Even the Mulleted Deserve Equality

Sometimes, in our efforts to correct one instance of intolerance, we forget others.

Two weeks ago, a Miami-Dade judge declared Florida’s anti-gay adoption law unconstitutional and allowed Vanessa Alenier to adopt the one-year-old she and her partner Melanie Leon have been fostering.

The ultra-conservative Orlando’s Florida Family Policy Council (FPC) sent out an alert to its members last week, describing the ruling. It included a photo of a lesbian couple sporting mullets the likes of which I haven’t seen for many years. Neither woman is smiling, and I doubt most people would consider it a flattering photo.

The couple in the picture, however, is not Alenier and Leon. Orlando Sentinel writer Scott Maxwell rightly calls the Family Policy Council to task for this, and offers up a strong endorsement for allowing loving same-sex couples to adopt.

He calls the mulleted couple “abnormal-looking,” though, and says: “The couple look so odd (you literally can’t tell whether they are male or female) that one might wonder how any judge could place a young child with such a disturbing-looking duo.” Read the rest of this post »

Teen Sexuality: Hard Truths and Warm Love

I’m very pleased today to bring you a guest post by Lori Hahn, who has blogged at Hahn at Home for several years, and is now also a co-editor of the new GLBT blog Our Big Gayborhood.

Lori writes below of teen sexuality—an area in which I have no expertise as a parent. I’m grateful for hers.

I’ve marveled over the past few years as I grew my three beautiful, loving, delightful multi-racial adopted kids through their junior high years and then high school years, where one is gone and two are closing in on that mortarboard and tassel. Always knowing in my logical mind that sex and sexuality are part and parcel of parenting at this tumultuous age and there would be no denying it despite my desire at times curl into a fetal ball and wish it all away. Read the rest of this post »

In Memoriam: Brendan Burke

Last November, I posted about Brian Burke, the gruff president and general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, who very publicly supported his gay son Brendan, a hockey player for Miami University. Today I just learned of the sad news that Brendan was killed in a weather-related two-car accident in Indiana Friday afternoon.

My deepest condolences to Brendan’s family, who loved him unconditionally.

LGBT Parenting Roundup

Schools and Youth

• The Tennessee General Assembly’s House Education subcommittee referred to another subcommittee two bills that would ban the teaching of any sexuality other than heterosexuality. That means the bills’ fate is uncertain, although the head of the Tennessee Equality Project said he would have preferred a vote to defeat them.
• Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is getting all the headlines, but the Department of Defense is also reviewing a decision to give DOD teachers in same-sex relationships the same status and consideration as heterosexual married teachers when they request a job transfer together. The decision would also apply to opposite-sex couples in domestic partnerships.
• The L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center is collaborating with Opportunities for Learning, a charter school with 34 locations in Los Angeles and Orange counties, to open a school where LGBTQ youth can learn in a harassment-free environment.
• Twenty-six members of Congress sent a letter to the Boy Scouts of America urging them to stop their anti-gay discrimination.

Law and Politics

• Nancy Polikoff reports on a custody case involving a former opposite-sex couple. The father was given custody by a lower court because the mother was now a lesbian. An appeals court overturned the ruling, and in the process overturned a 25-year-old ruling that had said the burden of proof was on a gay or lesbian parent to prove that the child would not be harmed by being exposed to their parent’s same-sex relationship.

Personal Stories

• The Advocate interviews Thomas Moore, husband to fellow transgender man Scott, who is not really the “second pregnant man” despite media reports stating so. Thomas discusses the prejudices and hurdles they’ve faced in finding a doctor, plus some universal issues of pregnancy and preparing for parenthood.

Lesbian Albatrosses Welcome Chick

The two female albatrosses in New Zealand who have been incubating an egg together are now the proud parents of a little chick.

The Times Online reports:

For the next six months the new parents will take turns to alternately guard and feed the chick, with one protecting it from predators while the other goes out to sea to forage for food several hundred kilometres away. They swap the roles every two days.

I bet none of us can top that division of labor.

Anyone else feel like sending stuffed plush albatross dolls to those who say same-sex parenting is unnatural?

(Photo credit: Mila Zinkova. Distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2. Not the actual albatrosses described above.)

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 »

“She Got Me Pregnant”: Episode 97

Helen and I discuss our six-year-old’s letter to the president about health care reform. We also share our thoughts on LGBT families and California’s Proposition 8, Rosie O’Donnell’s upcoming show for kids, the impact of divorce on families, and a new list of LBGT-inclusive books from the American Library Association.

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

Brought to you in partnership with After Ellen.

Quote of the Week (Perhaps the Year)

“The only thing the State or anybody should be looking at, the best interests of the child and how he is loved.”

—Florida Judge Maria Sampedro-Iglesia, in granting Vanessa Alenier’s petition to adopt an infant cousin, despite the state ban on gay men and lesbians adopting children (via Nancy Polikoff)

LGBT Parenting Roundup

Parenting Studies

• “How Does the Gender of Parents Matter?” asks the lead article in this month’s Journal of Marriage and Family. The answer, from sociologists Timothy Biblarz of University of Southern California and Judith Stacey of New York University, is that it doesn’t, with the “partial exception of lactation.” The gender of parents “has minor significance for children’s psychological adjustment and social success.” Not news to most of us, but if you’ve been following any of the Prop 8 trial out in California, you’ll know how important reputable academic research is for all of the political and legal battles we’re fighting.

Politics and Law

• A Miami-Dade judge has declared Florida’s adoption law “unconstitutional on its face” and allowed lesbian Vanessa Alenier to adopt the one-year-old she has been fostering. This is the third legal adoption in Florida by a gay man or lesbian, rare rulings in a state that bans gay men and lesbians from adopting. A sign of change, perhaps? We still await a ruling in the more well-known case of Martin Gill, who was permitted to adopt in November 2008, but is fighting a state appeal. 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 »