The first couple, Julie Garnier and Charlene Evans, are in an article on the efforts of schools in Washington, D.C., to teach about all types of families, including ones with two moms or two dads. It’s particularly notable because the article isn’t “about” black lesbians per se; Garnier and Evans are just the couple they’ve chosen to focus on. Nice to see that white isn’t always the default, especially when recent demographic work by UCLA’s Williams Institute and others shows that a high percentage of lesbian and gay people, including parents, are in fact people of color.

The second, Jane Ladson and Pat Body, are raising Body’s great-granddaughter, and appear in an article on the struggles of some black women to help their extended families during the economic recession. The article does focus on black families—but this time, it is the fact that Ladson and Body are lesbians that is the “incidental” part of the story. The writers could have chosen an opposite-sex couple just as easily, but didn’t.

It’s great to see these intersecting images of acceptance.

(Thanks to reader Jackie for nudging me to write about these stories in a separate post, rather than waiting for my next roundup.)

Makes me feel old to realize that although GSAs didn’t exist when I was in school, they’ve still been around for over twenty years.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has long supported GSAs. (Here’s my coverage of his letter to educators reminding them that schools receiving federal funds must provide equal access to school resources for all student groups, including GSAs.) Now, he has issued a special message on the White House blog for GSA Day, which you can see here on video after the jump.

I have interviewed Groundspark’s founder, Academy Award-winner (and lesbian mom) Debra Chasnoff, about several of her other films, Straightlaced (on gender stereotypes), It’s STILL Elementary (on teaching elementary students about gay people), and Choosing Children (on the first wave of lesbians choosing to be parents after coming out.) Good films all, and highly recommended.

To obtain your free digital stream of Let’s Get Real, send an email to streamfree@groundspark.org saying “Let’s Get Real” NNCW 2012 in the subject line.

(Thanks, GLSEN!)

Here’s a short preview. As one of the interviewees said, “Yes, elementary school kids know the word ‘gay.’” And as this GLSEN study from last week showed, elementary school children often use it in negative and harmful ways—and teachers don’t always feel prepared to  address such remarks. Welcoming Schools is only one of several resources designed to help them (and parents) do so. For several others, see my post on the GLSEN study.

The striking part about the findings in the new study,  Playgrounds and Prejudice: Elementary School Climate in the United States, is not that such bullying exists, but that it is so widespread. Almost half of the teachers and students surveyed reported regularly hearing comments like use of the word“gay” in a negative way (e.g., “that’s so gay”), “spaz,” or “retard.” About one quarter reported regularly hearing students make homophobic remarks, such as “fag” or “lesbo” and negative comments about race/ethnicity.

Three-fourths of students reported that “students at their school are called names, made fun of or bullied with at least some regularity,” most often because of students’ looks or body size (67 percent), by not being good at sports (37 percent), how well they do at schoolwork (26 percent), not conforming to traditional gender norms/roles (23 percent) or because other people think they’re gay (21 percent).

Of equal interest to me are the findings on family diversity and teacher preparedness. Almost three-quarters of students say they have been taught that there are many different kinds of families—but less than 2 in 10 have learned about families with two dads or two moms. 

Nearly 90 percent of teachers report including representations of different types of families when discussing families in the classroom—but less than a quarter report including representations of LGB parents, and less than 1 in 10 represent transgender parents. Only a quarter report “having personally engaged in efforts to create a safe and supportive classroom environment for families with LGBT parents.”

Eight in 10 teachers said they would feel comfortable addressing name-calling, bullying or harassment of students who are perceived to be LGB or gender nonconforming. But less than half said they feel comfortable responding to questions from their students about LGB people, and even less felt comfortable about questions from their students about transgender people. And while 85 percent of teachers said they received professional development on diversity or multicultural issues, just over a third received professional development specific to gender issues and less than one quarter on families with LGBT parents.

In order to help educators address the above issues, GLSEN today also released the instructional resource Ready, Set, Respect! GLSEN’s Elementary School Toolkit. In addition to that toolkit, I’ll also point readers to the Welcoming Schools program from the HRC Foundation, the PFLAG Safe Schools: Cultivating Respect program, and the films (and associated curriculum guides) That’s a Family and It’s STILL Elementary (for students and teachers, respectively) from Groundspark.

Teachers should not bear the full responsibility of instilling respect in children. Much, if not most, of this must come from parents (which is why it is good to see mainstream childcare books, like the new edition of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, start to address LGBT topics). But teachers can play an important role, and it is good to see there are an increasing number of resources to help them do so.

The study was conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of GLSEN. Online surveys were conducted among 1,065 U.S. elementary school students in 3rd to 6th grade and 1,099 U.S. elementary school teachers of Kindergarten to 6th grade. The national sample was drawn primarily from the Harris Poll Online (HPOL) opt-in panel and supplemented with sample from trusted partner panels.

(For more on the topic, you might also want to read 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.)

• The Sydney Morning Herald looks at what parents and teachers are doing in Australia to address hetero-centrism in elementary schools.
• The Buffalo News reports on gay and lesbian teachers—why it can be hard to be out, and why many nevertheless feel it is important.

Family Portraits

• Mark Daniel Snyder at HuffPo talks about the true diversity of LGBTQ families, versus the pressure many sometimes feel “to portray our families as ‘perfect,’ upper-class, mainstream, two-parent homes.”
• Four percent of San Francisco high schoolers have LGBT parents, according to preliminary results of a district-wide survey given to ninth and 11th graders last spring, reports SF Weekly.
• KUT profiles lesbian moms Michelle Randolph and Emily Parks as part of their same-sex parents in Texas audio series.
• Tyeryann at BlogHer responds to her nine-year-old son’s question, “Mom, How Do Gay People Get Babies?” A great little story.
• J. P. Marzullo, a self-described “a conservative who believes in God, liberty and family values” writes an op-ed for New Hampshire’s Concord Monitor asserting “I believe in God, liberty and my gay son.”
• Gay dad Stephen Russell tells a great story at HuffPo about negotiating dating and sex with his teen son (also gay).

Law, Politics and Policy

• A Calgary judge has granted custody to a non-biological father after his former partner, the biological father, tried to deny him access to their child.
• In a similar case, the Texas Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling granting parentage to a non-biological father, although his former partner, the biological father, was trying to deny it to him. Nancy Polikoff has the details.
• A new initiative in Scotland by the National Health Service in Edinburgh, along with adoption and legal specialists, will offer LGBT people advice on starting families.

The groups say the project was created in response to the lack of representation of LGBT people in school curricula as well as “disproportionate incidents of bullying and violence against LGBT youth.”

The project contains audio interviews (and transcripts) of nine people who “helped shape LGBT history,” along with discussion questions, suggested activities, and historical background for each interview. There are also lesson plans on broad topics such as invisibility, name-calling, the exclusion of LGBT people from societal institutions, the right to marry, and understanding gender identity.

Interviewees include Phyllis Lyon, one of the founders of the pioneering Daughters of Bilitis lesbian rights group and of the Lesbian Mother’s Union; and Terry Boggis, one of the founding members of Center Kids, Center Families, a program of the New York City LGBT Center. GLSEN says they will add more stories and voices in the coming months.

Worth a listen/read for your own edification even if you don’t have kids in the target age range. (They’re mp3′s, so—if you’re like me—you can download them to the device of your choice and listen while you’re folding laundry, washing dishes, or raking the yard.)

Hurricane Irene raged up the East Coast this past weekend, sending people scrambling to the stores for bottled water and canned tuna. Of course, hurricanes weren’t the only thing I prepared for this week. Back-to-school time is here, so I’ve been buying pencils and erasers alongside the flashlight batteries. And because I am an LGBT parent, I’ve also been thinking about the “emergency supplies” we should have as we navigate the sometimes-stormy weather of our educational system, in case our children encounter anti-LGBT prejudice, bullying, or simply exclusion.

Some of the most exciting new school-related resources this year are about sports, long an area where homophobia and transphobia have reigned. A 2008 study by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) found that some students with LGBT parents were told they should not do sports, or had their athletic abilities questioned, because they had LGBT parents. And GLSEN’s 2009 National School Climate Survey found that over a third of LGBT students avoided locker rooms, making them the most feared place in the school for these students.

But GLSEN in May launched Changing the Game: The GLSEN Sports Project, backed by a coalition of athletes, journalists, and sports figures. It features “Game Plan” resources for athletes, athletic administrators, coaches and parents, inspirational videos about people making a difference, and the Team Respect Challenge pledge “for teams to commit to treat all teammates with respect.” The San Diego Padres in July became the first professional team to sign it.

Athlete Ally, launched in January, offers individuals an online pledge to reduce homophobia in sports. Founded by Hudson Taylor, a straight, three-time NCAA Division I All-American wrester, now a Division I wrestling coach at Columbia University, the site also includes a weekly “Ally’s Playbook” video with suggestions for how non-LGBT athletes can help reduce homophobia. Hudson is also seeking high school and college students to be “Athlete Ally Ambassadors” to promote the pledge and participate in future initiatives.

And the Sports Project at the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), launched in 2001, has long been a powerhouse of advocacy and education. It also offers legal assistance for LGBT athletes and coaches.

Sports aside, there are also a number of more general resources to help make schools safe for students from all types of families.

For parents with children in elementary school, the Human Rights Campaign’s An Introduction to Welcoming Schools guide is perhaps the best single resource. It aims to help elementary school administrators, teachers, parents and guardians address family diversity, gender stereotyping and bullying, and includes a bibliography of books on all kinds of families, LGBT and not.

The Family Equality Council’s “Back to School Tool” is a useful short guide for LGBT parents on how to make our children’s schools safer and more inclusive. The organization also offers “Opening Doors,” a short but helpful booklet with tips for educators and others. It discusses the kind of prejudice children of LGBT families may face, how educators can support them, and how they can answer questions other children may have about them.

Many resources aimed at older students focus on LGBT youth, but most also have applicability to children of LGBT parents, whatever the children’s sexual orientation or gender identity:

GLSEN has extensive safe-schools materials for both educators and students, including information on its educator training program and starting gay-straight alliances.

PFLAG’s Safe Schools for All: Cultivating Respect program has similar materials (in both English and Spanish) for making schools safer, reducing bullying, and providing comprehensive health education. They also offer a certification program for PFLAG members who want to assist with staff training and policy creation in local schools.

The Gay-Straight Alliance Network has materials for starting or sustaining a GSA, as well as the guide “Beyond the Binary: Making Schools Safe for Transgender Youth,” a joint project with NCLR and the Transgender Law Center.

NCLR has additional safe-schools information, including samples of anti-harassment policies and memos to school boards.

The American Library Association’s Rainbow List offers LGBT-inclusive children’s and young adult books chosen by a committee of librarians for quality as well as content.

Groundspark’s series of LGBT-inclusive diversity-education films include That’s a Family, for elementary school students, about different family structures; Let’s Get Real, for middle schoolers, about name-calling and bullying; It’s STILL Elementary, for and about educators discussing gay issues in schools; and Straightlaced, for teens, about the pressure of gender stereotypes. Curriculum guides make the films easy to incorporate into diversity and anti-bullying programs. The films are also available for individual screening online: $4.99 for 90 days of on-demand viewing.

Of course, as in a storm, often our best resources are our neighbors and friends. When it comes to LGBT issues in schools, this could include other LGBT parents and parents of LGBT children—but also families who may have similar concerns about exclusion and/or harassment because of their family structure, race, ethnicity, religion, or other reasons. It could also include “traditional” families who know that LGBT families are as much a part of communities across the United States as anyone else—and that we’ll even share a few cans of tuna during the next hurricane.