Weekly Political Roundup

• Ken Mehlman, President Bush’s 2004 campaign manager and a former chair of the Republican National Committee, has come out as gay. He led the party when it was increasing its anti-gay campaign rhetoric and trying to rally voters around anti-gay initiatives.
• After harshly criticizing the Pentagon survey of military spouses regarding Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Servicemembers United announced that members of the Pentagon’s working group on the policy will meet with a group of lesbian and gay military partners during Servicemembers United’s Military Partners Forum in September.
• The New York Times has a great piece on lesbian and gay cadets at West Point.
• The Advocate rounds up this week’s primary election results for LGBT candidates.
• Conservatives in Iowa are trying to get people to vote out of office three State Supreme Court judges who ruled last year that the state law barring marriage for same-sex couples is unconstitutional.
• Supporters withdrew a proposed anti-discrimination ordinance in Memphis, Tennessee, citing a lack of support from the City Council and the mayor. Read the rest of this post »

Weekly Political Roundup

• President Obama included an openly gay man, Richard Sorian, in his list of recess appointments. Sorian would become Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services.
• Lanae Erickson and Jon Cowan have a thought-provoking piece in Politico on how to sway the “persuadable middle” on marriage equality.
• Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach and the Servicemembers Legal Defense fund reached an agreement with the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho, U.S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. Air Force, preventing the Air Force from discharging Lt. Col. Fehrenbach under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) until the Court can schedule a hearing on the Air Force’s request to dismiss him.
• Marriage for same-sex couples in California will have to wait a little longer. The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals granted Yes on 8’s request for a stay of Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. The good news, such as it is, is that the Court also said it would expedite the process for Yes On 8’s appeal.
• The California State Senate passed the Separation Equity Act, which would create a consolidated form and procedure to simultaneously dissolve a civil marriage and domestic partnership—helping couples who are both married and domestic partners. The State Assembly already approved the bill; it now heads to the governor. Read the rest of this post »

Lego Lesbians in Love

Minifig Pride! (This is what lesbian moms do when we’re bored.)

LGBT Family Researcher Takes on Family Research Council

For your viewing pleasure today, here’s Dr. Abbie Goldberg, assistant professor of psychology at Clark University, and one of the foremost researchers on LGBT families today, debating Tom McClusky, Vice President of Government Affairs at the Family Research Council.

Dr. Goldberg’s work was cited in the Prop 8 trial, among other places, and her book, Lesbian and Gay Parents and Their Children, compiles and synthesizes decades of research by herself and others. I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing her and asking her questions like, “Are lesbian and gay parents really better than straight ones?” I’m pleased to say she walks all over McClusky’s arguments below.

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Weekly Political Roundup

• Air Force Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach has filed a suit to try and stop his discharge under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT). And high-ranking West Point Cadet Katherine Miller resigned because she is a lesbian and unwilling to compromise her integrity over the policy.
• Rachel Maddow also has a few pointed words about DADT.
• A a new CNN Opinion Research Poll found that for the first time, a majority of Americans (52%) think that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry (even though they feel it is not a constitutional right). (Thanks, Think Progress.) Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight has done a meta-analysis of this and other marriage equality polls, and concluded there is “acceleration in the rate of support for gay marriage.” Read the rest of this post »

UPDATE: Prop 8 Stay Is DENIED; Same-Sex Couples Can Marry in California

Updated: Judge Vaughn Walker has just denied a stay in his marriage equality ruling of August 4, but kept a temporary stay in place until 5 p.m. August 18.

More to come, I’m sure. . . .

Victory for Lesbian Mom in Ohio: Marriage Ban Does Not Block Child Custody

Add another court victory to the recent Prop 8 and DOMA wins. The Eighth District Court of Appeals in Ohio last week rejected an attempt to use the state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage to prevent a lesbian mother from sharing custody of her children with her former partner.

Lambda Legal, which represents Rita Goodman in the case against her former partner Siobhan LaPiana, reports that the two women were in a committed relationship for 10 years, during which they planned and had two boys. LaPiana gave birth to them, but both women parented equally, and even signed an agreement committing to do so. The boys, Lambda says, “love and rely on both of them as their mothers.” Read the rest of this post »

Prop 8 Ruling: A Ally Dad’s View

At the risk of overloading you on Prop 8 references, go read “Gay Marriage Revealed the Worth of My Own,” by Jeremy Adam Smith, founder of the blog Daddy Dialectic (itself a great read for anyone interested in gender and parenting). The piece appeared last Friday in the San Francisco Chronicle, and begins with the assertion, “Judge Vaughn Walker has overturned Proposition 8—just in time to save marriage from the mess heterosexuals have made of it.”

Smith writes of how same-sex couples are “an integral part” of his community in San Francisco and how “An attack on [my friends'] lesbian marriage—for that’s how we perceived Prop. 8, regardless of its intent—felt like an attack on all of us, straight and queer alike.”

He explains how he became a father with his female partner before they felt the need to get married, and how it was in part the struggle of same-sex couples for the right to marry that led them to tie the knot. “With Judge Walker’s decision,” he says, “I hope we will soon be seeing more and more gay and lesbian couples join us in pulling marriage back from the brink of irrelevance.”

Destroying marriage? No. We might just be saving it. And knowing we have allies like Smith gives me great hope.

Mombian Weekly Reader

I’m not going to do my usual political roundup this week because the Prop 8 ruling and Elena Kagan’s confirmation have made it a week full o’ politics. I will, however, point out a few items, political and otherwise, that are worth a read.

• “What teens think about Prop. 8 being struck down” from the teen authors at LA Youth newspaper. Important voices. (Thanks to Lee Wind.)
• “Judge Walker’s Ruling is About Much More Than the Law” by Kai Wright at Colorlines. The money quote: “Walker’s ruling moves the debate away from deliberately distracting questions about how gay relationships impact everyone else—and toward questions about how bigotry impacts gay relationships.” (Thanks to LesbianDad.)
• “The Kids Are All Right, Aren’t They?” by Belinda Baldwin at Change.org looks not so much at the movie (about which we’ve had much discussion here), but at what the debate about the movie within the lesbian community means. “It has become a kind of cultural litmus test for how we feel about ourselves,” she says. A good and thought-provoking read.

Prop 8 Reading List for the Day After

It’s been all Prop 8, all the time in the LGBT blogosphere for the last day or so, with a sprinkling of Elena Kagan softball jokes thrown in.

Here are a couple of pieces I wrote about the Prop 8 ruling over at Change.org—they’re not parenting-specific, but may be of interest to some of you:

• Jehovah’s Witnesses Aided Prop 8 Reversal Ruling: Just how did members of a religion that is against same-sex marriage help Judge Walker’s Prop 8 ruling?
• Prop 8 Ruling Highlights Crumbling of Gender Roles: One of the more interesting passages in the Prop 8 ruling states that “the time has passed” for distinct gender roles in marriage.

Also worth a read or listen:

• Lisa Keen’s piece at Keen News Service (for whom I also write) is a good place to start. Lisa’s been covering LGBT news for over 30 years, and won an award from the American Bar Association for her coverage of the historic Romer v. Evans case in 1996, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an anti-gay law in Colorado and ruled that animus against a group could not be used to justify discrimination.
• Chris Geidner at Metro Weekly gets into the legal nitty gritty.
• The New York Times offers a sympathetic editorial on the ruling.
• Plaintiffs’ attorneys Ted Olson and David Boies spoke on The Rachel Maddow Show.
• Kevin Drum at Mother Jones adds a dose of reality with a look at potential weaknesses in Walker’s ruling as the case moves to appeal.
• Bob Egelko of the San Francisco Chronicle explains what that appeal process is likely to be.