- The family of Larry King, a gay middle school student who was shot to death last year by a classmate, has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit that accuses the school district, a shelter, and the Ventura County Rainbow Alliance, an LGBT-rights organization, of failing to protect him. The suit claims the Alliance “encouraged him to make sexual advances toward his classmate.”
- Annie Crowder, parent of a first-grader in Calfornia’s Alameda Unified School District, wrote a great letter to the Mercury News in support of instituting a safe schools curriculum. Her letter is a terrific model for any others hoping to do the same. She says in part:
This is not an issue of whether or not people understand me as a person or agree with my decision to have children with my partner. This is not about teaching our children “how to be gay” or what it means to be homosexual. It is about teaching children that all people, no matter who they are or how different they may be from who you are, deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Period.
- Kentucky’s Fairness Campaign issued a statement calling the legislation that would ban unmarried couples from adopting or fostering children “an anti-gay political attack.” And an anti-child attack, I might add.
- Chris Sanders, chairman and president of the Tennessee Equality Project, tells readers of The Tennessean why the proposed state ban on adoption by unmarried, cohabiting couples of any gender is not in the best interest of the state’s children.
- Anoka-Hennepin, the largest school district in Minnesota, has replaced its 1995 policy stating that homosexuality should not be taught as a normal, valid lifestyle, with a new policy stating that staff should remain neutral on issues of sexual orientation.
- Wayne LaRue Smith, a gay man in Florida, gained permanent guardianship of the foster child he was raising, to ensure the boy could stay with him even though the law forbid him to adopt. Now that a court has revoked the adoption ban, state child welfare administrators are refusing to give the boy the financial benefits available to other adopted foster kids, including state-funded health insurance under Medicaid, a tuition waiver for any Florida college or university, and monthly stipends. Because the boy was already in a guardianship, they say, he was no longer a foster child when he was adopted, and therefore does not qualify for the subsidies.
- Sixteen-year-old Adrienne of San Francisco wrote a piece for PBS’s NewsHour Extra explaining why same-sex couples like her parents should be allowed to marry.
- More.com has a piece on the fact that—shock—women are coming out after 40. Despite a little sensationalism, and a bit of overemphasis on the sex, it’s a pretty positive article. It touches on, but doesn’t delve into the issue of what it means for children when their parents come out, though. On that, I refer you, as always, to Abigail Garner’s Families Like Mine
(which is, in fact, great for LGBT families of all types).
- A lesbian couple in Australia has received $317,000 in compensation in a suit that claimed having two IVF babies instead of one damaged their relationship. They had sued their obstetrician for implanting two embryos instead of the requested one. (Yes, the doctor goofed. But what kind of message is this sending to the children?)
- Cambodian officials said their National Assembly would soon approve a bill to ban adoptions involving single parents, gay parents, low-income parents and parents who already have two children. Can we get Angelina Jolie to have a word with them?
- Last, but far from least, Massachusetts House Minority Leader Bradley Jones, the state rep from my very own district, has filed a bill that would expand the state’s sex education parental notification law to require written parental approval for students to participate in any “curriculum, or a school sanctioned program or activity, which involves human sexual education, human sexuality issues, or [newly added] sexual orientation issues.” (My emphasis.) Yep, I have a few thoughts on the subject. More on this later in the week.