The father in the show, Marty Kahn (Don Cheadle), is “confused,” Anderson-Minshall says, but nevertheless “goes to bat for the kid. . . . Like Kurt Hummel’s father on Glee, he’s trying to understand the kid. So is Roscoe [Donis Leonard Jr.] gay? Transgender? Or just playing around the way kids should be allowed to do? We know as much as Marty does but, based on episode one, it’ll be a fascinating journey watching Roscoe find out.”

My friend Cathy Renna, whose firm Renna Communications does publicity for Gender Spectrum, also liked the portrayal of the child in the first episode, as did After Ellen’s The Linster.

Based on the trailer, parenting may be the only area where Marty acts with integrity, but I’m all right with that—having a good character accept his child would have been expected, and perhaps yawned at. Having a sleazy one actually try to do the right thing in this area makes it even more compelling. And Marty is just one in a long line of morally ambiguous Showtime parents, who include Weeds’ drug-dealing Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) and Dexter’s serial killer Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall).

Positive media images aren’t the only thing that will grow acceptance and understanding of gender variant children, but they help. Good for Showtime.

Showtime’s new comedy series, House of Lies, which starts this Sunday, stars Don Cheadle as a “charming, fast talking” business consultant. Cheadle and his team of MBAs “are playing America’s 1 percent for everything they’ve got. They put the con in consulting as they charm smug, unsuspecting corporate fat cats into closing huge deals, and spending a fortune for their services.”

Sounds funny—more so because my brother is a business consultant—but a read through the character descriptions on Showtime’s site reveals that Cheadle’s character’s young son is gender variant. From the character description:

Marty and Monica’s young son Roscoe is as bold and brash as his father, except instead of consulting, his thing is cross dressing. Roscoe is very sure of who he is, and he knows how to work a blinged out tee and designer handbag better than anybody, classmates and teachers be damned. The idea that he is not the right gender to play Sandy in Grease does not stop him from auditioning, or even enter his mind.

I haven’t seen a screener, so I don’t know if they’ve handled the character and the issues with insight and sensitivity along with humor, or if they’re just going to use the tired “let’s poke fun at a male in a dress” approach regrettably used by other shows. The “very sure of who he is” part sounds promising, but time will tell.

(For an example of a great approach to handling issues of gender in the classroom, read Wisconsin teacher Melissa Bollow Tempel’s recent piece. You might also want to take a look at my interview with Stephanie Brill, executive director and founder of  Gender Spectrum, which supports families that have gender variant, gender non-conforming, and transgender children. Let’s hope House of Lies’ writers and producers have taken a look at similar resources.)

I was therefore delighted last year when the Maccabeats, Yeshiva University’s a cappella group, gained YouTube fame last year with “Candlelight,” to the tune of the pop hit “Dynamite.” Finally, a Hanukkah tune catchy enough to compete with all the pop versions of Christmas carols my son’s been hearing!

The Maccabeats are back this year, now with “Miracle,” another tune that has my son’s toes tapping. While it may seem out of character to include the video of an all-male (and not necessarily gay) singing group here, I will point out the brief scene (at about 1:38) showing what appears to be a single mom celebrating Hanukkah with her children. Clearly, Hanukkah celebrations occur in all types of families. Not only that, but the mom is wearing a men’s tie and yarmulke (traditionally worn only by men), which gives the scene a certain gender-bendy appeal, or at least a feminist twist. (Bonus fun fact: Actor Mayim Bialik, who plays the mom in the video, also has a Ph.D in neuroscience.)

The Maccabeats are using the video to encourage donations to the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation at makesomemiracles.com.

Happy Hanukkah to everyone celebrating today. May your lives be full of miracles, big and small.

But they’ve kicked up the gay quotient a notch with the revelation in the October 26 episode that Detective Carlton Lassiter (Timothy Omundson) has a lesbian mom, who came out after being married to his father. It’s a throwaway line, a small in-passing bit of backstory for the character. If your attention wandered during the show, you might have missed it. 

Still, there are so few adult (or even teen) characters with LGBT parents on television, that it’s always exciting to see a mention, even if we hope for more. Fans of Glee have been agitating for a while now for the show to feature the gay dads of character Rachel Berry (Lea Michele), to no avail. Of course, having gay dads isn’t the defining part of her character, and I’m glad they haven’t presented it that way. But heck, it sure would be nice to see them at some point.

Same goes for Lassiter. There doesn’t have to be a Big Gay Storyline, but his mom and her partner could still provide a nice focal point for an episode. Maybe they’re victims of or witnesses to a crime that Lassiter has to solve, even if it doesn’t revolve around being gay.

At the same time, Lassiter is a straight-laced Republican, which suggests either his mom is that rare breed, a lesbian Republican, or there’s tension between her and her son because of their differing politics. Either way, there’s opportunity for non-homophobic but gay-related humor there (Psych is a comedy, after all)—and maybe even a subtle lesson about LGBT equality. Maybe Lassiter tries to cement his relationship with his mom by reminding her of the prominent Republicans who support LGBT rights, such as former vice president Dick Cheney and lawyer Ted Olson, who is trying to strike down California’s Prop 8.

Perhaps we should start a campaign to have his mom and her partner appear in a future episode. Certainly we should put the show’s creators and USA Network on notice that we’re watching, and would love to see a funny, positive episode with these characters. Better yet, give them recurring roles.

GLAAD gave the network a “adequate”  grade last year for its LGBT inclusivity, up from a “failing’ grade the year before—but clearly there’s still room for improvement. Here’s a chance for them to work on that.

Who would you pick for the actors?

With Eric Stonestreet winning an Emmy last year for his portrayal of a gay dad in ABC’s Modern Family, and the movie about two lesbian moms, The Kids Are All Right, garnering Oscar nominations, it is easy to forget what things were like just 25 years ago. Then, people both inside and outside the LGBT community assumed that “you gave up the ability to have children,” if you came out, said Academy Award-winning filmmaker Debra Chasnoff. In her 1985 documentary, Choosing Children, however, she profiled six pioneering lesbian families who were defying this assumption.

The film, made with her then-partner Kim Klausner, helped inspire many lesbians to become parents. Now, years after the film’s negative was lost, Choosing Children is being restored, and Chasnoff hopes it will inspire the next generation of LGBT parents—as well as teach people about a key part of LGBT history. Neither Chasnoff nor Klausner had ever made a film when they began Choosing Children, but both were intrigued by stories they had heard of lesbians becoming parents after coming out (in contrast to those who had children from previous heterosexual relationships). “It was a big topic of conversation in our social circle,” Chasnoff explained in an interview. They didn’t know any such parents personally, but decided to find some, “and ask them all the questions that all of us were talking about.” After placing classified ads in feminist and women’s newspapers, they drove around the country to meet the women who responded.

The families they chose showcase the diversity of our community from many angles. The children were created through known donors, unknown donors, and adoption. They ranged in age from infant to early teens. One mother was still pregnant when filming began. The women are white, black, and Hispanic, and include two interracial couples. In addition to three couples, there was one woman co-parenting with a gay man, a single mother, and a group of five women co-parenting together. Attorney Donna Hitchens, one of the founders of the Lesbian Rights Project (now the National Center for Lesbian Rights), provided legal commentary.

Chasnoff said that the one thing all the women had in common, however, was their courage. “They were the first in every single community to take their kids to school or go into a doctor’s office and say ‘I want to inseminate.’ They were all so brave, to face great societal opposition with very little resources.”

When the documentary was first shown at film festivals, Chasnoff recalled, “People would come to the screenings and you could see these little light bulbs going on over their heads, saying, ‘Oh my god, I could have a child if I wanted to?’ People would turn to each other and say, ‘Honey, what do you think?’ Over the years, I would get letters of so many people who said ‘I never thought I could have kids until I came to see the film. Now we have a four-year-old.’”

The screenings also generated coverage in mainstream newspapers, “the first media coverage in those areas ever that suggested that gay people could have kids,” Chasnoff said.

Chasnoff herself admitted, “I was like everybody else. I assumed that being gay meant that I was not going to have children. I think the experience of making the film was enormously life-changing for me, because I did end up having children.” She and Klausner had two children together.

Much has changed, too, since the mid-80s, in terms of both media coverage and legal rights, especially protections for non-biological parents. For Chasnoff, though, the biggest change is that most gay and lesbian people would now say “yes” if asked whether they could become parents. “To me, that’s a radical change, because when we made the film, the answer was unequivocally no,” she said.

The film became inaccessible for many years, however, when the lab that had housed the negative went out of business and the negative vanished. Last year, the Outfest Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation selected Choosing Children for restoration and created a new 35mm print from a copy at the Library of Congress.

Now, Chasnoff and Klausner hope to raise $25,000 in order to digitize the film for DVD and include updates and commentaries. On September 14, 2011, Chasnoff’s GroundSpark organization and a number of community partners held a 25th anniversary screening and fundraiser in San Francisco. (See the Groundspark site for information on the screening and making a donation.) Chasnoff said she would be open to fundraisers elsewhere if approached by groups that wanted to arrange them.

Chasnoff hopes Choosing Children will be of historical interest to LGBT archives, women’s studies departments, and college libraries—but also of practical use to lesbian families today. “It’s still the same,” she said. “Everybody has to go through the conversations: what will the kids call us, what will happen to them at school, what will it be for kids to grow up without a male parent, can gay men and lesbians co-parent, will you be able to adopt jointly?”

She added, “I think having that possibility [of becoming parents] has changed all of our lives. . . . It used to be when you came out, that topic was off the table. You didn’t have to grapple with your partner about whether you were going to have kids or not. It was just not part of your relationship—and now, I think everybody has to have that conversation.”

The Kids Are All Right

No word on who will star in any of the leading roles, including those of the moms, played in the film by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore. The film’s director, Lisa Cholodenko, will be executive producer.

The lesbian community was split about the film. Some, upon learning that one of the moms has an affair with their children’s sperm donor, felt it was a rehash of the old cliché that a lesbian really just needs a man. Others (including myself) felt that Cholodenko upended that myth by never having the mom question her lesbian identity and by having her end the affair—citing her identity, her love for her spouse, and her commitment to their marriage. It is more about the universals of human relationships than anything else. (My full review here.)

It remains to be seen what the series will be like, of course. All I can say at this point is that if it’s better than the last season of The L Word (or any season of The Real L Word), it will be a step in the right direction.

Regardless of what you thought of the film, what would you like to see in the series?

This is what happens when you let same-sex couples get hitched—they do so with their own style. Anita Bayliss and Margaret Wood had a Star Trek-themed civil partnership ceremony in Swansea, South Wales, to commemorate their meeting in a Star Trek forum. Not only did the women wear Starfleet dress uniforms, but they required their guests to wear Star Trek costumes as well. Bayliss’ two sons (of unspecified age) wore Captain Kirk outfits. (Let’s face it, if one was Kirk and one was Picard, there would have been fistfights over who was better.)

No word on where they’re beaming to for their honeymoon (or on whether J. J. Abrams will include any actual gay characters in the next Star Trek film, although After Elton seems hopeful).

(Thanks to the Daily Mail, via The Mary Sue. They have photos, too, which I have not used here because of copyright.)

You and all the rest of us, darling.

But there’s more in the interview, so go read.

Glee Season 3 premiere is Tuesday, September 20. I’ll be watching.

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.

Even if you’re not interested, but have thoughts on the project (overall thoughts; angles you’d like to see; pitfalls to avoid, etc.), please leave your comments and I’ll refer the production company to them.

ARE YOU A SAME SEX COUPLE OR SINGLE PARENT LOOKING TO START OR ADD TO YOUR FAMILY?

Have you (as a single parent or with your partner) been talking aboutstarting or expanding your family? Are you ready to embark on the journey of parenthood? Have you looked into surrogacy, adoption and/or artificial insemination? Have social prejudices or other challenges stopped you from pursuing a family of your own in the past?

DiGa has teamed up with an award winning documentary filmmaker as well as a major network to tell the stories of gay and lesbian singles/couples that are about to have kids. The series will focus on the challenges, decisions, joy and love that comes with the journey of becoming parents in the LGBT community.

If you are about to start this journey please send us a photo of you and your partner and a brief paragraph to casting@digallc.com that tells us about yourselves, your relationship, your goals and what you both do for a living.

And don’t forget your contact information (full name and phone number) so we can get in touch!

We look forward to speaking with you!!!

On the surface, Harry Potter was a tale of magic. But it also was a story about love, for friends, teachers and family—biological or otherwise—and the ability of love to flourish in the most difficult circumstances.