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.)

Dr. Susan Love

Since the blogosphere has been abuzz with news about breast cancer organization Susan G. Komen for the Cure pulling funds from Planned Parenthood, I thought I’d post the slightly revised version of an interview I did several years ago with Dr. Susan Love for the now-defunct 365gay.com. Her Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation is taking an innovative approach to breast cancer research, building an “Army of Women” (and some men) to participate in studies and surveys related to the disease. She’s committed to including LGBT people in her Army, as evidenced by a recent call for lesbian and bisexual volunteers for the “Variations in Health Needs of Breast Cancer Survivors Study.” You may also remember Dr. Love from her guest appearance on Season 3 of The L Word (or from her inclusion in my annual “Most Powerful Lesbian Moms in America” list).

This piece first appeared in October 2009.

Dr. Susan Love Recruits an LGBT Army Against Breast Cancer

“Breast cancer doesn’t have to go on to another generation,” said the renowned breast cancer advocate and surgeon Dr. Susan Love. “We can be the generation that stops it.” Love is recruiting a one-million strong “Army of Women” (and some men) to do just that. Love, an out lesbian, is also committed to making the LGBT community an integral part of the effort. 

She and her Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation launched the pioneering initiative in 2008 with funding from the Avon Foundation. Now, 311,000 people have signed up [360,000 as of October 2011], agreeing to receive e-mail updates from the Army of Women about breast cancer studies looking for volunteers. Some studies might involve only a simple questionnaire. Others could require blood, urine, or milk samples. Some could involve clinical trials, although most will not. If a person fits the criteria and wants to take part in a particular study, she clicks a link to respond. There is no obligation to participate in any of them.

One thing that makes Love’s Army unique is the large number of healthy women taking part. Eighty percent of members have not had breast cancer and are not at high risk, Love says. Most previous studies of breast cancer, however, have been on women with cancer or on animals. Love believes that only by involving real women, with and without cancer, will we be able to determine how real women develop the disease. Currently, she said, “the risk factors that we look at only predict about 20 percent of breast cancer, which means we just don’t know what causes it.”

She thinks many are ready for a different approach, explaining, “The fact that in less than a year we have 311,000 signed up . . . shows me that there’s an enormous appetite out there for people to be involved in finding the solution.”

She added, “This October, everything is pink everywhere, and people are walking and running and buying products, but the question is, where’s the money going, and how is it changing things? . . . I think it’s really time for us to put our bodies on the line and say we’ll be part of answering these questions.”

As of October 2009, more than 11,000 Army volunteers have participated in 14 studies by approved independent scientists [50,000 volunteers in 52 studies as of October 2011]. “The [researchers] that have used it have been thrilled,” Love reported. “We’ve closed many studies in 24 hours that usually take them five or six years to recruit for. That means we get answers faster. That means you can do the research cheaper.”

It also makes it easier for researchers to study small subgroups of the population, including parts of the LGBT community. Looking at breast cancer in lesbians is one obvious avenue for research, but Love also wants to investigate the almost entirely unexplored area of breast cancer in transgender people. “I think there’s a wealth of information in studying that community,” she asserted. “That’s a community where you’ve taken different types of hormones that do affect breast cancer [in non-transgender women] at different times in life, and nobody’s really studied what does that do to the breast tissue [of transgender people]. Are they at risk? Aren’t they at risk? We have no idea.”

Love wants to study the risks for both male-to-female transgender individuals as well as female-to-male individuals who have not had their breast tissue removed. Additionally, she would like to find funding to study the breast tissue of those who have had it removed after taking testosterone for some time.

Love also wants to determine the risk factors for breast cancer in non-transgender men, which occurs about 2000 times a year in the U.S. She is working with the John W. Nick Foundation, which promotes male breast cancer awareness, to actively recruit men to the Army. “Nobody’s really been able to track male breast cancer before, because it’s not that common,” she said. “By doing it through the Internet, we can probably have the biggest cohort of male breast cancer survivors without too much trouble.”

By looking at these subgroups, Love says, we might be able to discover hints about the causes of breast cancer that get washed out when looking at the broader population. That could have benefits beyond the smaller groups alone.

Until causes and cures are found, however, breast cancer is still a threat. For LGBT people who are diagnosed, Love advises being out to our doctors. “If the doctor has a problem with that,” she said, “then you want to know and get another doctor, because it’s bad for your health to be worrying about what’s going to leak out or what they’re going to think while you’re trying to deal with something as serious as cancer.”

She also offers some general advice: “The important thing to know about breast cancer is it’s not just one disease. If you get diagnosed with breast cancer, it’s really critical to not rush into anything, to take a deep breath, to get all the information.” Tests can now show what type of cancer it is, which will determine the best treatment.

Love feels her Army could have an impact on overall health care reform in our country, too, by providing a model for the type of research that could be done with electronic medical records. She also notes that because of the influence of pharmaceutical companies, attacking breast cancer has largely centered around drugs and treatments, with new ones piling on old. “All of those treatments have significant side effects,” she said. “Changing the aim to finding the cause is a more public-health way to approach things.”

The benefits may not be in breast cancer alone. “If we have a million people giving us their information,” Love said, “then it would be a crime if we just looked at breast cancer. . . . But we’re starting out with that. That’s certainly my claim to fame, so I can recruit people on that, and then we’ll go from there.”

Queer people will play an important role, regardless, Love insisted. “The LBGT community has been in the forefront of most major health movements. I think we can do it again.”

Find out more about the Army of Women at armyofwomen.org.

According to the AP (via NPR), the Komen grants to Planned Parenthood “totaled roughly $680,000 last year and $580,000 the year before, going to at least 19 of its affiliates for breast-cancer screening and other breast-health services.” That money paid for nearly 170,000 of the 4 million breast exams Planned Parenthood performed over the past five years.

There are many strong and thoughtful responses appearing in response to the news. Colorlines has a good piece on the implications of the Komen decision on low-income women, immigrant women, and women of color. And Dr. Susan Love, a leading breast cancer researcher and advocate (and lesbian mom), noted, “Investigation does not mean guilt. What happened to innocent until proven guilty?” and suggested, “Let’s redirect all the money that will be spent on investigating Planned Parenthood into funding studies looking to find the cause and prevent the disease once and for all.”

I don’t write a lot about being pro-choice here. A little focus is a good thing, and writing about LGBT equality keeps me busy enough. I was a pro-choice feminist before I was an out lesbian, however, and those roots go deep. Not to mention that my father and several other relatives have died of cancer. I’m appalled by the defunding of an organization that helps hundreds of thousands of women—including many low-income women—get screened for cancer each year, especially when the money is but a drop in Komen’s deep, pink, bucket.

Not that many, many other health care funding decisions aren’t driven by politics. (See the history of HIV/AIDS funding for an object lesson.) But that doesn’t mean we should let such decisions go unremarked or unchecked.

It’s good to see private funders are stepping up to help Planned Parenthood. Their defunding by Komen might in the long run be a good thing, in that it may help them attract even more money and raise awareness of the wide range of health care services they provide. Let’s hope.

These families also represent greater geographic, racial/ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity than is often seen in the media. 

The findings, by demographer Dr. Gary Gates of the Williams Institute at UCLA, appear in “Family formation and raising children among same-sex couples,” published in the Winter 2011 National Council of Family Relations Report.

Gates has analyzed data from several population-based surveys, including Census 2000, the 2008 General Social Survey, and the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

Data from Census 2000 showed that 17 percent of same-sex couples were raising children. That rose to 19 percent in 2006, but fell to 16 percent in 2009.

Gates said the decline may be because fewer lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people are becoming parents at a young age while in opposite-sex relationships. Declining social stigma means LGB people are coming out earlier and are thus less likely to have children with previous opposite-sex partners (although a good per still do). Gates wrote, “These declines may be outpacing increases in adoptive parenting and parenting using reproductive technologies.”

But the decline in percentages hides an increase in the total number of same-sex couples raising children, however, from 63,000 couples in Census 2000 to 110,000 couples in Census 2010. This increase may be partly because more couples are reporting themselves in Census data, Gates said.

The percentage of same-sex couples with children who have adopted some or all of their children also nearly doubled between 2000 and 2009, rising from 10 percent to 19 percent.

And despite what Gates called “a common contemporary media image of gay parenting: wealthy, urban, and White gay men raising an adopted child,” 20 percent of children raised by same-sex couples live in poverty, versus 9.4 percent of children being raised by opposite-sex married couples.

Additionally, African-Americans in same-sex couples are 2.4 times more likely to be parents than Whites are, Latinos and Latinas 1.7 times more likely, and American Indians/Alaska Natives 1.5 times more likely, Gates has found.

The socioeconomic and racial demographics are not new news (Gates has written about it before), but bear repeating.

Also worth remembering, as Gates reminds us in his latest paper, is that same-sex parents live in every part of the country. The highest percentage of same-sex couples with children live in the South—not what one might expect.

Gates noted that “many same-sex couples raising children live in states with legal environments that at best are not supportive and at worst are openly hostile toward LGB individuals and their families.”

What to do about that?  The “All Children Matter” report that came out last October (about which more here) has some good suggestions.

Gates also called on scholars and statistical agencies “to do a better job of collecting data about LGBT individuals and their families,” echoing an Institute of Medicine report from March 2011.

• Fenway Health, the LGBT health organization in Boston, reposted a piece by prospective lesbian mom Andrea about the journey she and her wife are taking to parenthood, starting with alternative insemination. Andrea also blogs at Little Lesbian Baby Blog.
• CNN profiled Frederic Deloizy and his husband Mark Himes, fathers of four. Deloizy, a French citizen, faces deportation from the U.S. under the Defense of Marriage Act. (Thanks, ThinkProgress.)
• A Note to My Kid shares a note from a kid—15-year-old Zac, who writes about what being adopted by his two dads has meant to him. And lesbian mom Leamy writes to her teenage daughter Jordyn, thanking her for supporting her through divorce and coming out.
• Ynet News (via PinkNews.co.uk) reports that Yuval Topper has become the first transgender man in Israel to give birth.
• The Medill Report from Northwestern University discusses the challenges for LGBT adoptive parents.
• MSNBC reports on two lesbian moms who decided that the non-bio mom would follow induced lactation protocols so the two could co-nurse. (Any readers ever tried this? Share your experience in the comments!)
• Even though I wrote last week about why the whole “gay parents are better” meme is rather ridiculous, I loved this tongue-in-cheek piece by Hellraisin at Aiming Low on how straight people can “be as awesome as us.”

Politics and Law

• The Washington Post reports that a Virginia state senator has introduced legislation to prohibit the state from funding adoption and foster care agencies that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, among other characteristics. The state Board of Social Services last month removed such discrimination protections. Bills from other senators would explicitly allow private agencies to deny placement to prospective parents if the placements would conflict with their religious beliefs.
• A lesbian couple in Michigan filed a federal lawsuit challenging the state’s practice of preventing unmarried couples from jointly adopting children.
• WSVN in Florida reports on yet another case in which a bio mom is trying to prevent her ex-partner, their child’s non-bio mom, from seeing the child.

Entertainment

• Diane Ehrensaft at HuffPo writes about what the character of Roscoe, a gender variant child on Showtime’s new series House of Lies, can teach us about gender non-conforming children and how parents can support them.
• Brian Stokes Mitchell and Jeff Goldblum will appear in an upcoming episode of Glee as character Rachel’s gay dads. (Thanks, Towleroad.)

Immigration Equality is hoping to find binational couples, who are raising children, for a campaign highlighting the unique obstacles binational parents face while raising children and trying to remain together here in the United States.  We know, from recent research by the Williams Institute, that many binational couples are, indeed, raising children.  But the obstacles presented by current immigration laws are considerable for those same families. Mombian readers who are interested in sharing their stories about raising children while navigating discriminatory immigration laws can share their information here, and our legal and communications team will be in touch with them.

Check it out—and marvel that they’re celebrating their 30th anniversary this year. LGBT families, as I’ve said before, are not a new phenomenon.

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!)

Now, an article from LiveScience (also published at HuffPo) asks again, “Gay Parents Better Than Straight Parents? What Research Says,” also citing Goldberg, among others. But as Goldberg clarified for me in an e-mail back in 2009: 

It is interesting that the media has suggested that the “take-home message” of my book is that gay parents are “better.” In fact, I would not make such a generalized statement—just as I would never say that heterosexual parents are ‘better’ (and nor should anyone else, in my opinion). Rather, the take-home message is that sexual orientation per se does not have much to do with one’s ability to parent, and the similarities between lesbian/gay and heterosexual parents outweigh the differences. Yes, there are some differences, and some could be interpreted as favoring same-sex couples ON AVERAGE—but it is important to emphasize that many of the characteristics that make (some) same-sex parents “special” (e.g., encouraging flexibility with regards to gender roles; engaging in a great deal of thoughtful preparation before becoming parents) also occur in some heterosexual parents.

The fact is, the LiveScience article, by Stephanie Pappas, is not as provocative as the headline. She writes, “in some ways, gay parents may bring talents to the table that straight parents don’t,” and quotes Goldberg as saying gay parents “tend to be more motivated, more committed than heterosexual parents on average, because they chose to be parents.” And because gay men and lesbians are unlikely to become parents by accident, Pappas quotes Goldberg, “That translates to greater commitment on average and more involvement.”

But let’s face it, commitment and involvement don’t always translate to “better,” and neither Goldberg nor Pappas says it does. In fact, sometimes being too involved may blur into being overprotective and smothering.  (I’m not saying that necessarily happens with gay and lesbian parents, just that it could happen to any parent who isn’t careful.)

There is also research, Pappas says, that while children of gay and lesbian parents “show few differences in achievement, mental health, social functioning and other measures,” they “may have the advantage of open-mindedness, tolerance and role models for equitable relationships. . . . [and] gays and lesbians are likely to provide homes for difficult-to-place children in the foster system.”

But Pappas tempers this by noting, “Of course, this isn’t to say that heterosexual parents can’t bring these same qualities to the parenting table.”

So why the edgy headline? Well, headlines drive traffic. Pappas may not even have written the headline herself, since editors often handle that task. But as a journalist, I want to caution other journalists and editors to restrain themselves from being edgy in this way. As I said two years ago, no one has proven lesbian and gay parents are better, so let’s not imply that we are. At best, we can say that there are certain areas in which, on average (but not exclusively), we tend to have strengths. While it very much behooves us to repeat—loudly—the findings that show our parenting is no worse than that of any other parents, and is in many ways very similar, there are three very good reasons not to overstate matters. (I’m adding one to my original list.)

Number one, LGBT-equality supporters often, and with good cause, bash the right for their sketchy science about LGBT families, or the sketchy conclusions they draw from good science. We need our science and our conclusions to be rock solid. Research shows that children  of lesbian and gay parents turn out to be just as well-adjusted, on the whole, as children of straight parents. (There has been less research on children of bisexual and transgender parents, but the little there is indicates the same.)

Number two, it is a waste of time to ponder the question, “Who makes better parents, LGBT or non-LGBT people”? It sets us up as competitors rather than as fellow travelers on this grand journey of parenting.

Number three, as several commenters on my original post noted, feeling like we have to be the best in order to reflect the LGBT community in the best light puts pressure not only on us as parents but also on our children. That’s not good for us or them.

A better question than “Who is better?” might be, “Where are the strengths of different groups of parents, and what can we learn from each other?” That question, unlike the first, has the potential to benefit our children—and that’s really what it’s all about.

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