Writing about the right always makes me grumpy. To cheer up myself and maybe some of you, here’s a roundup of some happy articles about LGBT families:

• “Mother’s Day Special: A Tale of Two Moms” in the Windy City Times is the first of a two-part series about a couple of lesbian moms in Chicago. They conceived their family the way Helen and I did, using one partner as the egg donor for the other.
• “Surrogate mothers fulfilling gay men’s parenthood dreams” from AFP talks about the increasing number of gay men using surrogates, and the extraordinary expense of the process (over $100,000).
• “Diane Amos Headlines Funny Girlz” in the San Francisco Bay Times would be just another article about a local stand-up comedy event, except that it profiles comedian Diane Amos, the daughter of two moms, one black and one Jewish. She uses tales from her childhood in her routines, and says:
  

  Gay audiences love it because there’s so much funny stuff. Then I found a way to take it to straight audiences just by really telling the truth and telling some of the stuff around our household they’d never experienced. It’s just funny.

  Amos is also the face and voice of Pine-Sol cleaner. (And hey, you’d think a household cleaning product fronted by the daughter of two moms, and whose parent company has a perfect Corporate Equality Index rating, would be interested in advertising to lesbian moms, no? My own selfish interest in that aside, it does indicate that some marketing teams just aren’t thinking creatively enough when it comes to potential audiences. All they’d have to do is rearrange the bottles in the picture so they form a rainbow.)

H&R Block’s TaxCut Online software doesn’t support tax filings for civil union couples, as two Connecticut men have found out. The ACLU has sent a demand letter to the company asking it to change its system. The ACLU also states “Although the tax requirements for couples with civil unions in Connecticut are very similar to the requirements for married gay couples in Massachusetts, H&R Block’s online tax preparation service seems to accommodate married gay couples there.”

Hmm. Maybe . . . but if so, they have a few improvements to make. Here’s what I get after I start my TaxCut Online return:

What’s a married Massachusetts lesbian to do? Read more »

If you happen to own shares of Wells Fargo, make sure to open the proxy statement you should have received recently, and take the time to vote your proxy. Item 9, “Stockholder Proposal Regarding Neutral Sexual Orientation Employment Policy” (pages 105-107) is a vicious, anti-LGBT proposal asking the company to create an equal opportunity policy without reference to “any matters related to sexual interests, activities, or orientation.” As a supporting statement, the proposal adds “While the legal institution of marriage between a man and a woman should be protected, the sexual interests, inclinations and activities of all employees should be a private matter, not a corporate concern.” There’s more bile from the ultra-right, but I won’t repeat it here.

Wells Fargo has long been a corporate leader in LGBT rights, scoring a perfect 100 on HRC’s Corporate Equality Index, and sponsoring many LGBT events. The Board of Directors is urging shareholders to vote AGAINST the proposal:

The Company believes that welcoming all people and opposing discrimination in all its forms, including discrimination based on sexual orientation, represents a commitment to fairness that Americans support. This belief is how we conduct our business successfully.

This is the kind of proposal the far-right tries regularly to get past shareholders at Wells and other corporations. Wells, with its strong record of LGBT support, seems an unlikely target. Still, we can’t afford to let down our guard and assume the measure will fail.

You can vote by Internet, phone, mail, or by showing up in person at the annual meeting on April 29 in San Francisco.

(Thanks to April for the tip.)

Last week, I urged readers to nominate their favorite LGBT moms for the title of “America’s Favorite Mom” in Teleflora’s Mother’s Day contest. I thought it would be a good opportunity for visibility.

Two days after my post, I received an e-mail from a publicist at Edelman, Teleflora’s PR agency. She thanked me for helping them to raise awareness about the program within the LGBT community. She then asked if I’d like to be kept apprised of any LGBT submissions to the contest, so I could urge readers to vote for them. I said yes.

In re-reading the contest rules, however, I noticed that each person can only submit the name of one nominee. Clearly, the organizers didn’t realize this would force children of partnered LGBT moms to choose between them (and could lead to shameless bribery on the part of said parents). I wrote back to inquire whether there might be an exception made here. Read more »

A new Kenneth Cole ad campaign, “We All Walk In Different Shoes,” features a lesbian couple and their two-year-old daughter as one of several examples of “non-uniform thinkers.” (Thanks, Family Equality.)

While I applaud the use of black clothing (hides mud, strawberry jam, and worse), I have to question the shoes. Both moms are wearing Cole’s “Hill Top” design, with a 4″ heel. Not that I want to deny those of a more femme persuasion the right to don heels, if they so choose. I’ve been known to wear them myself to weddings and such, at least until I can kick them off under the table at the reception. There are, however, certain practicalities of parenthood for which fashion has to bend, in my opinion. Little Ruth looks like she’s at the fast-forward stage of toddlerdom. Does Cole really think a 4″ heel will cut it? (Yeah, yeah, Bette and Tina manage, but how often do we really see them with their child?) I would have chosen the “Running Start” sneaker myself.

Still, it’s always nice to see positive images of LGBT families. The campaign will run print ads in March issues of Vogue, Vanity Fair, Lucky, GQ and Men’s Health, though it is unclear which magazines will carry which images. There are also accompanying videos online. The one of the two moms is very sweet.

If only Cole made shoes in a kids’ size 12 with flashing lights and dinosaurs on the sides. . . .

A publicist sent me a copy of the Happy Baby, Healthy Mom Pregnancy Journal by Robert A. Greene, M.D. and Laurie Tarkan. I was looking forward to reviewing it, and glad that a general pregnancy publication from a mainstream press (Clarkson Potter, part of Random House) was reaching out to lesbian moms.

The combination book and journal offers information and advice for all stages of pregnancy and the first few weeks postpartum. It describes what the embryo/fetus is doing at any given point, what physical changes a mother may experience, and offers suggestions for diet, exercise, and mental health. Those who find plowing through pregnancy tomes too much to handle may prefer the snack-size weekly information here. The advice is taken from Dr. Greene’s previous book, Dr. Robert Greene’s Perfect Hormone Balance for Pregnancy, but the journal version steers clear of being merely an advertisement for the previous book. It all seems like very sensible stuff, although my approach is always to take any book’s medical advice with a grain of salt and discuss serious concerns or changes in diet with my own healthcare professionals.

The book also has plenty of room for an expectant mother to note her own thoughts about her pregnancy. There is room for freeform expression, as well as suggestions for specific things to note, like your feelings about becoming a parent, thoughts on breast vs. bottle feeding, your physical symptoms, the results of medical checkups, etc. I’m a blank-book kind of writer myself, but those who want more structure or who want to keep a diary but have a hard time thinking of what to write, this could be helpful.

The catch is that this is still a book for non-LGBT mothers. Although it uses the term “partner” in many (but not all) cases in lieu of “husband,” it is clearly a male partner: Read more »

Tax-preparation software TurboTax has a number of Web pages devoted to helping people determine the tax implications of various life changes, such as changing jobs, getting married, or having children. To the right is the image they use under the title “Your Child.” They also use it in one of their television ads.

Not exactly the picture of my family, even ignoring the strange Weeble-like leg of the woman. How hard would it have been to make an image of a child or children at play, or to show some building blocks and a bicycle, images that would get the point across while excluding fewer parents?

The TurboTax software does in fact address the particular twist on tax preparation we married Massachusetts folks (or civil-unioned/DP’d folks in other states) face, which goes something like this: Complete and file our separate federal forms as “Single.” Fill out a third federal form, which the federal government will never see, as “Married.” Fill out the state form as “Married,” and submit it with the Married federal form. Of course, if you are not married/unioned/DP’d, but are both the legal parents of your child(ren), you may have to do additional iterations of your taxes to determine who should claim the child as a deduction. Read more »

Harlyn Aizley, author of Buying Dad and editor of Confessions of the Other Mother, both books that deserve a place on any lesbian mom’s bookshelf, will no longer be writing her Are You My Mothers? blog for Parents.com. She was fired by Parents.com’s parent company, Meredith Corporation, ostensibly because her blog did not generate enough traffic. Aizley gives us her own take on the numbers, and also suggests that more than numbers were at work (as does fellow writer Sara Whitman). Business decision or a case of cold feet by a mainstream publication that had gone out on a limb bringing a lesbian mom on board?

I’d love Parents.com to bring Aizley back, if she’d even speak to them after this rebuff. If not, I look forward to reading her elsewhere. (One additional benefit of a new home: an RSS feed, which Parents.com does not offer for their blogs. That always made me doubt their commitment to this whole blogging business in the first place.) For the moment, Aizley will be posting on the Family Equality blog, where I have also been asked to be a guest blogger. Welcome, Harlyn! I’m glad you’ll be joining us, though I wish it were under happier circumstances.

(Originally published in Bay Windows, Family Week Supplement, July 26, 2007.)

R Family Vacations, profiled in the HBO documentary All Aboard: Rosie’s Family Cruise, caught some flak (but also some praise) earlier this year when they removed Bermuda from their July cruise. A group of protesters had threatened to meet the ship, and R Family felt that parents who did not want to expose their children to this should not have to do so. During the cruise, from which I write, the ship had to change itinerary again because of engine trouble, heading back to New York City a day early and spending less time on the scheduled private island. The vast majority of families on board seem to be taking it in stride. For many of us, the point of the week is to spend it with other LGBT families and friends, and the location is secondary. The ship is, above all, a safe space for our children, where having LGBT parents is the norm, where having parents of a different race is not uncommon, and where there are that many fewer reasons to fear bullying or harassment.

There is a sense of community here that non-LGBT cruises would find it hard to match, no matter where they went. Even those of us who live near other LGBT families revel in the sense of camaraderie and cooperation among so many. Passenger and former Massachusetts State Sen. Cheryl Jacques explains “There is a magic to the week. People have talked about how it takes a village to raise a child. Here’s the village. The village takes care of everyone’s kids.” Read more »

As regular readers know, my family and I moved last month. My partner and I have in fact moved seven times in the fourteen years we’ve been together, and we’ve settled into a pattern: visit Home Depot a dozen times in the first month at our new home, and then set off on the first of several trips to IKEA.

We are both unashamed IKEA fans. We love their kid-friendliness, contemporary style, clever details, and of course the low prices. (And no, they’re not paying me to say that.) It’s also a great place to be a dyke. There are more LGBT families per square foot than almost any place but an R Family cruise. You get to feel burly loading all your furniture into the car, and then break out your tools to assemble it when you get home. (Yes, most of their stuff goes together with only the included IKEA wrench, but who doesn’t like an excuse to wear a tool belt? Besides, as I noted in my IKEA Assembly Tips, sometimes you need a few extra gadgets to do the job right.)

The Swedish giant is also good for relationship building. If you’re taking up with a new love, make sure the first thing you bring over (after the toothbrush) is an unassembled IKEA Expedit bookcase. If you’re still on speaking terms after you put it together, you know you have a keeper. If not, don’t bother unpacking the rest of the U-Haul.

Kudos to IKEA, too, for having their TV ad “Living Room” nominated for the Commercial Closet 2007 Images in Advertising Award. They’re one of two nominees that depict LGBT parents in their ads. TIME magazine is the other, with a print ad showing two moms and a baby, and the line “Are gay families different? (Other than making the statement ‘Go ask your mother’ twice as complicated.) TIME. Know why.”

Now if only R Family offered a trip to Sweden so we could visit the fount of all IKEAness. . . .

(Thanks to National Gay News for the ad-award tip.)