I’ve often wondered about this myself, since I am a Jewish mom (albeit a non-observant one) who donated an egg to my shiksa wife in order to create our child. I like to think that might befuddle a few Talmudic scholars. In her article, Susan explores the strands of heritage and identity and comes up with a conclusion that I like a lot. I won’t spoil the punchline, but I will quote one of my favorite lines from her piece, “Occasionally, the responsibility and the sheer work involved in creating our own path forward feel overwhelming, but it’s necessary work if we want our children to make informed, responsible decisions about their lives, rather than simply deferring to unexamined authority.”

Wise words for all, whether related to Judaism or to any other religion or culture.

If that’s not enough, Susan is doing a giveaway in association with the article. Go visit Mama Non Grata for details. You could win a free copy of the whole issue of Lilith in which her article appears. (If you don’t win, never fear. You can still read her article online.)

Susan is also one of the editors of the fantastic collection of essays And Baby Makes More: Known Donors, Queer Parents, and Our Unexpected Families. Highly recommended. (Here’s my review of it, if you need more convincing.)

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.

The father in the show, Marty Kahn (Don Cheadle), is “confused,” Anderson-Minshall says, but nevertheless “goes to bat for the kid. . . . Like Kurt Hummel’s father on Glee, he’s trying to understand the kid. So is Roscoe [Donis Leonard Jr.] gay? Transgender? Or just playing around the way kids should be allowed to do? We know as much as Marty does but, based on episode one, it’ll be a fascinating journey watching Roscoe find out.”

My friend Cathy Renna, whose firm Renna Communications does publicity for Gender Spectrum, also liked the portrayal of the child in the first episode, as did After Ellen’s The Linster.

Based on the trailer, parenting may be the only area where Marty acts with integrity, but I’m all right with that—having a good character accept his child would have been expected, and perhaps yawned at. Having a sleazy one actually try to do the right thing in this area makes it even more compelling. And Marty is just one in a long line of morally ambiguous Showtime parents, who include Weeds’ drug-dealing Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) and Dexter’s serial killer Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall).

Positive media images aren’t the only thing that will grow acceptance and understanding of gender variant children, but they help. Good for Showtime.

Here’s the blurb from their Web site: 

Images of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth, more and more, are regular images in our media and current pop culture. Young people are developing an understanding and awareness of their sexual orientation and gender identity at increasingly younger ages. As a result, youth and their families face a unique set of challenges navigating childhood and adolescence. This workshop aims to explore:

• The nature of sexual orientation and gender identity ranging from early childhood to adolescence
• Disparities faced by LGBT youth in school systems and their larger communities
• Recommendations for how to create “safe spaces” where youth can explore their sexual orientation and gender identity and LGBT identified youth can find support.

Webinars are free to NAMC members and $20 for non-members. Membership is $35, so you might check their list of upcoming Webinars to see if membership is worthwhile for you or any friends/colleagues who may be interested.

(On a related note, here’s a free helpful hint to NAMC: Rename your “How To Parent Together: Do Moms & Dads Have to Agree?” Webinar to “How To Parent Together: Do Parents Have to Agree?” (Or “Do Parenting Partners Have to Agree?”). The descriptive text about that Webinar is gender-neutral, using the terms “parents” and “partners,” which is great—but you’ll get very few LGBT parents even looking at the description with a title like that.)

Showtime’s new comedy series, House of Lies, which starts this Sunday, stars Don Cheadle as a “charming, fast talking” business consultant. Cheadle and his team of MBAs “are playing America’s 1 percent for everything they’ve got. They put the con in consulting as they charm smug, unsuspecting corporate fat cats into closing huge deals, and spending a fortune for their services.”

Sounds funny—more so because my brother is a business consultant—but a read through the character descriptions on Showtime’s site reveals that Cheadle’s character’s young son is gender variant. From the character description:

Marty and Monica’s young son Roscoe is as bold and brash as his father, except instead of consulting, his thing is cross dressing. Roscoe is very sure of who he is, and he knows how to work a blinged out tee and designer handbag better than anybody, classmates and teachers be damned. The idea that he is not the right gender to play Sandy in Grease does not stop him from auditioning, or even enter his mind.

I haven’t seen a screener, so I don’t know if they’ve handled the character and the issues with insight and sensitivity along with humor, or if they’re just going to use the tired “let’s poke fun at a male in a dress” approach regrettably used by other shows. The “very sure of who he is” part sounds promising, but time will tell.

(For an example of a great approach to handling issues of gender in the classroom, read Wisconsin teacher Melissa Bollow Tempel’s recent piece. You might also want to take a look at my interview with Stephanie Brill, executive director and founder of  Gender Spectrum, which supports families that have gender variant, gender non-conforming, and transgender children. Let’s hope House of Lies’ writers and producers have taken a look at similar resources.)

Over at Skepchick, Natalie Reed has a great article on “Guyliner, Murses, Bromance and Femmephobia,” in which she argues that girls should not be forced into playing with pink, feminine toys—but also that we should not denigrate pink, feminine things entirely. She explains, “Denigration of that which is feminine is to denigrate that which is female-ish. The misogynist implications are fairly clear cut.”

She also notes problems with the marketing of certain products for men:

The “for girls” marketing seems to have as its goal making women find the product more appealing. The “for men” marketing . . . seem designed to somehow protect or insulate men from the girliness of whatever you’re selling. As though . . . touching it or using it will contaminate them with… I don’t know… cooties or something. Maybe turn them gay. Or trans. Gasp!

It’s a great read, so go check it out. (Thanks to The Mary Sue for the link.)

I’m also pleased by Reed’s note that Edmund Scientifics, purveyor of kits and gadgets to geeks everywhere, has stopped marketing its children’s science kits in “girls” and “boys” varieties, but will simply call them “Novelty Science Kits” from now on. You should go read their blog post about it, too—it’s a nice example of a company realizing that they were “projecting gender bias and defining gender roles,” and taking action to change that.

(For more on the topic, you might also want to read my interview with Stephanie Brill, executive director and founder of  Gender Spectrum, which supports families that have gender variant, gender non-conforming, and transgender children.)

If defendant retains custody, it may be that because the community is intolerant of her differences these girls may sometimes have to bear themselves with greater than ordinary fortitude. But this does not necessarily portend that their moral welfare or safety will be jeopardized. It is just as reasonable to expect that they will emerge better equipped to search out their own standards of right and wrong, better able to perceive that the majority is not always correct in its moral judgments, and better able to understand the importance of conforming their beliefs to the requirements of reason and tested knowledge, not the constraints of currently popular sentiment or prejudice.

“Yes, that’s right, 1979,” Polikoff said.

“Lesbian moms: Building character since 1979.” I want a t-shirt.

Iowa college student Zach Wahls, in his twice-viral video, famously said, “The sexual orientation of my parents has had zero impact on the content of my character.” And a University of Virginia study last year concluded what many other studies have found: “Regardless of their parents’ sexual orientation, how well children were adjusted was significantly associated with how warmly their parents were oriented to them.”

But Ashley Harness at Velvet Park Media raises the question of whether a gay sexual orientation can actually have an impact—a positive one—on the character of one’s children. She imagines a homeless transgender youth adopted by a gay couple. Imagine, she writes, if this girl did a YouTube video:

She says she learned from her adoptive gay parents that love is something you spread around in excess. You color with love outside the lines that a heterosexist, racist, transphobic, classist world prescribes. She practices BEING love in the world—and people notice and ask her why.

She says it’s because she has gay parents.

Harness makes an excellent point. I’ve always urged caution when interpreting research results indicating that LGBT parents are “better” in some way. At best, we can say that there are certain areas in which, on average (but not exclusively), we tend to have strengths. But if those strengths help build our children’s characters, to Harness’ point, then we should acknowledge and celebrate that.

Harness also raises the question of whether Wahls’ video would have had the same impact had he been gay. She herself is a lesbian with lesbian moms. She had been an outspoken advocate for LGBT equality, but when she came out, she said, “I promptly stopped talking publicly about being the kid of gay parents. Nobody outright told me, but I wasn’t a politically savvy messenger for the movement anymore. I had become proof of the Religious Right’s propaganda—gayness rubs off. Gay parents make gay children.”

That right-wing view is, of course, utter nonsense. Some LGBT parents will have LGBT children, because statistically, that’s going to happen. No parent can “make” a child into a particular sexual orientation (or gender identity). The best we can do is support them in being themselves.

Harness also says that while she admires Wahls, she hopes our movement embraces a greater diversity of spokespeople, including LGBT children of LGBT parents. Even Wahls seems to feel the same way. In a piece for The Daily Beast this week, he writes that he has stopped answering questions about his own sexual orientation: “If the only question you have after listening to me defend my family is about my sexuality, I’m afraid you’ve missed my point. Whether I’m gay, straight, or bisexual, tall or short, male or female, white or black, successful go-getter or slacker, is entirely immaterial.”

My take on all this? A parent’s sexual orientation does not prescribe a child’s sexual orientation, nor does the parent’s sexual orientation in itself determine the child’s character. But living with honesty and integrity towards oneself and others, in the face of discrimination and adversity from society, takes tremendous strength of character. That’s a lesson LGBT parents can convey to our children that will definitely have a positive impact.

Here are details about the show and two of its featured guests, via a press release:

On Wednesday, November 16, Anderson Cooper’s new daytime talk show, Anderson, will focus on transgender children – children whose gender behavior, expression, or identity does not comport with their biological gender – and their families.  The episode will feature Diane Ehrensaft, PhD, a developmental psychologist and one of the nation’s leading experts on parenting of transgender and gender-nonconforming children. Dr. Ehrensaft’s appearance coincides with the release of her new book, Gender Made, Gender Born.  Ehrensaft serves on the Board of Gender Spectrum (www.genderspectrum.org), a national organization offering educational, training and advocacy services to promote acceptance for transgender and gender-nonconforming children.

The episode will also feature Tammy Lobel and her family, who were also subjects of a recent CNN.com article.  Tammy is an 11-year-old girl who was born as Tommy, and began identifying as a girl at age 3.  Her parents, Debra Lobel and Pauline Moreno, are Gender Spectrum allies. 

Dr. Ehrensaft’s research and writing focus on the areas of child development, gender, parenting, parent-child relationships, and psychological issues for families using assisted reproductive technology.  She has a clinical practice in Oakland, California. Her areas of specialization include: families using assisted reproductive technology; gender nonconforming and transgender children; divorce and custody issues; children with developmental problems; and parenting. Dr. Ehrensaft is also a founding member of the developing Children and Youth Gender Clinic, a partnership between the University of California San Francisco and community agencies to provide comprehensive interdisciplinary services and advocacy to gender nonconforming/ transgender children and youth and their families.

In Gender Born, Gender Made: Raising Healthy Gender-Nonconforming Children (The Experiment, dist. by Workman Publishing/Pub date: May 31, 2011/$16.95), Dr. Ehrensaft presents a pioneering resource for parents whose children live outside preconceived gender norms and for professionals working with those families.

Emphasizing that we do not make gender-nonconforming children, they come to us, Dr. Ehrensaft offers parents, clinicians, and educators guidance on both the philosophical dilemmas and the practical, daily concerns of working with children who don’t fit a “typical” gender mold. Dr. Ehrensaft draws on her experience as both a psychologist and as a mother of a gender-nonconforming child—experience which extends over three decades. In Gender Born, Gender Made, she carefully considers outmoded approaches to gender nonconformity that may harm more than help, and offers a new framework for helping each child become his or her own unique, most gender-authentic person.

The family shines, especially 16-year-old Samantha. I have two criticisms, though. First, the coverage focuses too much on the “will gay parents make their kids gay” question (to which credible social science has long answered “no”). Second, the reporter states, “We checked in with one family to find out what it’s like to be a teenager in a household led by same-sex parents.” (The associated text article says, “We checked in with one teen to find out what it’s like to be raised by same sex parents.”)

Because clearly one teen can speak for all children of same-sex parents. It’s not like our families come from different races, cultures, social classes, ways of family formation, or anything.

Sigh.

All we can do is tell our individual stories, as Samantha and her moms have done, to their credit. It is our collective experiences that paint the broader picture, a picture as diverse as that of any other cross section of society.