This Is What Happens When Kids Learn About Same-Sex Marriage

Confused? Traumatized? Not a bit.

[Update: It seems the video's owner has made it private. I'm not going to try and find another copy; if he wants privacy, I'll respect that.]

(Via Truth Wins Out.)

Happy International Women’s Day

It’s International Women’s Day, a holiday first celebrated in 1909 in honor of a 1908 strike by women garment workers in protest at their working conditions. Now, it’s a holiday endorsed by the U.N., which has set the 2010 theme as “Equal rights, equal opportunities: Progress for all.”

While the holiday gets little attention in the U.S., people in other areas of the world whoop it up, as evidenced by the many events listed on this slightly more commercial International Women’s Day site. (There are 238 events IWD events listed for the U.K., but only 124 in the U.S..)

I’m all about celebrating women here at Mombian, though, so here’s a topic for discussion today:

How has either being a mother or being LGBT changed your awareness and/or involvement in women’s rights and issues?

Engaged (Legally or Not?) Here’s a Survey

Passing along this request for volunteers to participate in an academic study of same- and opposite-sex engaged couples. I am not affiliated with the project; please contact the researcher if you have questions. (I do think it is important to have LGBT voices in broad research like this, though.)

Engaged volunteers needed!

I am looking for volunteers for a study of attitudes towards marriage and parenthood among engaged couples. The study consists of a 25-30 minute online survey. To qualify for the study, you must be 20-35 years old, live in the U.S., and plan to marry or have a commitment ceremony within the next 365 days. You and your romantic partner must not have children, and this must be the first marriage for both of you. 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 »

What’s In a Name?

I am not “Mrs. Rudolph.” That should not surprise readers here, for lesbians who take a partner or spouse’s name (and are thus eligible for the “missus” title) are few and far between. Rudolph was the last name I was born with, and despite the inevitable jokes at Christmas time, it’s the name I’ll keep for the rest of my life.

My son’s teachers, however (and, I venture to guess, most of the teachers in the school), insist on calling all of the mothers “Mrs. [Lastname].” All of his peers also seem to use “Mrs” for adult women.

Maybe it’s just my inherent feminism, not to mention too many years in the corporate world, where “Ms.” was de regueur. I twitch involuntarily when I hear someone address me as “Mrs. Rudolph.”

I’m trying not to make a big deal of it. I also really don’t want to come across as the uptight, oversensitive, PC type. I’m not, really.

I try to gently correct. “Ms. Rudolph,” I say —but it never seems to stick.

On the other hand, I am out to my son’s teachers, so the fact that they call me “Mrs.” is in some way a positive acknowledgment of my relationship status. That’s progress of a sort, even if feminism still has a ways to go.

Anyone else ever encounter this? How do you handle it?

Gay and Lesbian History for Teens

(Originally published as my Mombian newspaper column, October 2009.)

October is, among other things, LGBT History Month, which makes it the perfect time to write about Gay America: Struggle for Equality (Amulet: 2008), by Linas Alsenas. The book is a history of gay men and lesbians in the U.S. from the mid-nineteenth century through 2005. It fills a much needed gap, not because of the subject (there are a small but a growing number of LGBT-specific histories), but because of its audience: teens.

LGBT histories for that age group have been sorely lacking, consisting mostly of Becoming Visible: A Reader in Gay and Lesbian History for High School and College Students (Alyson: 1994), by Kevin Jennings. (Yes, the same Jennings who is now heading up the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools). Jennings’ volume is useful, but is more a source book than a narrative like Gay America. Both are needed. Read the rest of this post »

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Today marks the 11th International Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. My thoughts are with all of the transgender community today, but especially with transgender parents, transgender and gender variant children, and their parents.

Here are some resources to help spread understanding:

• Trans Youth Family Allies is a terrific organization helping parents of transgender and gender variant children, as is Gender Spectrum Family.
• The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals, by Stephanie Brill and Rachel Pepper, is a great resource for parents and educators. The Kids of Trans Resource Guide, by Monica Canfield-Lenfest of the COLAGE Kids of Trans program, looks from the flip side. Here’s my review of both.
• This American Life On Transgender Children: The NPR show did a great piece in February profiling two eight-year-old transgender children. The segment starts about 29 minutes into the show.
• 10,000 Dresses, by Marcus Ewert, is a delightful picture book with a transgender protagonist. My review and author interview is here.
• Another great read is Transparent, Cris Beam’s gripping book on homeless transgender teens. Here’s my post about it.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program, and get a small referral fee from all purchases made at Amazon.com via links on this site. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.

Take the COLAGE Donor Insemination Survey

Passing this along on behalf of my friends at COLAGE. Please contact them if you have questions.

Take the COLAGE Donor Insemination Survey

COLAGE, a youth-driven national network of people with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer parents, is thrilled to announce the debut of the ART Project, a program to highlight the experiences of COLAGErs born through assisted reproductive technologies. Over the past 30 years the number of people born through these technologies to LGBTQ parents has steadily grown, yet let little, if any, work has been done to bring this community together or address the experiences of these youth and adults. Read the rest of this post »

Sesame Street and LGBT Families

In honor of the 40th season of Sesame Street, which starts tomorrow, I thought I’d rerun this video, which made the rounds earlier this year and is based on a much older episode of the show.

Yes, this is exactly what marriage equality proponents want to teach children. The horror.

I was two when Sesame Street first launched. As one of the first generation of children to grow up with the show, I’ve always had a soft spot for it (although I raise a skeptical eyebrow at Elmo and Abby Cadabby). It remains not only one of the best children’s shows in terms of pedagogy, but also in terms of inclusivity. That inclusivity has not yet extended to LGBT families, but as I’ve said before, they have a new chance now, under a federal administration that is not likely to yank funding if they do so, and an increasing number of LGBT-friendly corporations who wouldn’t be afraid to sponsor them.

They’ve been a pioneer in diversity before, unafraid to incorporate characters of various ethnicities, languages, and physical abilities. They had a multi-episode storyline with an adoptive single mother in 2006. Really, throwing in an LGBT-headed family wouldn’t be that much of a stretch, and would help them prove that even 40 years on, they remain a leader in teaching children not only the ABC’s, but also the diversity of the society around them.

What Really Constitutes Family

Happy Monday, everyone! To start the week, here’s a passage I like from a Bay Windows article by Rev. Irene Monroe, one of the officiants at the wedding of Cambridge, Mass. Mayor E. Denise Simmons and Ms. Mattie Hayes. Mayor Simmons is also the mother of four and is raising her three grandchildren. She and Hayes wed August 30 at St. Bartholomew Episcopal Church in Cambridge, making it possibly the first mainstream African American church to hold a same-sex wedding.

Monroe writes:

Historically, as African Americans, we have always focused on spiritual content of family and not physical composition of it. . . .

These multiple family structures, which we have had to devise as models of resistance and liberation, have always, by example, shown the rest of society what really constitutes family. A family where a grandmother raises her grandchild or a lesbian couple raises their children. Just like in the Simmons-Hayes household. A household that is now legal by the state and blessed by the church.”