Free New York Workshops for LGBTQ Parents

I’m judicious in my posting of press releases, especially about purely local events (otherwise, I’d do nothing but post press releases), but this one is in a major city and runs for several months, so I’m passing it along. I know nothing about the organization or their programs, but they have a good group of speakers, which bodes well. Any further questions, please contact ihi as below.

ihi (the institute for human identity) Announces its 2nd, Annual Family Q Workshop Program for LGBTQ Parents
This year, the Grounding-Breaking, Affirmative Family Q Program Includes a Broader Spectrum of Free Workshops, Starting in October 2009, in NYC

ihi (the institute for human identity), the pioneering, professional mental health service, proudly announces the launch of its second, annual, free Family Q support program (www.ihi-therapycenter.org/familyq/about.html). This year, Family Q includes a wider range of workshops and counseling for LGBTQ parents and prospective parents.

The program takes place at ihi’s Manhattan office (322 Eighth Avenue, at West 26th Street, Suite 802). Starting at 7:00 PM, workshops are held on the third Wednesday of each month from October through May. Reservations are requested (212-243-2830, ihi-lgbt@juno.com).

The Family Q workshops are led by esteemed mental health experts, most of whom combine their expertise with their own practical experience of being LGBTQ parents themselves. Consequently, the program is singularly designed to alert participants to the emotional issues they and their children will face and give them the insights and tools needed for productive family building.

Family Q also provides free-of-charge, follow-up counseling for workshop participants who would like more support in handling some of the emotional complexities with which LGBTQ parents must deal. Ihi is pleased that this program is available without cost to our community through the generous funding of the New York State Department of Health.

[Program schedule after the jump.] Read the rest of this post »

What Really Constitutes Family

Happy Monday, everyone! To start the week, here’s a passage I like from a Bay Windows article by Rev. Irene Monroe, one of the officiants at the wedding of Cambridge, Mass. Mayor E. Denise Simmons and Ms. Mattie Hayes. Mayor Simmons is also the mother of four and is raising her three grandchildren. She and Hayes wed August 30 at St. Bartholomew Episcopal Church in Cambridge, making it possibly the first mainstream African American church to hold a same-sex wedding.

Monroe writes:

Historically, as African Americans, we have always focused on spiritual content of family and not physical composition of it. . . .

These multiple family structures, which we have had to devise as models of resistance and liberation, have always, by example, shown the rest of society what really constitutes family. A family where a grandmother raises her grandchild or a lesbian couple raises their children. Just like in the Simmons-Hayes household. A household that is now legal by the state and blessed by the church.”

The Captain and the Kid

Elton John and his partner David Furnish may adopt a child, according to the BBC. The musician met a 14-month-old boy called Lev during a charity performance at an orphanage in the Ukraine, and said the boy has “stolen my heart.” The performance was part of John’s work with his AIDS foundation.

He explained, “David and I have always talked about adoption, David always wanted to adopt a child and I always said ‘no’ because I am 62 and I think because of the travelling I do and the life I have, maybe it wouldn’t be fair for the child. But having seen Lev today, I would love to adopt him.” Read the rest of this post »

“She Got Me Pregnant”: Episode 81

Helen and I respond to a reader’s query about sperm banks, and discuss the ones we tried, features we overlooked, and whether romance and turkey basters are mutually exclusive.

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

Brought to you in partnership with After Ellen.

A Supremely Ridiculous Argument

Sometimes I read something that is just so mind-blowingly irrational I don’t know where to begin.

Robert P. George, in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece titled, “Gay Marriage, Democracy, and the Courts,” begins by stating that it would be “disastrous” for the U.S. Supreme Court justices to rule on a federal lawsuit that “has been filed to invalidate traditional marriage laws.” He continues, “They would repeat the error in Roe v. Wade: namely, trying to remove a morally charged policy issue from the forums of democratic deliberation and resolve it according to their personal lights.”

Those of us who believe Roe v. Wade was a valid ruling made on the basis of sound legal reasoning will see the obvious error of the second statement. Let’s also be clear that any federal lawsuit to invalidate the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) will not in any way, shape, or form “invalidate” traditional marriages. They will remain as legitimate and traditional as ever.

George then goes on to try and refute those who say the fight to legalize marriage for same-sex couples is similar to the fight to legalize interracial marriage. He says the two situations are not the same, however, because those who sought to permit interracial marriages did not question the concept of marriage “as a union that takes its distinctive character from being founded, unlike other friendships, on bodily unity of the kind that sometimes generates new life.” He continues: Read the rest of this post »

“She Got Me Pregnant”: Episode 77

Helen and I use the arrival of Cat Cora’s fourth child to talk about creating our own, using a similar egg donation process (though without the simultaneous pregnancies of Cat and her partner Jennifer). We also use a passing comment about two moms and two mortgages on Nurse Jackie to discuss saving for a child’s education.

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

Brought to you in partnership with After Ellen.

Not Quite Heaven, West Virginia

In early June, the West Virginia Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Kathryn Kutil and Cheryl Hess, a lesbian couple who have been fostering an 18-month-old girl since shortly after she was born, can maintain custody and not turn the child over to an opposite-sex couple for adoption, as ordered by a lower court. Here’s my post about the ruling.

The New York Times Magazine published a long article this week on the case and the couple’s long battle with the foster care system. Hess and Kutil have fostered 18 kids between the ages of 1 and 16 in the past two years, all of whom had suffered abuse or neglect. One was adopted by Kutil. (The article says they couldn’t adopt jointly; my understanding is that it is unclear whether West Virginia would allow them to do so, but it might be more of a struggle in any case.)

Note that the state Supreme Court ruling was not the same as granting an adoption. The Court just said the women could not be denied the right to apply for one simply on the basis of being a same-sex couple. Kutil and Hess are now going through the usual adoption process, “which will require the approval of Health and Human Services and confirmation by a county judge,” the NYT notes.

The paper also quotes Hess as saying, “Every day, you wake up and have this perfect baby, and you’re like this normal family. Yet you sit and wait for somebody else to decide if you get to keep her. You’re at the mercy of other people deciding your life.”

Best of luck to them. It shouldn’t take so long to give a child a good home.

Happy Birthday, Louise Brown!

Today marks the birthday of Louise Brown, the world’s first “test-tube baby.” Her birth in 1978 heralded a new era of fertility services for many women, including lesbians. Helen and I conceived our own son this way, using my egg and her womb, so we bear a personal debt to Ms. Brown, her parents Lesley and John Brown, and their doctors, Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards. Thanks! You’ve helped create many happy families.

Congrats, Cat and Jennifer!

Very many congratulations to Iron Chef Cat Cora and her wife Jennifer, who just welcomed their fourth son! Cat gave birth to newcomer Nash Lemuel Cora on July 19, not long after Jennifer gave birth to Thatcher Julius Cora on April 4.

Good thing Cat knows how to cook for a crowd.

Overlapping pregnancies may not be common, but the Coras aren’t the only lesbian moms to go this route. In fact, we had a discussion about this here at Mombian a couple of weeks ago.

(And because I’ve had a few commenters ask recently: Helen and I didn’t get pregnant at the same time—we have only one son—but we did both shoot up hormones together so that I could donate an egg to her. I’ve written up a long post about the process, in case anyone’s interested.)

Groundbreaking New D.C. Law for Lesbian Moms

In a national first, a new Washington, D.C. law grants legal parenthood to both women of a couple who plan a child together using donor insemination.

More specifically:

When a woman bears a child conceived by artificial insemination, and her spouse or unmarried partner consents in writing to the insemination, the consenting spouse or partner is a legal parent. That person’s name will appear as a parent on the child’s birth certificate. With the enactment of this measure, the District has become the first jurisdiction in the country to enact a statute specifically providing children born through artificial insemination with two legal parents from the beginning even when those parents are a same-sex or different-sex unmarried couple. . . .

The new law also establishes that when a woman in a registered domestic partnership bears a child, her domestic partner is the presumed parent of the child and the partner’s name will appear on the child’s birth certificate. [Via NCLR.]

An Oregon case last week came to a similar conclusion as regards donor insemination. This is the first such legislative move. (States where same-sex partners can marry or have a civil union or equivalent domestic partnership will usually put both moms on the birth certificate only if they are married or CU’d/DP’d.) Read the rest of this post »