Preview Review: A Family Is a Family Is a Family

Rosie O’Donnell’s new documentary A Family Is a Family Is a Family, premieres this Sunday, January 31, at 7 p.m. ET on HBO. I’ve seen a screener, and here are my thoughts.

Overall, this is a great film, aimed at the elementary school ages, that focuses on children of various backgrounds speaking about their families. There are children with same-sex parents, opposite-sex parents, single parents, parents of different races, adoptive parents, children living with grandparents, and more. It is a wide-ranging sampling of the great diversity of family life in our country. If there is one gap, it is that there are no children with transgender parents—or at least none that speak about having them. Read the rest of this post »

Who You Callin’ No-Name Calling Week?

Today kicks off No-Name Calling Week, “an annual week of educational activities aimed at ending name-calling of all kinds and providing schools with the tools and inspiration to launch an on-going dialogue about ways to eliminate bullying in their communities.” The event is organized by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), in partnership with a whole host of LGBT, educational, youth, and social justice organizations (including, I’ll note, the Girl Scouts but not the Boy Scouts).

They have produced a series of lesson plans for different ages, along with a variety of other resources. Good stuff.

On a related note, this seems a good time to mention a separate initiative in the U.K. Leading LGBT group Stonewall has produced a feature film on homophobic bullying that it is sending to all secondary schools in Britain next month. The movie, FIT, is an adaption of a play the organization produced that has been seen by 20,000 pupils to date. The Times calls it “a kind of gritty take on the shiny E4 drama Glee.”

Without getting into heavy cinematographic comparisons between the two, I’ll say that it looks pretty good from the trailers, even if it doesn’t star Jane Lynch.

Will teachers actually show it? The Times asked the same question of the film’s writer and director, Rikki Beadle-Blair, who said they will be doing screenings for teachers so they can view the film, ask questions, and become more comfortable showing it in class.

It makes me wonder, though: What advantages does a fictional drama have over anti-bullying documentaries like the ones from Groundspark? What disadvantages? How do they complement each other? And most importantly, why can’t we do something like this in the U.S., even at a state level? (Aside from the fact that the right-wing goes apes**t every time someone mentions LGBT-inclusive diversity education.)

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

Lesbian Moms Rejected as Leaders of Son’s Cub Scout Troop

Cate and Elizabeth Wirth, a lesbian couple in Vermont, were told by a Vermont district director of the Boy Scouts that they could no longer volunteer for their son’s Cub Scout troop after it became known that they are a couple. According to the Rutland Herald, Richard Stockton, Scout executive for the Green Mountain Council, confirmed, “The national policy of the Boy Scouts of America is we don’t accept gays and lesbians as volunteers.”

This is awful, but given the Boy Scout’s previous history with gay matters, it is perhaps not surprising. (For the record, I also have a serious problem with the fact that the Boy Scouts don’t allow atheists or agnostics to be leaders, either.)

What is interesting, however, and what I hope will stir some discussion among those of you who are around over the holiday, is this comment from one of the mothers: Read the rest of this post »

High School Performance of Gay-Themed Musical Receives Cheers, Not Jeers

Last week, I wrote about the performance of a Tony Award-winning gay-themed musical by students at Massachusetts’ Concord-Carlisle Regional High School. Anti-LGBT group MassResistance was up in arms about a high school producing a “depraved homosexual musical” and was trying to use director Peter Atlas’ supposed friendship with Assistant Deputy Secretary of Education Kevin Jennings to smear Jennings.

What would happen, I wondered, at the actual performances? Protests? Catcalls? Snickers from fellow students in the audience?

The reality was much happier. Sarah S. Brannen, the author and illustrator of gay-inclusive children’s book Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, attended the show on Saturday and was kind enough to submit this guest post about it.

December 13, 2009

Falsettos in Concord

I went to see Falsettos at Concord-Carlisle Regional High School on Saturday night. According to the Boston Globe, it was the first-ever production of the musical by a public high school. A production of The Laramie Project by the Acton-Boxborough Regional High School two years ago met with pickets and protests, so I was delighted to see nothing outside the school but audience members hurrying through the cold. Read the rest of this post »

Glee Doesn’t Have Anything on These Kids

The drama group at Concord-Carlisle Regional High School in Massachusetts is performing William Finn and James Lapine’s Tony Award-winning musical Falsettos this weekend. That might seem to be of only local interest, except that the play is about a man who leaves his wife for another man, and the impact of that decision on his wife, son, and two other couples, one lesbian and one straight. The school is the first public high school in the country to produce it for an outside audience, reports the Boston Globe.

The right-wing group MassResistance, which campaigned against marriage equality here in the Bay State, recently sent out an online newsletter with the headline, “Concord-Carlisle High School presenting depraved homosexual musical.’’

The students don’t seem to mind. Director and math teacher Peter Atlas says that when he told the straight students playing the two gay male leads that if their performances were any good, people would likely assume that they, too, were gay, it wasn’t a problem for them. For sophomore Hannah Kilcoyne, who plays the 12-year-old son, the play hits closer to home. After being married to Hannah’s father, her own mom discovered she was a lesbian. Read the rest of this post »

Alameda Diversity Curriculum Is Not Health Ed; Parents Can’t Opt Out Their Kids

Many of you followed last spring’s story about the uproar by some conservatives when the Alameda, California school board decided to adopt an LGBT-inclusive safe-schools curriculum. Now comes a new ruling stating that because the diversity curriculum doesn’t constitute health education, parents cannot opt their children out of it. Finally, a glimmer of understanding that teaching about LGBT people and families doesn’t mean teaching about sex.

The ruling comes in response to a group of parents who filed a lawsuit over the district’s refusal to excuse their children from attending the classes. The parents are supported by the conservative Pacific Justice Institute.

On Tuesday, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch tentatively denied the parents’ request. He said the lessons don’t constitute health education, as the parents are arguing, and thus don’t fall under the state legislature’s has opt-out rules related to health lessons. John Knox White has details of the proceedings over at Stop, Drop and Roll. He reports that Judge Roesch was persistent in trying to pin down Kevin Snider, the Pacific Justice Institute’s General Counsel, on exactly how anti-bullying education is a part of Health Education: Read the rest of this post »

Protect Maine Equality Responds to Fear Ad

Protect Maine Equality has responded to Stand for Marriage Maine’s Prop 8 copycat ad I posted about last week. They now have two new ads out, one that directly addresses the allegations raised by the right-wing ad.

In my previous post, I cautioned the Maine equality group against responding in the same way the No On 8 group responded in California. The California response, I wrote, “focused on the lack of harm that marriage equality would cause the children of straight parents rather than stressing the harm to children of LGBT parents and LGBT youth themselves. The former will lead to many straight parents not caring whether the measure passes; the latter has a chance of appealing to their protective parenting instincts.”

Did Protect Maine Equality succeed? Here’s the first video. Read my opinion and see the second video after the jump. Add your own thoughts in the comments.

I think this is better than the No On 8 response, but still has its faults. Read the rest of this post »

Protect Maine Equality Needs Effective Response to School Fear Mongering

“Stand for Marriage Maine” has just released “Everything to Do With Schools,” the latest TV ad in their campaign to revoke marriage equality. Some of you may recognize the name from an ad used during the Prop 8 campaign. As Jeremy at Good As You has pointed out, not just the name is the same—the ad is almost identical, right down to the script and an appearance by the Massachusetts couple outraged that their son’s school taught him that boys can marry other boys. (As they can in Massachusetts!) The ad’s creators did put a new woman in the “teacher” role, Charla Bansley. Jeremy astutely notes, however, that she doesn’t teach at a public institution, but at Calvary Chapel Christian School, and is also the state director of Concerned Women For America.

From a marketing perspective, I can’t blame Stand for Marriage Maine for using the same formula. It worked in California.

I hope, however, that Protect Maine Equality has a better response than the No On 8 campaign did. When No On 8 correctly insisted that Prop 8 would not require schools to teach about marriage equality, they were in effect playing to the idea that there was still something “wrong” about discussing LGBT families in schools. Their ads also focused on the lack of harm that marriage equality would cause the children of straight parents rather than stressing the harm to children of LGBT parents and LGBT youth themselves. The former will lead to many straight parents not caring whether the measure passes; the latter has a chance of appealing to their protective parenting instincts.

Sound familiar? I wrote about it at length just after the election last year. Read the piece again after the jump. Read the rest of this post »

New Books Showcase Stories of LGBTQ Youth

(I’ve been meaning to write about these books for a while, and back-to-school time is giving me the motivation I need.)

Ongoing incidents of students (and teachers!) harassing LGBTQ students, students perceived to be LGBTQ, and children of LGBTQ parents are one of the scariest and most frustrating things for me as a parent. I take hope, however, not only in the fact that more parents are organizing to prevent this, but that these students are sharing the stories of their experiences.

Two recent books have compiled many of these stories, and are highly recommended resources for parents, schools, libraries, religious congregations, and anyone involved with youth today. Read the rest of this post »

Back to School 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.

Summer’s over and we’re all back to school. We’ve met some kids who are thrilled, some who have first-day-of-school jitters, and lots of kids who don’t know WHAT to expect. So whether you are psyched or psyched out, here are some tunes to help you through the first week! Read the rest of this post »