• 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.)

• An Iowa court ordered the state’s Department of Public Health to issue a birth certificate for a two year-old child born to a married same-sex couple in 2009, listing both women as her parents. I covered the earlier part of the case in November for Keen News Service.
• Mentioned a couple of days ago, but worth noting again:  a Florida court has ruled in a custody case involving two lesbian moms and said both women are the legal parents of the child they raised together. One woman provided the egg; the other carried the embryo.
• (From December, but skipped over the holidays.) Virginia’s Board of Social Services approved new adoption rules that allow them to discriminate against prospective parents on the basis of gender or family status, among other characteristics.
• The New York Times discusses Catholic bishops who have stopped their adoption services rather than place children with lesbian and gay parents.
• WearingMascara at BlogHer discusses why she, a straight woman and nationally certified school psychologist, supports gay parents. It’s a great read.
• Another good read is this Fox News piece (yes, Fox News) by an evangelical Christian mom about her path to accepting her lesbian daughter. (Thanks to Renna Communications for the link.)
• (Not a parenting story per se, but could have an impact on families with kids, too.) House leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has helped win a two-year stay against deportation for a gay bi-national couple.
• (Not exclusively gay or parenting-related, but still of interest.) The U.S. Department of Justice has changed its definition of rape to include male victims.

• Tigger, a lesbian mom, writes at Moms Rising about why “Without Unemployment Insurance, My Family Would Have To Choose Which Bills to Pay.”
• CBS Minnesota’s WCCO This Morning each week “[rewards] a hard-working, dedicated parent who loves what they do.” Last week, they chose lesbian moms Tara and Becky Lien—but the notable thing about their coverage is that it is totally normalized. They don’t treat them any differently than any other couple, and don’t even need to point out the obvious—that they are a lesbian couple. Nicely done.
• Author and poet Michelle Tea is writing at xojane about trying to get pregnant as “a single queer lady who hardly knows a single sperm-producing man.”
• The Leffew family has gotten in a holiday mood with their video “I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus.” (I did my own small lesbian mom riff on the classic tune (text, not video) five years ago.)

Law and Politics

• The New York Times’ Tara Siegel Bernard investigates incidents of the IRS denying lesbian moms the adoption tax credit.
• Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) has asked the U.S. Department of Education to reform policies “that discriminate against the children of same-sex couples and gay and transgendered students seeking federal financial assistance to attend college.”

News from Down Under

• An Australian bishop has told a Catholic primary school in his diocese that it was wrong to refuse kindergarten admission to a girl who has lesbian moms.
• On a geographically, but not causally, related note, Australian finance minister Penny Wong and her partner Sophie Allouache welcomed their first child, a baby girl.

• Deborah Skolnik of Parenting.com writes at CNN of “The new normal: Stay-at-home Dads and gay parents.”  A nice piece that shows the many different varieties of families and family organization.
• Allison Sherry at the Denver Post profiles U.S. Reps. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), who each became dads recently. Polis is gay; Gardner isn’t—a good piece emphasizing similarities rather than differences.
• Trish Bendix at The Frisky ponders what to do when a friend, unrequested, offers his sperm to help you start a family.
• Shannon Cate of Peter’s Cross Station has a guest post at The Declassified Adoptee about “Separating Adoptee Rights from Homophobia.” It’s a thought-provoking piece that also has implications for non-adoptive parents who are wondering how or whether to incorporate donors or surrogates into their lives.
• Martin Gill, plaintiff in the case that struck down Florida’s ban on adoption by gay men and lesbians, has an op-ed in The Hill about the Every Child Deserves a Family Act, which would withhold federal adoption and foster care assistance funds from states that discriminate against LGBT people in foster placements or adoption.

• Denise Balkissoon writes in Toronto’s Globe and Mail about “The seven habits of highly effective lesbian families.” ”A series of studies in Canada and elsewhere over the past decade has found that the children of lesbians aren’t just well-adjusted—they excel.”It’s a good article for explaining some of the good parenting habits that have emerged from these studies—but I have to caution that we should not necessarily jump to the conclusion that lesbian parents are “better.” (Balkissoon doesn’t, but readers could easily conclude this from her piece.) Different? Perhaps. More likely to demonstrate the habits of good parenting in general? Perhaps, but we are not unique in that. As I’ve said before, we need to prove that we’re no better or worse than other parents, but saying we’re “better” sets up an unnecessary competition. In this journey of parenting, we must all be allies.

• Reporting Texas has a lengthy article on “The Economics of Same-Sex Parenting,” which covers, in addition to economics, the legal and social challenges that same-sex parents and our children face.
• The Baltimore Sun profiles the Baltimore City Circuit Court, “the favored jurisdiction among Maryland’s 24 circuit courts for same-sex adoption petitioners.”
• Benjamin Anastas writes with sometimes harsh honesty about growing up with lesbian moms in the early 1980s, in “O Pioneers” at the New York Times.

• 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 U.S. Supreme Court denied Lambda Legal’s petition to have them hear the case of a two gay dads seeking a new birth certificate for their adopted son. The boy was born in Louisiana but adopted in New York, and the men wanted a birth certificate listing them both as parents—not least so one dad could add the boy to his health insurance policy. Although new birth certificates are common for children adopted by opposite-sex couples, the Louisiana state registrar has refused to grant one in this case, on the grounds that unmarried couples cannot adopt in the state.
• In happier news, lesbian mom Janice Langbehn received the 2011 Presidential Citizens Medal, the nation’s second-highest civilian honor. In 2007, Langbehn was denied access to her partner Lisa Pond, who lay dying in the hospital. The couple’s three children were kept from Pond as well.  Her story helped motivate President Obama to revise hospital visitation rights for same-sex couples.
• The Virginia State Board of Social Services ended a 30-day online comment period regarding proposed standards for child-placing agencies that would protect “prospective parents based on race, national origin, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, political beliefs, sexual orientation, disability, and family status.” GLAAD reports that the Board received over 2,500 comments, which “focused heavily on adoption rules and whether gay and lesbian couples and individuals should receive the same consideration as straight adoptive parents. Overwhelmingly, fair-minded Virginians commented in favor of non-discrimination measures that protect LGBT families and individuals wanting to adopt.”
• The Australian government is considering whether to amend passport application forms to say ‘Parent 1’ and ‘Parent 2’ alongside Mother and Father. The U.K. government announced last week it would enact such a change, and the U.S. did so earlier this year.
• I’ve written a lot about custody cases involving a biological mom trying to deny custody to a non-biological mom. But in a case involving a bio and non-bio dad, the Texas Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling granting both men custody. The case may not yet be over, however, as Nancy Polikoff tells us. The Alliance Defense Fund, which has backed a number of non-bio moms in such cases, is backing the bio dad.

• Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), the first Republican member of Congress to cosponsor the Respect for Marriage Act, has had her viewpoint on LGBT equality shaped by her experience as the mother of a transgender child (now grown), reports the Miami Herald.
• Can a same-sex couple who had a civil union in Illinois become foster parents? Lambda Legal answers.
• Katherine Bindley of HuffPo interviews  Yale sociology professor Rene Almeling about her new book Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm. It’s not LGBT-specific, but may be of interest to some of you.
• Comedian and lesbian mom Wanda Sykes has had a double mastectomy after a diagnosis of breast cancer.

• The American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s Sexuality, Reproduction & Menopause (SRM) e-journal has an article explaining, “What are the reproductive options when a same-sex couple wants a family?“

Law

• The New York Law Journal tells us, “Creative Parenting Agreements Still Needed With Same-Sex Marriage,” reminding us why second-parent adoptions are still needed even if same-sex parents are married.
• The Nebraska Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling and said that a nonbiological lesbian mom has a right, under the doctrine of in loco parentis, to a custody and visitation hearing regarding the child she and her former partner were raising together. Nancy Polikoff has the details.

Family Profiles

• Gay dad David Valdes Greenwood writes a must-read column for HuffPo on being the only two-dad family in their daughter’s elementary school. While this means taking on the role of “Encyclopedia Homosexualis” at times to explain gay life to straight friends, he writes, “I think we have an obligation to do so, for if we don’t tell the truth about our lives, the stuff made up by politicians and preachers may be allowed to define us instead.” And there’s more good stuff, too. Go read.
• The Windy City Times profiles gay adoptive dads Brian Walker and Mike Demetria.

Things We Don’t Like to See

• Although lesbian mom Denise Steele had been a den leader and assistant scoutmaster for her son’s Cub Scout and Boy Scout troops for six years—and the head scoutmaster knew she was in a relationship with another woman—she was removed when another assistant scoutmaster found out and raised objections with the national organization, according to the Loudoun Times.

• An Australian court ruled that a nonbiological mother had the right to have her name on the birth certificate of the child she had with her former partner, and that the sperm donor had no parental rights.
• California Governor Jerry Brown (D) signed the Protection of Parent-Child Relationships Act on August 5, strengthening the rights of nonbiological mothers. Nancy Polikoff has the details.
• Six leading child welfare organizations filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of Lambda Legal’s request for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case of two gay dads asking the state of Louisiana to put their names on the birth certificate of their Louisiana-born son whom they adopted in New York.
• Actor Sean Hayes (Will & Grace) is near a deal to sign Rescue Me co-creator Peter Tolan and writer Michael Wimer for a family comedy that “follows two men tasked with raising a 12 year old,” reports Entertainment Weekly.