Weekly Political Roundup

• Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) plans to introduce a bill as soon as next week to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. He says it will still be hard to get it passed this year.
• Meanwhile the Marine Corps commandant said that while he supports a Pentagon assessment about how to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the repeal must be secondary to the military’s ability to protect our country.
• President Obama nominated federal prosecutor and out lesbian Laura Duffy as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California. Read the rest of this post »

Good News In Pennsylvania Custody Ruling

Too good to wait for the next roundup: The Pennsylvania state Superior Court overturned a 25-year-old precedent that said in custody cases involving former opposite-sex couples, where one person is now in a same-sex relationship, the burden is placed on the LGB parent to prove that the same-sex relationship will have no adverse effect on the child.

In the current case, Dauphin County Senior Judge Joseph F. Kleinfelter had ignored the recommendation of a neutral social worker who proposed either a shared custody arrangement or primary custody going to the mother. Judge Kleinfelter, however, awarded primary custody to the father because the mother  was now involved with another woman.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports his original bias:

He concluded that “when weighing [daughter's] best interests between the two households, we believe those interests are better served by placing her in a traditional heterosexual environment.”

Judge Kleinfelter said he awarded primary custody to the father based on his personal experience as a judge, parent, grandparent and foster parent.

The Superior Court, reports the Post-Gazette, found he, “abused his discretion by both ignoring the recommendations of the social worker and by basing his decision on his personal opinion.” (Remind me again why anti-LGBT people always criticize pro-LGBT people for having “activist judges”?) The Superior Court awarded shared custody to both parents.

(Thanks, Sue!)

LGBT Parenting Roundup

Politics and Law

• A Vermont family court judge issued a warrant for the arrest of Lisa Miller, an “ex-lesbian” who disappeared with the girl who is legally the child of her and her former civil union partner, Janet Jenkins.
• A bit of good news to follow up on a case I posted about last June, when a California Court of Appeal denied the appeal of Kristina S., a biological, “ex-lesbian” mom (are you sensing a pattern here?) who has been trying since 2004 to prevent her former partner Charisma R. from being declared a legal parent to the child they planned and began to raise together. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear the case. Charisma was represented by the National Center for Lesbian Rights; Kristina by the conservative Liberty Counsel. Nancy Polikoff explains that while the SCOTUS refusal sets no precedent, the California opinion in the case helps “protect a person designated as a parent under state law” and the SCOTUS denial “can’t help but add the tiniest bit of ‘oomph’ to any citation of the case in other states.”
• The Arizona House advanced a bill to give preference in adoption cases to legally married couples. The Arizona Republic reports, “Unmarried adults could still be considered for adoption when they are related to or already have a relationship with the child, or if there is not a married couple available. The best interests of the child would remain the determining factor in choosing adoptive parents.” That’s all well and good, but still . . . . Equality Arizona has launched an online petition through which Arizonans can contact their legislators and ask them to oppose the bill.
• Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell “almost certainly” will appeal last week’s federal appeals court ruling that ordered the state to issue an amended birth certificate listing two gay New York men as parents of a child born in Shreveport whom they adopted.

Entertainment

• The cast of Glee, which includes out actor Jane Lynch as well as several gay characters, has been invited to perform at the White House Egg Roll in April. Last year, the Obama administration reached out directly to LGBT families, encouraging them to attend the Egg Roll. Nice, but what about equality under the law, as I’ve said before (and as Dorothy Snarker rightly points out again)?
• Not exactly parenting news, but because those of us with children of a certain age are likely to have video games in the house—and sometimes play them ourselves—it’s worth noting that LesbianGamers.com has relaunched with a new look and all of the reviews, commentary, and other good stuff they’ve become known for.

NCAA Pulls Focus on Family Ads

Under pressure from LGBT advocates, including Pat Griffin, Change.org, and (I imagine) many of you, the NCAA has pulled the Focus on the Family (FOF) ads from its Web site.

As I wrote yesterday, the ads were running at NCAA.com, a site managed in partnership with CBSsports.com. CBS came under fire for running FOF ads during the Super Bowl in January.

There’s still no word about future ads, or about the rumor that CBS will run FOF ads during the upcoming NCAA basketball championships, so stay tuned. Reproductive health blog RH Reality Check also covered the story. (FOF is as anti-choice as they are anti-LGBT.) The story made the virtual pages of Inside Higher Ed, though (h/t, Andy), so let’s hope that not only the LGBT community, but also the community of all fair-minded people in higher education can keep the pressure on.

Tell the NCAA to Stop Running Ads for Focus on the Family

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is running banner ads for ultra-conservative group Focus on the Family. You can see them at NCAA.com. (If you don’t, just reload the page; the ads are in rotation with some others.)

This is an affront to all LGBT, feminist, and allied NCAA athletes and former athletes. I was an NCAA athlete myself, and I’m personally pissed.

I first learned of the incident from Pat Griffin’s LGBT Sport Blog. Griffin is the former director of It Takes A Team, an education and advocacy project addressing LGBT issues in sport. She observes:

The NCAA constitutional principles include an explicit prohibition on discrimination based on sexual orientation. Lesbian and gay student-athletes, coaches, and administrators are a significant part of the NCAA’s membership. Women are a significant part of the NCAA on all levels. Many of the individual institutions [i.e.,  colleges and universities] that belong to the NCAA have policies prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. Yet the NCAA apparently thinks it is just fine to support an anti-gay agenda.

Griffin also says (which I cannot confirm, but have no reason to doubt) that CBS plans to air FOF ads throughout the men’s NCAA basketball tournament in March “with the complete complicity, consent and support of the NCAA.” CBS, as you may know, came under fire for running an FOF ad during the Super Bowl. Read the rest of this post »

Weekly Political Roundup

• News from late last week that didn’t make it into that roundup: The U.S. Senate confirmed two gay men and a lesbian to high-ranking roles in the administration. Douglas Wilson will be assistant secretary of defense for public affairs. As a civilian, he is not subject to the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Cynthia Atwood will sit on the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, and David Mills will be assistant secretary of commerce for export enforcement.
• Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) said the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) is still on track for a House committee markup this month and a floor vote in March. Read the rest of this post »

Weekly Political Update

• Army National Guard Lt. Dan Choi, who faces dismissal under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, is back training with his unit.
• The U.S. Health and Human Services Department and the Administration on Aging have awarded Services & Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Elders (SAGE) a three-year, $900,000 grant to create the nation’s only national resource center on LGBT aging.
• Rumors broke this week that Judge Vaughn Walker, who is ruling on California’s Prop 8 case, is gay. At the moment, they are more speculation than substance.

  My thoughts? Ever watch a kids’ soccer game, in which one of the refs is also a parent of one of the players? They’re often harder on their own kid than on anyone else, for fear of being seen as biased. If Walker is gay, might he be more inclined to rule strictly? Maybe not in favor of upholding Prop 8, but in a narrow way so as to make it harder to use the ruling to strike down marriage bans in other states? I think the right-wing’s fears that a gay judge would be biased in favor of the plaintiffs are unfounded. Read the rest of this post »

Work/Life Balance and the LGBT Community

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of participating in Fem 2.0’s “Work/Life in Our Communities Blog Radio Series” as part of a panel on “Work/Life and LGBT Families: Reimagining Policy for ALL Families in the 21st Century.” The radio series is part of their larger 2010 Wake Up! Campaign, which also includes a blog carnival running through Saturday.

This is my contribution to the carnival.

My personal story of work/life balance as an LGBT person is pretty boring. My employers and my spouse’s employers have all offered full recognition and benefits to same-sex partners. We’ve never had any trouble with co-workers about our orientation. Heck, my co-workers threw us a baby shower. Sure, there was the amusing issue of sitting in a meeting, obviously flat-stomached, and having to mention that I might have to leave early because I was having a baby any minute now—but my straight, about-to-adopt co-worker was in a similar situation. (They threw her a baby shower, too.)

My work/life issues therefore are mostly the same as those faced by people of all gender identities and orientations—finding the time for both work and family, dividing household work with my spouse, and so forth.

There is some evidence, however (ably analyzed by sociologist Abbie Goldberg in her Lesbian and Gay Parents and Their Children), that same-sex couples as a whole divide household work more equitably than opposite-sex ones. Indeed, when I tell straight moms that my spouse gave birth to our son, and stayed home for the first eight months or so, at which point we switched because of shifting job opportunities, they look at me like I’m from Mars.

It’s nice to have that flexibility.

At the same time, the flexibility has limits. Read the rest of this post »

Even the Mulleted Deserve Equality

Sometimes, in our efforts to correct one instance of intolerance, we forget others.

Two weeks ago, a Miami-Dade judge declared Florida’s anti-gay adoption law unconstitutional and allowed Vanessa Alenier to adopt the one-year-old she and her partner Melanie Leon have been fostering.

The ultra-conservative Orlando’s Florida Family Policy Council (FPC) sent out an alert to its members last week, describing the ruling. It included a photo of a lesbian couple sporting mullets the likes of which I haven’t seen for many years. Neither woman is smiling, and I doubt most people would consider it a flattering photo.

The couple in the picture, however, is not Alenier and Leon. Orlando Sentinel writer Scott Maxwell rightly calls the Family Policy Council to task for this, and offers up a strong endorsement for allowing loving same-sex couples to adopt.

He calls the mulleted couple “abnormal-looking,” though, and says: “The couple look so odd (you literally can’t tell whether they are male or female) that one might wonder how any judge could place a young child with such a disturbing-looking duo.” Read the rest of this post »

Weekly Political Roundup

• Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen told a Senate committee he is in favor of repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates said they have appointed a high-level working group to report, by the end of the year, on how the military can implement such a change if Congress repeals the law.
• President Barack Obama used his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, run by fundamentalist group The Fellowship, to denounce the proposed “Anti-Homosexuality Bill” being considered in Uganda.
• The U.S. Tax Court ruled in favor of GLAD client Rhiannon O’Donnabhain, stating for the first time that treatment for gender identity disorder qualifies as medical care under the Internal Revenue Code, and is therefore deductible. Read the rest of this post »