LGBT Parenting Roundup

Personal Stories

• The Children’s Hospital Boston blog shares the story of Sylvia (not her real name), who was born Ryan, diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder at age six and transitioned to live as a girl at the start of fifth grade. The blog has also posted an essay by Sylvia’s father—both must-read pieces, as is the piece that led me to them, Joanne Herman’s “A Wedding Just for the Kids” at HuffPo.
• On a related note, if you missed Slate’s early-August piece on a camp for transgender and gender-variant kids, go read.
• On a more sobering note, and one that makes us appreciate stories like the above, Kim Pearson, executive director of TransYouth Family Allies (TYFA), relates the story of a school district in Kansas that is refusing to recognize a 10-year-old transgender girl’s gender identity, even though at least one school in the district was willing to make a safe, productive environment for her. TYFA (in conjunction, I assume, with the girl’s two moms) is now trying to raise money to bring a lawsuit against the district.
• Central Pennsylvania’s Patriot News profiles lesbian moms Joy Verner and Sue Waldner, mothers of four. The article mentions the movie The Kids Are All Right, and cites the latest results from the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS; about which more here), but feels it has to counter it with a quote from the spokesperson of the anti-LGBT American Family Association of Pennsylvania. It also feels like it tries a bit too hard at times, with pedantic sentences like, “The two nurture their children, exposing them to social and cultural interests, and teaching them the importance of education and respect for others.” Still, it’s an overall positive article, and a sign that movies like Kids and studies like the NLLFS are indeed raising awareness of lesbian families.

Starting a Family

• A small study in the U.K. has found that the costs of getting pregnant are a barrier to many lesbians trying to conceive, despite new laws that make it easier for them to use fertility clinics. Read the rest of this post »

LGBT Parenting Roundup

Family Profiles

• The Advocate profiled lesbian moms Cathy and Leah, who talk about creating their family and offer some wise words about what they have learned as parents.
• The Arizona Daily Star profiled a nine-year-old transgender girl, and her parents, who have allowed her to transition and live as a girl. The article is generally positive—it quotes Kim Pearson, executive director of TransYouth Family Allies, for example—but it also explores the debates surrounding transgender kids. (For more resources about transgender kids, see my post from November.)

More Debate on The Kids Are All Right

• The New York
  Times has solicited opinions from various people including marriage-history expert Stephanie Coontz and columnist Dan Savage to talk about the impact of a movie like The Kids Are All Right on changing social perceptions.
• Joan Garry, currently adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communications and former head of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), shared her thoughts about The Kids Are All Right. She feels the film goes beyond believability when it has one of the moms have an affair with their sperm donor, and “the takeaway from this film will be that lesbians and the families they create need men to be complete.”
• If you read Garry’s piece, though, you should also go read the piece at After Ellen by Sinclair Sexsmith, who takes the opposing view. (My position is closer to that of Sexsmith, and I’ve explained why.)

LGBT Parenting Roundup

Let’s start the week with a roundup.

Politics and Law

• Iceland’s Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir and her partner, Jonina Leosdottir, transformed their civil union into a marriage Sunday as the country’s marriage equality law went into effect. Sigurdardottir has two grown sons from a previous marriage.
• A Wisconsin appeals court ruled that a woman seeking guardianship of two children for whom she had been a stay at home mother for years was “not a parent” under state law and could not be the children’s guardian. The children had been adopted by her now-ex partner, but not by her, since same-sex couples cannot adopt in Wisconsin.
• Nancy Polikoff highlights a case in West Virginia in which a co-parent was denied guardianship of the children she has been raising with her partner—children from a previous opposite-sex relationship and a father who was later convicted of molesting other children. The court said there were other legal means by which the non-legal co-parent could secure decision-making authority over the children. Polikoff notes that the court documentation did not use the terms “lesbian” or “same-sex couple,” making this a case that almost slipped our attention. How many other such cases might there be? Read the rest of this post »

LGBT Parenting Roundup

Politics and Law

• The Labor Department will expand its interpretation of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to allow non-legal, non-biological parents to take leave to care for the legal children of a same-sex partner. Labor won’t officially announce the news until Wednesday, so stay tuned for further details. The AP reported that the changes would allow employees to take time to care for same-sex partners as well; Chris Geidner at Metro Weekly, however, says it will only apply to children—the most the department can do while DOMA still exists.
• A U.K. court ruled that a non-bio mom does not have to pay child support for the child she was raising with her ex-partner, because the two never entered into a civil partnership. The judge apparently agreed that she was a “social and psychological” mother to the child—but because she was not a legal one, she owed no support. She had, however, previously won shared custody. Blegh. I’ll be the first to say that with rights come responsibilities.
• Florida Gov. Charlie Crist told TIME that he has, “a live and let live attitude as it regards adoption [by gay men and lesbians].” He seems unclear as to how to change the existing law, however: “I think probably the best decision maker would be a judge. Currently we have a law on the books in Florida that precludes that from happening. I’m sure that a future legislature and maybe the next governor might address that issue.”
• This Wednesday, the Vermont Supreme Court will hear an appeal from attorneys for Lisa Miller, the “ex-lesbian” mom who apparently fled the country with her daughter rather than give primary custody of the girl to her ex-partner Janet Jenkins. The Family Court gave Jenkins full custody after Miller’s continued refusal to allow Jenkins visitation. Read the rest of this post »

LGBT Parenting Roundup

• Two French gay dads are having difficulties bringing home their twins, born through a surrogate in India. France does not allow surrogacy, and the French consulate is refusing to transfer the twins’ names to the French birth registry, a necessary step before they can obtain passports. A gay Israeli couple had similar problems last month.
• Two days after the publication of new findings from a major study of lesbian families here in the U.S. come the results of a new study of children of lesbian families in the U.K., conducted by the University of Cambridge for Stonewall, the country’s leading LGBT-rights organization. The U.K. study found, “Children reported that they were proud of their parents and felt their families were special, but often faced prejudice at school.”
• Iceland’s parliament approved a bill that will allow single women, same-sex couples, and heterosexual couples whose members both suffer from fertility issues, to use both donor eggs and donor sperm in IVF treatment. Previously, donor eggs could only be used when the sperm came from the father-to-be, and could not be used by single women or lesbian couples.
• The South Australian Parliament’s Social Development Committee will conduct an inquiry into the number, experiences, and challenges of gay and lesbian parents.
• Also in Australia, Sydney MP Clover Moore plans to introduce a private member’s bill to allow same-sex couples to adopt, even though the New South Wales Labor Government has said it will not initiate such legislation.
• And in Victoria, the the Rainbow Families Council has produced a new information pack about same-sex parented families to help early childhood centres, kindergartens, and the parents themselves.

On a lighter note, if you missed my tweet about it: Shoes for your sperm donor. (Or shoes to wear while you’re lugging the cryo tank up the stairs. Your call.)

LGBT Parenting Roundup

Here’s what’s been happening while we’ve been celebrating Memorial Day and Blogging for LGBT Families Day:

Politics and Law

• “Ex-lesbian” mom Lisa Miller is rumored to have fled the country with the eight-year-old daughter she was supposed to turn over to the girl’s other mom, Janet Jenkins. Jenkins’ attorney Sarah Star said to the Associated Press that a Virginia police officer told her that Miller and the girl flew to San Salvador from Juarez, Mexico. Miller failed to show up in January to transfer custody of the girl to Jenkins, as ordered by a Vermont court, after Miller had refused multiple times to allow Jenkins court-ordered visitation.
• The Texas Supreme Court has refused to review an appeals court ruling that allowed a non-bio mom to seek visitation rights with her daughter, Nancy Polikoff reports. Another appeals court had ruled in a separate case that a non-bio mom had no standing to seek visitation.
• Nancy also pointed out that the U.S. State Department has posted information for GLBT people who want to do international adoptions.

Personal Stories

• If you haven’t seen the picture of Jane Lynch and Lara Embry with their daughter in the couple’s New York Times wedding announcement, you’re missing the adorablest thing you’ll probably see all week. The article’s worth a read, too.
• A mother wrote to the Washington Post’s advice columnist Carolyn Hax asking how to explain to her six-year-old why she didn’t want him going over to the house of a friend who has two moms. “I am not homophobic and have nothing against gay people,” the mother wrote. “I just don’t want my son exposed to this unfamiliar lifestyle at such a young age. I just think he’s too young to understand.” Hax astutely replied, “What is there for him to understand at this stage beyond, two people who love each other have created a home together? . . . I have a hard time believing your son, at 6, isn’t already fully aware that his friend has two mommies/daddies. . . . Kids are open to the world as it’s presented to them; it’s adults who teach them to start filtering it all in arbitrary ways.”

LGBT Parenting Roundup

Personal Matters

• Sex and the City actor and lesbian mom Cynthia Nixon is the first “celebrity expert” at 365gay.com, where she tackles the question “I think my 7-year-old is gay and kids are starting to tease him. How do I help him or what should I do?”
• We Are Goodkin profiles Kimbo Prichard and Natasha Boissier, a couple who used a known donor to create their family.
• I mentioned CNN’s upcoming In America segment about two gay dads in my last roundup. Adam Amel Rogers has an interview with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien about the segment. It’s well worth a read. I commend O’Brien for stating that she is not trying to tell the story of all gay Americans here, or even all gay parents, just that of these two individuals (though she does say that she views the segment as the start of what she hopes will be a longer series of profiles of gay Americans).

Law

• Yet another custody battle between a non-biological mother and a biological mother, with (yet again) the biological mother hiring an anti-LGBT conservative lawyer. This time, it’s in Ohio, the second recent bio/non-bio case in the state. Read the rest of this post »

LGBT Parenting Roundup

Politics and Law

• Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) introduced the Student Nondiscrimination Act, a companion to a House bill by Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO). It would prohibit discrimination on the basis of real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity in any program or activity receiving federal funds. “Discrimination” would include harassment. Already, some are saying this provides “special” rights to LGBT students. I just did a longer piece for Keen News Service on various state-level anti-bullying measures and the whole issue of “enumerating” sexual orientation and gender identity. Expect this to be a key issue as SNDA and related legislation moves forward.
• The new sheriff of West Hollywood is Captain Kelley Fraser, also a lesbian mom. Read the rest of this post »

From Harassment to Hope

I’m fuming. Let’s review:

• A twelve-year-old Kentucky middle-school student with two moms was suspended from school for three days after she asked her bus driver to stop some other students from making fun of gay and lesbian people. When the bus driver laughed along and called the girl a “contradiction,” the girl called the bus driver a “jerk”—and was suspended. The Kentucky Equality Federation is calling for the termination or route change of the driver and an official apology from the school’s assistant principal. (Thanks, Pam.) Change.org has a petition up demanding apologies from the school principal and assistant principal.
• A two-mom family has filed a lawsuit against the Rio Rancho School District in New Mexico, claiming that their daughter’s fifth-grade teacher, because of bias against their family, did not let the girl go to the school nurse after a playground injury.
• A Roman Catholic school in Massachusetts withdrew its acceptance of an 8-year-old boy because he has lesbian moms. The Boston archdiocese does not have a policy that would prohibit the children of same-sex couples from attending its schools, said a spokesperson. In March, a Catholic preschool in Boulder, Colorado similarly told a lesbian couple their child could not return to the school next year—but in that case, the Denver Archdiocese supported the school’s decision. (For contrast, however, I recommend this essay in Commonweal magazine, in which a lesbian mom discusses her Catholic faith, her and her partner’s decision to send their children to Catholic school, and the welcome they received there.)
• Catholic churches aren’t the only ones at fault here. Cate and Elizabeth Wirth were told last December 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.

What’s keeping me from despair? Let’s review: Read the rest of this post »

LGBT Parenting Roundup

Entertainment

It’s a bonus entertainment week:

• Autostraddle has compiled a collection of celebrities with two moms.
• Brent Hartinger at After Elton discusses the increasing number of gay dads on television, and the increasingly varied ways they are forming their fictional families.
• Law & Order recently ran an episode featuring a lesbian heiress who adopted her partner in order to gain some measure of legal protections for their relationship. It’s loosely based on the real-life case of Olive Watson, the heir to the IBM fortune, who adopted her partner Patricia Spado. An interesting twist in the Law & Order episode is that one of the women was pregnant with the embryo of the other—the same thing Helen and I did (though neither of us adopted the other). The Culture & Media Institute has more.
• Actor Cynthia Nixon is this month’s Advocate cover story. She talks about her partner Christine Marinoni and their two children, among other things.
• The New York Times reports on the making of The Kid, a musical based on the parenting story of gay dad and syndicated columnist Dan Savage. Read the rest of this post »