluate exactly what political donations to make in that regard.

Watch after the jump: Read the rest of this post »

LGBT Parenting Roundup

Family Profiles

• The Advocate profiled lesbian moms Cathy and Leah, who talk about creating their family and offer some wise words about what they have learned as parents.
• The Arizona Daily Star profiled a nine-year-old transgender girl, and her parents, who have allowed her to transition and live as a girl. The article is generally positive—it quotes Kim Pearson, executive director of TransYouth Family Allies, for example—but it also explores the debates surrounding transgender kids. (For more resources about transgender kids, see my post from November.)

More Debate on The Kids Are All Right

• The New York
  Times has solicited opinions from various people including marriage-history expert Stephanie Coontz and columnist Dan Savage to talk about the impact of a movie like The Kids Are All Right on changing social perceptions.
• Joan Garry, currently adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communications and former head of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), shared her thoughts about The Kids Are All Right. She feels the film goes beyond believability when it has one of the moms have an affair with their sperm donor, and “the takeaway from this film will be that lesbians and the families they create need men to be complete.”
• If you read Garry’s piece, though, you should also go read the piece at After Ellen by Sinclair Sexsmith, who takes the opposing view. (My position is closer to that of Sexsmith, and I’ve explained why.)

New Adoption Study: Parent’s Orientation to Kids More Important than Sexual Orientation

Charlotte Patterson

From the “not that those of us here needed proof, but it’s good to have” files, a new study from the University of Virginia has found that the adoptive children of same-sex parents were on average “developing in typical ways.”

“We found that children adopted by lesbian and gay couples are thriving,” said U.Va. psychology professor Charlotte J. Patterson, who led the study. Her research used standardized procedures to assess a sample of 106 preschool-age children across the country who had been adopted at birth by same- or opposite-sex couples. She found that whether or not the children were well adjusted and developing in positive ways was unrelated to the sexual orientation of their adoptive parents.

Patterson’s work supports that of Drs. Nanette Gartrell and Henny Bos, whose National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) has looked at biological children of lesbian parents, and Dr. Abbie Goldberg, whose research covers both biological and adoptive parents. (Goldberg’s book, Lesbian and Gay Parents and Their Children, compiles and synthesizes decades of research by herself and others.) All of the researchers conclude that children of same-sex parents are as well adjusted as any others—the NLLFS and Goldberg even found they may have advantages in some areas. (We should be careful not to take that too far, however.)

Patterson’ study also concludes what many other studies have found—but it bears repeating (my emphasis): “Regardless of their parents’ sexual orientation, how well children were adjusted was significantly associated with how warmly their parents were oriented to them.”

The results appear in the August issue of the journal Applied Developmental Science.

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Weekly Political Roundup

• Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin said he expects the full Senate to take up Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DSDT) repeal in September, after the August recess.
• Former National Guard Lt. Dan Choi, one of the leading advocates for the repeal of DADT, has been officially discharged from the military. Choi and others were also arrested in Las Vegas after a protest urging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to do more to pass the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA).
• A U.S. District Judge issued an injunction preventing Arizona from enforcing a law that would have prevented the non-spouse domestic partners of state employees (and the partners’ children) from receiving health benefits.
• A new poll found that one in four Californians has become more supportive of gay rights over the last five years, compared with eight percent who had become more opposed (although we should be careful not to place too much faith in polls as predictors of voting outcomes).
• Seven same-sex couples in Montana, represented by the ACLU, filed a lawsuit against the state for failing to provide legal protections to same-sex couples and their families. Read the rest of this post »

“She Got Me Pregnant”: Episode 111

I’m vlogging solo, as Helen is away on business again— this week I discusses my views of The Kids Are All Right, the new movie about a pair of lesbian moms and their teen children. I also explain how the U.S. passport application needs to be updated to include all families, and share the latest in elementary school fashion trends, courtesy of our son.

Mombian: She Got Me Pregnant, 07-22-2010
Uploaded by drudolph. – Discover LGBT videos.

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

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