Lest you think I’ve become entirely obsessed with the Olympics (almost, but not quite), here’s a roundup of what’s happening in LGBT parenting news:

• The California Supreme Court ruled today that a group of doctors cannot use their religion as a legal excuse for denying a lesbian patient infertility treatment. Lambda Legal reports, “In a unanimous decision, the justices ruled that Guadalupe ‘Lupita’ Benitez was entitled to be treated like other patients with her same health problem, and that constitutional protections for religious liberty do not excuse unlawful discrimination.”
• Conservative activists gathered outside a California high school to rally support for Proposition 8, which would ban marriage of same-sex couples. They are apparently upset that the state’s Teachers Association donated $250,000 to fight the ban.
• Canada.com has a good interview with the mother of a trans son, in which she says, “I haven’t lost a daughter. I have gained a confident, strong level-headed son of whom I am immensely proud.” The article also mentions Families In TRANSition: A Resource Guide for Parents of Trans Youth (PDF link), which seems similar in spirit to The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals, which I reviewed last month, albeit with a Canadian bent.
• The U.K’s Guardian looks at some of the different approaches to transgender children who want to transition.

Read more »

A few interesting features from round and about:

• From The Walrus magazine in Canada comes “Frontier Families: The Complexities of Queer Parenting,” by Matthew Hays, who wrote the article after two lesbian friends of his first considered and then rejected him as a sperm donor. He turns this rejection into a broad, balanced article about the changing landscape of LGBT rights and parenting and the tradeoffs involved in known versus unknown sperm donors. Among other things, he notes that despite Canada’s leading status in terms of marriage for same-sex couples, “Canada’s laws surrounding assisted procreation have become far more restrictive than in America.” Worth a read.
• You should also read Paige Schilt’s four-part series “Of Buddhas, Brains, and Babies; or, Meditations on Parenting and Anger,” at Bilerico if you’ve ever had a child throw a tantrum or felt yourself get angry at your child’s behavior—and I think that’s pretty much all of us. (Here are Parts II, III, and IV.)
• More gay men are starting families with the help of a surrogate mother. Not shocking news to those of us in the LGBT community, perhaps, but this Associated Press coverage is a good mainstream treatment that explores many of the legal hurdles. At the same time, I have to question its premise that the possibility of marriage is incenting more same-sex couples to consider parenthood. My sense is that same-sex couples who want kids will have them, whether legal marriage is open to them or not. Those who already have kids, or are considering them, may be more inclined to marry, but the reverse isn’t necessarily true.
• Despite the title, “Dad, Dad and me: Seattle is a haven for children of gays and lesbians,” talks about children of lesbians as well. It features a number of quotes from teens and adult children of lesbian and gay parents.

People magazine has the first photos of transgender man Thomas Beatie and his daughter, Susan Juliette. Towleroad has some beautiful stills from Good Morning America’s coverage yesterday.

From what Beatie says, the family is settling in to being a family. Can’t ask for more than that.

Alan O’Brien-Myers is a rising senior at Holyoke High School in Massachusetts, where he lives with his two moms and younger brother. He posted on Bilerico today in response to John McCain’s statement that he doesn’t believe in gay adoption. He says, in part:

What’s not to believe in? Many gays and lesbians adopt children and create wonderful, loving families. My moms adopted me out of foster care when I was eleven years old. I’m seventeen now. I love my family. My moms provide for me in all the ways that other parents provide for their children. We have our problems just like everybody else, but in the end we take care of each other. We believe in each other.

What we don’t believe in is John McCain and any other politician who is out of touch with the reality of American families.

Worth reading in full and forwarding to anyone you know who might be considering a vote for McCain.

Last Sunday, presidential candidate John McCain told the New York Times, “I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no, I don’t believe in gay adoption” (which, like “gay marriage,” is a misleading term implying there is something so fundamentally different about the act when it is done by gay people that it requires the extra modifier). Presumably he’s not too fond of adoption by single parents, either, although as Raw Story points out, his phrasing also seems to imply that two gay parents only constitute a single parent. (Hmm. . . . Two becoming one. Isn’t that how some people describe marriage?) Read more »

Helen and I used in vitro fertilization (IVF) to conceive our son. We did not, alas, have enough extra embryos after implantation to freeze any for later use. (We did, however, use a tried and true frozen sperm “pop-sicle.”) I was still interested, however, in a new study from Copenhagen University Hospital, which reports the counterintuitive result that for IVF, frozen embryos were better than fresh. Babies conceived using previously frozen embryos were of normal birth weight, whereas those conceived through conventional IVF were on average 200 grams lighter.

The lead scientist is not sure why, but says it may be a matter of selection, with only the strongest embryos able to survive the freezing and thawing process. Women who freeze embryos for later use also tended to be younger and healthier, and were less likely to implant the embryos right after the hormone treatments to harvest the eggs, which might have some impact. (This would, of course, be irrelevant for lesbian couples who did what Helen and I did, with the eggs being harvested from one woman and implanted into the other.)

I am not, of course, recommending that you put your blastocysts on ice. This is only one study, and there are many, many variables for any given person’s case. I find the whole science of assisted reproduction pretty fascinating, however, and wonder what options will be available to our children when they are grown.

Thomas Beatie and his wife Nancy welcomed a baby girl into the world last Sunday. Beatie, a transgender man, made headlines in March when he announced he was pregnant.

Best wishes to the new family. May they have the privacy and peace their young one needs while they also continue to help shift attitudes. Kudos also to ABC News for referring to Beatie as a “new dad” in acknowledgment of his gender identity and stated parental role. (His wife said on Oprah that she would be the mother and Beatie the father.) ABC’s phrase, “Transgender Man Born a Woman” does seem redundant, but we’ll allow it in the spirit of being clear for the clueless.

If you missed Quads with Two Moms, the Discovery Health show I mentioned yesterday, you can catch it again June 14 at 2 p.m. Eastern and July 6 at 12 p.m. and 4 p.m.

Here’s my quick take: It’s a good documentary, although the whizzy graphics and zippy scene cuts at the beginning struck me as a little silly. Fortunately, they don’t continue through the whole film. The filmmaker, Shannon O’Rourke, gets high marks, too, for not dwelling on overdone points like the search for sperm, though she does touch on it. Instead, her focus is on the women’s preparations for having their babies, their dual c-sections (in separate hospitals because of separate insurance), and the struggle of one of their preemie babies to breathe on his own. She has the women speak a little about the difficulties they and their children will face as a lesbian-headed family. What’s striking about the film, however, is that it is the fact of four babies that stands out more than the fact of the mothers’ gender.

Again, here is the Discovery Viewer Relations page so you can send them a note of support for airing the show.

Thanks to Terrance at Republic of T for his serendipitous sighting of an ad for Quads with Two Moms, which will air tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on Discovery Health as part of their Baby Week coverage.

I wrote back in March about another lesbian couple who had quads. In that story, one woman carried all four at once. The couple portrayed on the show tonight went about it a little differently, implanting embryos in both women, who then each bore twins. They already had a ten-year-old daughter, whom one of them had from a previous opposite-sex marriage.

I’m not sure what would be more difficult: carrying quads or dealing with a partner when we were both hormonal from twins. Yes, I realize that’s a silly question; both ways are hard, and carrying a single baby is no walk in the park, either.

It’s great to see yet another way we create our families, though. Kudos to the Discovery Channel for including lesbian moms in their Baby Week. (And because the ultra-right is bound to criticize them for doing so, here is their Viewer Relations page so you can send them a note of support.)

UPDATE: I just realized that the filmmaker, Shannon O’Rourke, also made the documentary Maybe Baby, about single women choosing to become mothers. It’s not about lesbian moms per se, although one of the woman profiled is a lesbian, but it explores issues of “alternative” parenting and assisted reproduction that many of us will appreciate.

I’m reading my way through the Blogging for LGBT Families posts, and am once again awed by the strength and diversity of our community. Many thanks to all of you who participated.

I’ll be doing a few posts in the next week or so highlighting and contrasting some of the contributions, or suggesting some emerging themes. One post in particular I wanted to point out right now, however. C at Liquid Baby wrote:

how’s this for a blogging for LGBT families post??
Homestudy complete last Friday.
Potential birthmom match this Friday.
Meet and make it an official match Saturday/Sunday.
Baby Today. (she is doing very well, just needs a little help with breathing)

Can’t top that. Congratulations and best wishes to the newly enlarged family.