“Invisible” Black Lesbian Families Made Visible

Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood among Black Women, by UCLA sociologist Mignon Moore, is arguably the most groundbreaking work on LGBT parenting published in recent years. Moore gives us one of the few in-depth looks at lesbians of color, showing how race and class influence their self-perceptions, relationships, and family creation.

Her work corrects the predominant impression from media and research that LGBT people are almost all white. It complements the recent demographic work by UCLA’s Williams Institute and others that shows a high percentage of lesbian and gay people, including parents, are in fact people of color. Read the rest of this post »

Weekly Political Roundup

• Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and 132 other Democrats filed an amicus brief in Massachusetts v. Dept. of Health and Human Services and Gill vs. Office of Personnel Management, asking the First Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold a lower court ruling that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional. Seventy Massachusetts and national employers filed a separate, similar brief, as did several other professional, labor, law, and religious organizations.
• The home of LGBT pioneer Frank Kameny, who died in October, has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
• California Assemblywoman Cathleen Galgiani came out as gay.
• A New Jersey Superior Court judge ruled against the state’s motion to dismiss Garden State Equality v. Dow, a case arguing that civil unions do not provide same-sex couples with equality under the state constitution. (That’s not a final ruling on the case, just a ruling that it will proceed.)

Around the world:

• The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) created a Unit on the Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex (LGBTI) Persons, “in order to strengthen its capacity to protect their rights.”
• Danish LGBT pioneer Axel Axgil, who helped his country become the first in the world to allow same-sex couples to marry, died at age 96.
• Member of the Scottish Parliament Ruth Davidson, who is an out lesbian, is the new leader of the Scottish Conservative party.
• The U.K. Home Office confirmed that religious buildings may begin to host civil partnerships by the end of 2011.

Would You Let Your Teen Have Sex in Your House?

“For American parents,” says the publisher’s blurb for Amy Schalet’s new book, Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex, ”teenage sex is something to be feared and forbidden: most would never consider allowing their children to have sex at home, and sex is a frequent source of family conflict.”

Contrast this to the Netherlands, “where teenage pregnancies are far less frequent than in the United States, [and] parents aim above all for family cohesiveness, often permitting young couples to sleep together and providing them with contraceptives.”

Gay dad Stephen Russell wrote recently at HuffPo about how he applied his friend and colleague Schalet’s findings while negotiating dating and sex with his teen son (who also happens to be gay). It’s a great case study in how sometimes not pushing too much can be more effective than coming down hard with the rules.

I’m the parent of an eight-year-old, not a teen, and have no direct experience with my son and dating. Have any of you had teens who wanted to have a date stay the night (or spend any extended period behind closed doors)? How have you handled it? What advice would you give others?

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LGBT Parenting Roundup

Schools

• The Sydney Morning Herald looks at what parents and teachers are doing in Australia to address hetero-centrism in elementary schools.
• The Buffalo News reports on gay and lesbian teachers—why it can be hard to be out, and why many nevertheless feel it is important.

Family Portraits

• Mark Daniel Snyder at HuffPo talks about the true diversity of LGBTQ families, versus the pressure many sometimes feel “to portray our families as ‘perfect,’ upper-class, mainstream, two-parent homes.”
• Four percent of San Francisco high schoolers have LGBT parents, according to preliminary results of a district-wide survey given to ninth and 11th graders last spring, reports SF Weekly.
• KUT profiles lesbian moms Michelle Randolph and Emily Parks as part of their same-sex parents in Texas audio series.
• Tyeryann at BlogHer responds to her nine-year-old son’s question, “Mom, How Do Gay People Get Babies?” A great little story.
• J. P. Marzullo, a self-described “a conservative who believes in God, liberty and family values” writes an op-ed for New Hampshire’s Concord Monitor asserting “I believe in God, liberty and my gay son.”
• Gay dad Stephen Russell tells a great story at HuffPo about negotiating dating and sex with his teen son (also gay).

Law, Politics and Policy

• A Calgary judge has granted custody to a non-biological father after his former partner, the biological father, tried to deny him access to their child.
• In a similar case, the Texas Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling granting parentage to a non-biological father, although his former partner, the biological father, was trying to deny it to him. Nancy Polikoff has the details.
• A new initiative in Scotland by the National Health Service in Edinburgh, along with adoption and legal specialists, will offer LGBT people advice on starting families.

New book Explores Lesbian and Gay Adoptive Families

(November is National Adoption Month. Here’s my review of a new book on adoption by lesbians and gay men. Originally published in my Mombian newspaper column.)

There have been a number of studies over the past 25 years on lesbian and gay parents and their children, but few have looked specifically at lesbian and gay adoptive families—even though over 65,500 children are being raised by gay or lesbian adoptive parents in the U.S.

And while over two million LGB people are interested in adopting, over 115,000 children are still waiting for adoptive homes, according to UCLA’s Williams Institute.

Adoption by Lesbians and Gay Men: A New Dimension in Family Diversity, edited by David Brodzinsky and Adam Pertman of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, has brought together experts across several disciplines—social welfare, psychology, sociology, and law—to address these issues and provide a picture of this “rapidly growing new family form.”  Read the rest of this post »